Hello Heroes!

James Salt here again, Senior Producer on Heroes.

It’s been a week since we opened the doors to the new phase of the Closed Beta and we’ve been very busy!

First up. We’ve just made some updates to the website. We fixed a lot of little things – formatting on some pages, browser compatibility; most of you won’t even have noticed that there were some glitches. We won’t bore you with the details, but instead present to you the highlights:

- We have introduced a New Map! Buccaneer Bay makes its debut today.
- New Items! We’ve added new items to the Store.
- Battlefunds! Look out for the Battlefunds icon next to the prices in the store.

As you all know, Battlefield Heroes is a Play 4 Free game. Which means it’s free to download and play. We’ll be making a living by putting advertisements on the website and in the game, as well as selling items to customise your Hero. “Battlefunds” is the name of the currency you’ll eventually be able to purchase, to be able to get these customisations. To test out the Battlefunds system we have now given you some to play with. For more information you should check out our Store manager, CaptainShop’s forum post.

Since Monday, when you exit the game, you’ll be asked to complete a short survey. It’s not some marketing survey, when they ask dumb questions like “How many pet cats have you got?”. These surveys are written by the development team, and the results go straight back to them. We really appreciate the responses we’ve been getting so far, keep ‘em coming! If you haven’t filled in the survey yet, it is a great way to get involved in refining Heroes.

Matchmaking. That’s what happens when you push the Play Now button to get into a game. The matchmaking system is there to find the right game for you. It takes a few things into account when deciding which game is best for you: your skill level based on an ELO calculation, the ‘ping’ to the game servers and which team is needed on a server.
We’ve been monitoring this over the last week, and see that occasionally games are occurring where there is a team imbalance. This is something we take seriously, and are looking into.

Thanks for playing Battlefield Heroes, see you on the Battlefield!

James