As things stand today, you don't have to look very hard to find evidence of cheating in ET. From recent high profile bustings, right down to random highskill 3v3 teams, this xfire community is one which has had much to think about in the cheating department. Since RTCW's demise, ET has been the only real option for fans of strafejumping WW2 multiplayer fans, and the consensus has been very much one of 'grin and bear it'. But with ETQW only just around the corner, is it really a game to evolve id software's universe, or will it infact benefit over-proportionately from the frustration building inside ET?

There are already a few givens when it comes to Quake Wars. No, it's not ET2 or RTCW2. No, you can't download it freely. But whats so important about these two facts? Firstly, when RTCW became ET, much of the gameplay elements were carried over; with ETQW, this is not the case. Quake Wars is a far less natural progression from ET, than ET was from RTCW. Witness journals and comments on xfire stating dismay over the differences. This in turn has two distinct effects. Not only alienating some loyal ET players, it also represents a changed direction which will attract new and different types of player, the sort of player who could before be found in perhaps Battlefield or Tribes. Yet the goal when creating a game that carries the name of previous game(s) is to encourage players of the older game to travel across, and experience new varieties of their old universe. With Quake Wars' bold direction into the realm of vehicles and Strogg, the gap between it and ET only widens further, bad news for those who cant strafejump that sort of distance.

You might expect the ET contigent's support to wane slightly then, when it comes to moving to QW. I say ET contingent, because if you look at the open beta signups, all 30,000 keys were snapped up without delay. "It's just another Battlefield ripoff", say some, "It just isnt Enemy Territory", say others. Yet without RTCW2 (which carries no guarantee of staying true to old RTCW/ET foundations), Quake Wars is set to become the only alternative. It is not only an alternative gameplay option though, it is a clean slate in terms of cheating, but cheating with a difference. Forget your dedicated hardcore of cheaters, who use their guid and hardware spoofers to evade detection, most of your 14 year old aimbotting community wouldn't be so nearly prepared to use hacks on a game they paid for. ET really was asking for it being a free download, becoming what the Cayman Islands are to tax evasion for potential cheaters. You could download a hack, join any old server, hack away to your heart's content and slip away into anonymity.

Not so with Quake Wars. It'd be naive to suggest ETQW will be a _clean_ game, and everyone has seen images of hacks already made for the open beta. But yet again, that beta is a free download. Do you really think little Maciek from deepest Krakow will fork out money to pay for a game to cheat in, when a free alternative is available? Sure, we can go back to these hardcore few, but the point is most will lose the ambition to the point where they could be forced to re-buy the game.

It is this promise of greater security and assurance over the credibility of players which will ultimately spell the downfall for ET. You cannot continue with a game that players have lost of a lot, and continues to lose yet more confidence in, as CoD1 has found out. As mztik says, we're playing a game where "did he just nade me through a wall, felt like he knew where i was 24/7, or that aim is clearly unnatural" is the normal question to ask. That is where ET will ultimately lose out, and why the majority of the clean ET scene will transfer to ET Quake Wars, despite its glaringly different gameplay features.