April 9, 2009

• Battlefield Heroes – failed

   

  I’ve done quite a few beta testing in the past but never had issues where I can’t even start the game.  I was excited to receive my beta key for Battlefield Heroes two days ago.  As soon as I got home I started the download before I went to make dinner so that I can play after I eat.  While my dinner is cooking I went ahead and created my first Hero.

  What is Battlefield Heroes?  It’s a less complicated cartoon style version of the Battlefield series gear towards the casual crowd.  The concept is the same, capture the flag points to run down the opposing team’s tickets.  There are only 3 classes to choose from and they have individual abilities.  The game is said to be free to play but there is an option to buy (with real $) Battlefunds (virtual currency) to purchase items in the game store, such as clothing and items to level up faster.

  The download is finished and I’m eating dinner, so I launched the game and kind of expect a full screen load but instead it opens in a smaller browser window.  Interesting I thought, it’s going to be browser based.  Anyways, I continued on to select the hero I created earlier and clicked ‘Enter’.  Then I got hit with an error message.  Ugh, “Unable to connect. (1009)”, wtf… I clicked ‘OK’ and the game exits.  Tried again, same thing.  I went to the forum on the website, submitted my report and gave up for now.”

  Next day I got home to attempt another try.  Bam!  This time I got a different error, “Internal error. (2)”.  Like I know what that means, so I tried again and got the same error.  Then I went to the forum and submitted my report for this and gave up.  What a disappointment since I wasn’t expecting to get nothing out of this beta this early.  Even Quake Live wasn’t this bad, I ran into issues where the game freezes during login and loading.  Once the game started it was smooth sailing.  I’ll definitely give it another shot and it works for other people, just need to wait for them to iron this one out.

  Have you ever beta tested a game but it just won’t work?  What is your patience level before you would completely give up?

  +++++

  UPDATE

  It worked!  After I got home last night I attempted another shot at it and I can finally play the game.  But of course it didn’t work right away.  I did get the usual “Internal Error (2)” then it loaded into the game menu.  When I was browsing around in the menu I was disconnected frequently and that was annoying.  Then I reconnected and as soon as the menu loaded I launched the game, to my initial thought of the game running in a browser was wrong.  It actually launched it full screen and I started playing through the tutorial level.  If you ever play any of the Battlefield series then you’re already familiar with how it works.  After exiting the tutorial I quickly jumped into a game and played a few rounds.  It was quite smooth, I did get one disconnect early in one game and the subsequent games are fine.  Finally I get to start beta testing this game after 2 days of glitches.

  How often do you participate in a public beta for a game?

  • 11:06 am
  • 11 Comments