More than anything though it's Heroes' combination of "runs well on anything" and "free" that really gets its hooks in me.
Anyway, back in May EA was saying Heroes would be going into beta in the early summer months and then transitioning into full public release later in the fall. The beta started up as scheduled, and EA was hot to talk about the ludicrous number of hours the current crop of 10,000 beta testers have logged in the last few weeks (something like two years' worth of game time). Wide release for Heroes, unfortunately, has been pushed back into the early part of next year. That will at least give the team more time to add in new stuff. For instance, new maps and more kinds of vehicles will be rolled into the beta later this winter.
EA was making some bold predictions about the game's success yesterday, saying it expects Heroes to be the most widely played game on the Internet after it launches. That just sounds nuts. Perhaps they haven't heard of World of Warcraft or Counter-Strike? Then again, neither of those games are completely free, and Heroes looks like it's bringing a pretty robust set of features to the table for the whopping price of zero dollars.
If you're jonesing to play some Heroes like I am, you can at least take heart that EA and DICE will be widening the beta by a healthy margin in the next few months, with the player base expanding to 50,000 people drawn from community signups. Keep your eyes on the game's official site for a chance to get in early. We're hoping to get press access to the game in the near future so I'll talk about the gameplay in more depth soon.
Are any of you readers in the beta already? How are you liking the game?