EA’s free-to-play, massive multiplayer shooter Battlefield Heroes is doing pretty well for itself. I mean, getting 7 million people to play in under three years is pretty good. The game first debuted in June, 2009 and it’s reached that user milestone by only March, 2011. It’s a cause for celebration, which is exactly what EA intends to do.

All 7 million of those Battlefield Heroes players are now going to be rewarded until March 15, 2011…

If you like additional downloadable content for your games, but don’t like paying for it, then drink Dr. Pepper. For a limited time, Dr. Pepper and EA have teamed up. Now, bottles of Dr. Pepper and select fountain cups at stores like 7 Eleven will come with promotional codes for free DLC for select EA games. 14 oz., 16 oz. and 20 oz. Dr. Pepper, Dr. Pepper Cherry, Diet Dr. Pepper and Diet Dr. Pepper Cherry bottles will all carry the codes under their caps, and codes will be on stickers on the fountain cups.

Once you acquire a code, you can visit the Dr. Pepper website to enter your code. You’ll need to log into the Dr. Pepper site and your EA account. Then, you can get DLC for your game. The website says you can get DLC for Sims 3, Mass Effect 2, Battlefield Heroes, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Spore. I’m guessing it only applies to the PC versions of the games, though the EA press release does mention the Xbox 360 version of Mass Effect 2.

Here’s what you can get for each game…

We can choose to look at EA’s actions in one of two ways – they’re either paying homage to the late Michael Jackson, or cashing in on his death. Either way it will release two awfully familiar costumers for Battlefield Heroes in July 2009.

The first costume is the Smooth Suit inspired by “Smooth Criminal” and the second is the Thuggin Outfit inspired by “Bad.” In order to get these costumes you’ll have to cough up 420 Battlefunds ($3), the currency used to purchase items in Battlefield Heroes…

Fans of the cartoon-style open world warfare-shooter, Battlefield Heroes will get the chance to continue the good fight as Swedish developer EA Dice is set to reopen its closed beta testing servers on February 11, 2009.

It has been just under four months since EA Dice originally shut down the closed beta for Battlefield Heroes, which was originally supposed to be released as a free-to-play download for fans of the popular series late 2008.

The reasoning behind the original shut down was so,,,

All of you lucky beta soldiers that were recruited to participate in the engagement of bug scouting and reporting, please report to the front office to be relieved of duty. That’s right kids, as of 6 p.m. CET, November 14, 2008, the free-to-play shooter being published by Electronics Arts and developed by Digital Illusions have shut down their closed beta to “focus on polishing up the backend…”

You’ve got to hand it to EA for creating a presence at PAX. They had not just one but three booths on the floor, plus several others related to them. Here are the games they had on display, some more prominently than others…

Today (June, 24, 2008), Battlefield: Bad Company comes out for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, making it the 12th title in the series to date, with Battlefield: Heroes still due to be released for the PC this summer.

According to IGN, executive producer Ben Cousens spoke about the game at Paris GDC this week:

“Since the start of this year I’ve been working as executive producer for the entire Battlefield franchise – we’ve got five titles in development at the moment, which is probably more than you expect.”