Its been some years since the release of Enemy Territory for free to the interent community. And since then its been a great success. Many if not most of these players have probaly never even played the great classic game of RTCW Online. So heres the question. Should Id Software, etc release the Multiplayer of RTCW to the public for free?
What would be the benefits of releasing such a good team based game to the online community? For one, it would boost the current community in numbers! RTCW is played in 2 versions. 1.4 ( Patch ) Which is mainly people with a vailid CD Key and 1.0 ( No Patch ) Which is mainly people without a valid CD Key. Take a guess which one or these versions is more popular at the minute? Its 1.0.
Its no surprise to me that when I finish work at 6am in the morning that I cant Join a Public 1.4 OSP server in Europe as theres no one active at the time to play against. But if I join a 1.0 game I have a choice of 3-7 servers to play on. ( A Mod called SandMod ). So I've been thinking over the last few weeks how can I get 1.0 players to 1.4 ( With PunkBuster + Competition Mod ) and increase the user base of RTCW? Well its simple, release RTCW MP FOR FREE!
When F.E.A.R released its Multiplayer for free it followed suit with a increase of at least 100,000 + Players who tried it at least once. With the Release of Enemy Territory as an Addon and ET:QW, RTCW2 around the corner surely ID Software have no more money to gain from RTCW as a game? It would be a great boost to the RTCW faithful if such a proposal was carried forward.
Warleagues is the only European League really supporting RTCW at the minute. So far we've had 30 Clans Signup for the new season. But you'd expect a 25% drop out from those signups. Imagine RTCW being released for free!! Those Signups would Double at the least ( Guessing ) with new players and new clans coming to the game they dont have to purchase. And even if that wasnt the case. I'm sure the Public servers would be alot more active than now.
Should RTCW be released for Free? Should there be a petition? Theres many more points to be made, But I'm sure you get the main point of this column!
Peace Reznap
What would be the benefits of releasing such a good team based game to the online community? For one, it would boost the current community in numbers! RTCW is played in 2 versions. 1.4 ( Patch ) Which is mainly people with a vailid CD Key and 1.0 ( No Patch ) Which is mainly people without a valid CD Key. Take a guess which one or these versions is more popular at the minute? Its 1.0.
Its no surprise to me that when I finish work at 6am in the morning that I cant Join a Public 1.4 OSP server in Europe as theres no one active at the time to play against. But if I join a 1.0 game I have a choice of 3-7 servers to play on. ( A Mod called SandMod ). So I've been thinking over the last few weeks how can I get 1.0 players to 1.4 ( With PunkBuster + Competition Mod ) and increase the user base of RTCW? Well its simple, release RTCW MP FOR FREE!
When F.E.A.R released its Multiplayer for free it followed suit with a increase of at least 100,000 + Players who tried it at least once. With the Release of Enemy Territory as an Addon and ET:QW, RTCW2 around the corner surely ID Software have no more money to gain from RTCW as a game? It would be a great boost to the RTCW faithful if such a proposal was carried forward.
Warleagues is the only European League really supporting RTCW at the minute. So far we've had 30 Clans Signup for the new season. But you'd expect a 25% drop out from those signups. Imagine RTCW being released for free!! Those Signups would Double at the least ( Guessing ) with new players and new clans coming to the game they dont have to purchase. And even if that wasnt the case. I'm sure the Public servers would be alot more active than now.
Should RTCW be released for Free? Should there be a petition? Theres many more points to be made, But I'm sure you get the main point of this column!
Peace Reznap
but infact i hate 1.4 patch, because i cant play single player on it :D
My only problem is the lack of players and competition...
I don't hate ET nor hitsounds. I'm just tired with ET... and hitsounds should just be removed.
An extinct bird.
RTCW2:MP for free would be nice but I think we're more likely to see r3vers shave his head.
I'd suggest pretty much everyone who was ever going to play RTCW competitively has already done so and moved on.
(FEAR MP being released for free increased it's numbers for a few months, but now they're back down to original levels, almost non-existent, and FEAR was a new-ish game for which MP didn't break SP)
Not sure what you mean. Releasing RTCW MP for free wouldn't affect those people at all since they wouldn't install it. Besides, SP works fine with the 1.4x patch installed (wolfsp.exe remains 1.32).
I agree with the rest of your post. :)
Either way, if RTCW MP was free, and existing owners of RTCW retail who figure "heh let's give MP a go as it's free and there are more players now" would have problems as they'd need to patch to 1.41 to play MP, and if they did it like I did it, SP would no longer work. Assuming of course there is this issue, maybe it's just me ...
"Either way, if RTCW MP was free, and existing owners of RTCW retail who figure "heh let's give MP a go as it's free and there are more players now" would have problems as they'd need to patch to 1.41 to play MP, and if they did it like I did it, SP would no longer work."
If it's never been a big enough problem in the past to warrant an updated patch (1.4 is 4+ years old), then I don't see why ACTV would care about the few people who decide to patch now. These people might as well download the free MP version (if it was released) as the patch anyway.
Not that it matters, this is all hypothetical. :)
dreams
I have bought the game and I still play it sometimes but the community is so much different. At one point they started banning people because they did not have an original cd key (even in 1.41)
This was all done to keep the remaining community clean.
Making RtCW free would just increase the lamers again and most important, the cheaters.
By making RtCW MP for free you would just hurt the current playerbase, and at what cost?
rtcw pwnage game tbh ;)
but think of the age limit ... :<
By the way... how did they handle the age limit with F.E.A.R. MP? Ôô
Good job though.
would be very nice:)
/rcon quit
Why not asking to have a special release "mp only" where we can buy by a paybycall system for 5 $ or € and download it on the id store..
Rest could be done with a few mods, since it's the same engine
I bought RTCW last week:D Platinum edition..
INCLUDING Enemy Territory... im thrilled:D
ouch ouch ouch
I'd like it if more people would play it though =p
39 €
i for one wouldn't play it again (yes i played the game but i didnt enjoy it THAT much, almost the same as ET but rtcw is more fixed on reflexes -> my style of aiming), i'd stick to et since rtcw doesnt ever get supported in any big lan or competition anymore
Couldnt agree more with you on this one. Exactly my thoughts.
Writing a columns interesting and whatever else but is there any way of actually asking id to make it free?
Ps happy penguins worth a bash! If it were not for the ping, shrub and axis panzers in the window, it would be e-heaven
The last thing you will see is RTCW being released for free with ET QW hitting the shelves any moment now.
Besides, i'd rather see 25 really addicted and good players who bought the game than 2500 whiners, nexus'ers and other ashholes who'd like to ruin the atmosphere of the game and got the game for free.
Indeed, the game isn't that expensive nowdays to just buy it and play it..
2. Free RtCW - without PB (like q3e GPL)
3. Make it 1$ buyable, still people would play 1.0 w/o cdkey
This topic was discussed end of last year with ttimo from id software
Are there any plans to release the source code to the id-produced Quake 3-derived games Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory?
That would be nice, I guess we have to talk it through in the company internally, and decide. It's usually mostly an issue of spotting where we might have a few days we can spare on going through that source and putting it together for a GPL release. It would be nice, I'm sure eventually it'll happen, at least for Enemy Territory and Wolfenstein. The thing is, Enemy Territory is still doing really good online, and really we see it a lot on the competition scene, so I would assume there's going to be a bit of resistance as far as releasing the source right now, because it's still doing so great on competition. I love watching those ET matches.
http://www.linuxgames.com/?dataloc=articles/ttimo2006/
rtcw should be played in qcon imo ! :D
rtcw = dead
et killed rtcw
if et never came out, rtcw would boom now
my 2 cents
But if RtCW comes out for free now or in the same release date as Wolf: ET, I think RtCW will be number one (not directly ofcourse).
agree
agree
hm, not really sure
my 2 cents ;(
what i wanna say is that it just might be as active as ET is atm
would be very nice if it would be free...
perhaps this would get the community back on rtcw
n1
And delivered it to my house and installed it on my PC.
And patched it.
And downloaded all the needed addons.
And connected me to a public server.
Apart from that I couldn't give two shits about making an effort to play the prequel to this game with the skeleton of a community.
its growing number of fans has reached new levels in the moslim community.
CS should be free
pizza should be free
weed should be free
money should grown on trees
birds should have good pussy
my pennis should be little bit smaller
u cant play without it ;o smart move
and my left bal is tennisbal
Activision could release it for free, add a 1.5 patch with some pimping materials for RTCW2 and make some noise on the net that "we've fixed some bugs and give it away for free now without spyware but with adds for a hot new title".