Dedicated to the memory of ThunderOfAllah, VonSchmuck and VonDefunct, proud National soldiers - killed not in a fair fight with Royal army, but treacherously obliterated by evil corporation Electronic Arts.I wanted to write about Battlefield Heroes ever since the time of this post. As months went by, the angle at which I would tackle the note were changing: beta problems, cheating and aimbotting, racism and facism - there was no shortage of interesting approaches to the subject. I even put the game down for three months and came back in the meantime. But a new twist of events has put an exclamation mark over everything that has led to this point and I have decided to step out and tell you my story: the story of Barts and Battlefield Heroes.
INITIAL IMPRESSIONS
The first information about the game came from this ubercool promotional movie (Hans von Schnitzel!). I fell in love with the cartoony style and sense of humour of Battlefield Heroes and applied for beta. Some time later I got my beta invite and was thrilled to get my hands on it.
I downloaded the client and started the game. In the game world there are two factions, Royals and Nationals, that are reminiscent of respectively Allies and Axis. And they are at war, of course. Three classes are available for players: back-stabbing sniping Commandos, thuggish Gunners with heavy firepower and somewhere between them Soldiers, regular shooters with a couple of fancy tricks up their sleeve.
I created my first hero as
Initially, playing Battlefield Heroes was a blast. Those who say that the game is slow are just being assholes - the gameplay style is not the adrenaline-junkie-high-on-amphetamine Quake clone, it is more adapted to regular human operating speed, without overclocking. I found it relatively fast (except maybe driving through vehicle maps which slows things down) and enjoyable, with occasional funny situations. Maps were colourful and well designed, weapons relatively well-balanced, player characters were looking wicked
Levelling my character up was fun but since I tried a bunch of different skillset options, I was eventually stuck with jack of all trades not very well suited for combat. Therefore I created a new hero - VonDefunct. Looking like Jason Statham dressed in Nazi general outfit, he was my second Commando, this time with well planned development path. Almost unseen (Invisibility level 5) and fast as lightning (Elixir level 2), he was a serious back-stabbing threat to the Allies.
Unfortunately both him and VonSchmuck got erased by Electronic Arts.
BETA ANNOYANCES
There were numerous problems with the beta, normal childhood pains for an online game - connections errors, weapons balancing, dirty tricks and loopholes. These were minor annoyances, because I expected them. Some other things were more nasty, to the point of infuriating.
First thing that set me off was deletion of all my characters without any warning. One day I turned the game on, only to find that since beta is moving to late-beta, everybody's soldiers are deleted and we can create new ones. What's more, all our in-game money disappeared as well - from now on, players had to pay for fancy uniforms and hats with real money. Later on it turned out that there were some information in the forums, but I haven't come across it.
Overall, it was a major deal-breaker for me - if I am to play with temporary characters, I would take it as a kindness if I get warned about it before I start playing and not immediately before deletion. Also, if my amount of in-game currency is only valid for some time, it would be nice to mention it as well. As a counterargument, I know it's beta and everything is changing, but instead of some explanation or information, one comes and stares at an empty screen. Not fun.
With the introduction of real money and paying for character outfits, the colourful armies changed into legions of bleak clones. Sure, there are some clothes and parafernalia available for Valor Points, which player earns through playing, but they are not that funky anymore. While not a big problem in general, it certainly took a bit of wacky appeal from the game.
Much more annoying, however, was the fact that even if player coughs up for the outfit, it only lasts a while. One cannot buy some piece and just have it - they have expiration date! If you want your character to look like Red Baron, you have to keep paying. That's a huge no-no in my book.
Next big problem, however, was much more serious - the cheaters (pronounce it in the way Malcolm Reynolds pronounced "Reavers!"). It has happened to me once that I got shot from the other end of the map (!) with a perfect headshot (!!) while being cloaked and invisible (!!!). At first, I thought it was one of those one-in-a-million things, but then it begun to occur repeadetly. I started quitting the games in whenever I realized there was a cheater on the prowl, but it soon got overwhelming and one could not cross any map without bumping into at least one.
More and more players would target their fire with deadly precision, invisibility was not protection anymore and cheaters were unpunished. Reporting them on the forums wouldn't work, because Admins would reply that even five witnesses were not enough to ban someone. I even downloaded Fraps and started recording movies, but some of them were questioned as inconclusive.
I realized that instead of playing, I was wasting my sparse free time cutting and encoding videos in order to expose infuriatingly annoying cheaters. It was far from my idea of leisure, it was something that should be taken care of by EA or Dice and they were not doing anything about it.
So, finally, the constant bullying by cheaters got so annoying that one day I have crossed over and joined the Dark Side.
THE FALL
This part is what I originally thought would be the meat of the note on Battlefield Heroes - a tragical tale of my descent into evil, from a friendly team player to obnoxious cheating bastard.
Cheaters were not eager to share their source of superpower and I didn't know what to search for. A bit of diplomacy and guesswork resulted in the link to the hack itself - DLL Injector that would alter the game code on the fly. I had to learn how to use it, which actually was not that easy and required some experimentation, usually on some innocent regular gamers, but after a couple of readjustments to aim-bot constants and tweaking of various display parameters, I got it all working just fine.
Note all the little extras in this screenshotAt first I felt like Neo when he saw the Matrix - I could see all the soldiers on the map, together with their energy bar and hero class, I would get warned if anyone was able to see me (spider-sense tingling!), I could shoot enemy in any limb of choice the second I saw them. This gave me the incredible sense of power over the normal folks.
Initially, I was playing caped crusader style - whenever I localized a cheater (I believe I should have written another cheater), I would concentrate my efforts on him. I would forget all other players and hunt that bastard down. It was relatively easy to weed cheaters out, by the way, because if some player carefully navigates his hero through the map avoiding enemies that he couldn't have seen without a cheat, this really stands out - for someone who can see it through the walls, that is. Unfortunately, concentrating only on one cheater and bringing him down a couple of times would usually result in counter-action and finally we would have sniper duel. Think about two super-heroes having their fight amidst unsuspecting regular soldiers.
But power corrupts and soon I started abusing my freshly acquired superpowers. Not before too long I was happily bullying enemy players, scoring perfect headshots from thousands miles away and engaging into flaming discussion started by my frustrated victims. Since at that time I was playing with my third character, ThunderOfAllah, stylized for a Turkish soldier from WWII era, my opponents would assume that I am muslim and would try to offend me by making nasty racial and religious comments. My personal favourite was being called "arab hacker":
Of course, when I got accused of cheating, I would lie that my victims were not cloaked or that they were, in fact, cheater no trying to frame me. Oddly enough, this was fun for a while, but I think about it with a little bit of disgust at myself, because I surely must have pissed a lot of people. Truth be told, at some point my conciousness budged and it occured to me that instead of having fun playing with others, I am having fun at others' expense. Some people have left the game because of me and that meant someone somewhere had his dose of fun completely spoiled by me. I was becoming a bastard and I realized I didn't like it.
Hence, I decided that I had had enough and on one sunny April day I deleted all local content of Battlefield Heroes and quit.
RELAPSE
In July I came back from vacation and was checking my email inbox, where I found promotional codes for a set of medals for my hero as a thank you for beta participation. I was strong and I resisted the temptation, but soon afterwards I saw this hilarious trailer and my weak strong will just snapped. Hearing the familiar Battlefield Heroes tune gave me the feeling similar to coming back home after a long departure. Although all my previously bought weapons and uniform parts have expired, I have proudly put the medals on my chest and jumped straight into the fight.
Boy, did it feel good.
I found out that in my absence the cheaters were weeded out and the holes for hacks patched. Some minor problems were also ironed out, web interface refreshed and a new map added. So far, so good. I started grinding, developed my character a bit and even played against game creators, forum admins and mods. Our team didn't win, but I did get to kill them quite a lot (and I've got screenshots to prove it).
Just when I thought my life could not get any better, the disaster struck: my hero was removed and account locked. The very serious note stated:
Violation: Inappropriate Screen/Persona Name
The EA Online naming policy is a derivative of the Terms of Service, and is designed to prevent any inappropriate conduct or vulgarity via a character name. This policy covers character names, group/clan titles, group/clan names, and any other user-generated content. Names that are abusive, racially or ethnically offensive, vulgar, sexually explicit, or in a reasonable person's view, objectionable are not appropriate.
Ouch.
I did reply, of course, in a relatively serious manner:
I did not request any assistance and am very unhappy about removing my in-game character and suspending account.
I would like to get more information on how my in-game nick "ThunderOfAllah" (which, on a side note, is a reference to a certain Surah of Quran) could be considered as "abusive, racially or ethnically offensive, vulgar, sexually explicit, or in a reasonable person's view, objectionable are not appropriate." I honestly don't think it can harm the religious feelings of anyone, either.
Of course, the bit about Surah of Quran was just my feebly attempt at legalizing my nickname, as originally it was taken from a comic book Status 7: Breakoff, in which there was a sniper called Thunder of Allah by muslims he was decimating in Yugoslavia (therefore it was quite funny when I was being called "arab hacker" in the game).
Still, you can fight, but you cannot win with Electronic Arts:
Unfortunately Allah also is another reference to god and is considered a religious reference and is a violation of the TOS.
So that was it: my third soldier has just died at EA hands and all the resuscitation attempts have failed.
I was crushed. I wanted to delete this stupid game and never go back... I resisted for about four days. Unfortunately, while theoretically my Electronic Arts Online account was suspended for 72 hours, I still couldn't log in after a week. Oh well. Now I can say I understand why EA is generally hated in the gamer's community. I have vowed to never buy another EA game, something further facilitated by the fact that Bioshock and its DRM has already made me dislike EA a lot.
And what about Battlefield Heroes after all this? Right now I have re-registered, opened a new account, created a new hero. I won't disclose his identity here, but he is also National commando. I even took part in the caption contest (the results of which can be seen on some of the above screenshots). So I guess that while Electronic Arts might be evil bastards, the game by itself is amusing and addictive and I would recommend it to everyone. Just, you know, don't develop any special relationship with your in-game avatar, it will hurt less when
