I just started playing Battlefield Heroes yesterday and it’s actually not that bad. It’s surprisingly fun for a free game. It’s got the gameplay of Battlefield 2 plus the graphics of Team Fortress 2.

BF Heroes is still a closed beta so you will need to get a beta key to play it. I thought the process of obtaining a key and installing the client was super annoying and confusing so I decided to write a post about it.

Getting the Beta Key

You can get the beta key through a number of ways. The first is going onto http://battlefield-heroes.com and clicking the “Sign Up For Beta” link but you’ll need an EA account first. On the right is a login box if you already have an EA account, otherwise just click the register link to sign up for one. However, this way takes forever cause you’ll have to wait for the BF:Heroes people to email you a beta key.

A quicker way of obtaining a beta key is to visit one of their partners here. I chose the mmohub.org site ‘cause their beta key signup thing was right on the homepage. For the other sites you might have to do some digging. So anyway, visit http://mmohub.org/game/battlefield-heroes/ and enter your email and click submit. The beta key will instantly be generated. Make sure you copy the key and paste it in a notepad file or something cause you’ll need to enter it in twice later on. Once you’ve copied it, click the “Play Now” button below.

Activating Your Beta Key

Clicking the “Play Now” button will bring you to the http://beta.battlefield-heroes.com/ site. Here you can activate your beta key by clicking the aptly named “Activate my Beta Key” button.

Paste your beta key in the form, set up you username and password and activate it. You’ll then be prompted by this screen:

If you don’t have an EA account you’ll have to sign up for one. You can do so by clicking the link in the first option, “Battlefield Heroes Beta registration page”. If you already have a EA account or finished signing up for one, click the second link and it’ll bring you to this page:

Here you’ll tie you beta key to your EA account. Again enter your beta key then enter your EA account information. And submit it.

Registering on BF Heroes

After your tie you beta key to your EA account, visit http://play.battlefield-heroes.com/ using either Firefox or IE. This is important cause BF: Heroes launches from your browser and only FF and IE are supported, which kind of sucks for us Opera users (screw you safari). Log in at the top using your EA account and you will be presented with this:

Just enter a BF: Heroes username that you want to use.

Yay. You’re almost done.

Once you finish registering you can then create heroes! Click the “Create a Hero” link at the top of the site and it’ll bring you to a page where you can create your heroes. You can only create 4 and you can’t delete characters that you have already created so choose carefully.

Here’s a thing that I noticed while playing the game: the National team is usually better. I think it’s cause all the noobs make characters on that are on the Royals side. Either way, it’s all up to you.

Downloading, Installing, and Playing!

Once you’ve created a character, just click the huge yellow “Play Now!” button on the top left and some stuff will pop up asking you to install the client. Make sure you are using Firefox or IE. Just follow the directions on the screen and it’ll download the client. It might take a while so just sit there and chill out or read some more WTFoodge.com posts (hehe).

After it’s done installing it’ll launch and you can play! Any time you want to play BF: Heroes, you’ll have to go to http://play.battlefield-heroes.com and click the Play Now button. So bookmark the site.

Make sure you set up all your controls and graphics options before you play cause you wont be able to do it in-game. There’s also some bugs with Alt-tabbing on some computers so try not to do that.

So that’s it. GO PLAY.

Oh and the character that I’ve been using is a Commando on the National Army named “dextrin”. Yeah.. I couldn’t think of a user name so I just looked at the back of my Starbucks coffee bottle and picked an ingredient.