It has been over a week since Wolfenstein was released and already we have two mods out.

Wolfpro is at the moment more interesting and attracts more players for several reasons: The people working on it were working on ET:QW promode, the mod is polished, has many features, developers listen to community feedback and implement good ideas coming from players. The mod has already fixed a series of bugs, balanced the game and brought it much closer to a competition game than it was on release.
Major gameplay changes that the mod introduced are weapon spread (which has been reduced to almost the same spread as that of when aiming through ironsight) and bunny hopping. Another big change is the panzerfaust's rocket explosion radius, turning it into a more useful weapon.
At the moment, it is a mod no doubt leagues will be using.
What the mod aims to do is balance and improve the original gameplay. This is a safe move, as changing gameplay to that of RTCW/ET would make current maps unusable as they were designed for a much slower paced game.

On the other side, there is shrapmod. This mod is supposed to bring game as close as possible to RTCW and ET gameplay. It is not nearly as polished as wolfpro and is seriously lacking bugfixes and game changes that are needed, which comes as a no surprise when you consider it is only being developed by a single person. It did however introduce some interesting major gameplay changes:
- as in Wolfpro, spread has been significantly reduced (i think both mods have similar spread now)
- it has removed recoil so aiming is much closer to that in RTCW/ET; it is also a change that directly benefits competition gameplay, without making maps imbalanced
- it increased the movement speed close to that in RTCW/ET

Movement speed changes are done by enforcing different player movement cvars values.
Neither mod currently has strafe or circle jumping, however that is because of technical reasons. Even after the release of the SDK, it is very improbable that such changes will be introduced as we will not have the source code.

<madscientist> we only have the game code
<madscientist> this how the whole code is basically:
<madscientist> renderer, client, client game and server game
<madscientist> there are other bits but these are the important ones
<madscientist> the SDK only contains the client+server game
<madscientist> we don't have the renderer+client
<madscientist> we can change the movement to some limits
<madscientist> by modifying the common server+client game code
<madscientist> but basically, think of it this way
<madscientist> all the game inputs are handled by the "client"
<madscientist> and we don't have this
<madscientist> this very same "client" code also handles what is sent to the server (packets etc)
<madscientist> so, u can't change the way inputs are processed
<madscientist> say, sprinting+shooting+strafe
<madscientist> etc
<madscientist> keyboard+mouse -> engine -> client+server game
<madscientist> we don't have the engine -_-
(...)
This change could be enforced by an unofficial patch, but that works as a game hack then, and PB would reject that sort of thing even with a community petition, meaning we would automatically need a new anticheat.
<madscientist> everything is possible with patching
<madscientist> u could even patch pb to stop it from rejecting it
<madscientist> but where do we stop?
<madscientist> it doesn't make sense
<madscientist> to fix
<madscientist> who'd be stupid or brave enough to spend so much time on such a crappy game
<madscientist> patching the engine etc


As mentioned before, changing player movement speed has to be done carefully as drastic changes could easily make current maps unplayable. Currently, the software required for custom map development isn't available and even if it was, it would take time for mappers to actually make maps which are suitable for competition.

All of this being said, its time to take a look at the competitive potential of the game original ideas.
Compared to ET, this game is much slower paced but in some ways it is better for competition. Less heavy weapons and less grenades result in more focus on aiming. It also requires better tactics, timing and teamplay since holding an objective requires better crossfire, and breaking that crossfire is impossible now by calling artillery or airstrikes. Lack of artillery or mines and objectives which are easier to complete are making the game faster with less waits in choke points and more action. Sprint makes the game more in favour of a defending player or camper as noted in some columns on crossfire posted a long time ago, however removing it from ET was never actually discussed as it would make certain jumps impossible to do without it. That problem does not exist in this game as shooting while sprinting is disabled thus placing attacking and defending players in an equal position in a duel.
Both RTCW and ET had turn spread - on fast turns the players spread would increase thus giving advantage to backrapers, again something non-existent in Wolfenstein.

With a proper mod, Wolfenstein could be turned into a good competitive game... the only question left is who will play this game?

It has been mentioned a lot that the only thing Wolfenstein has in common with RTCW and ET is the name. Many say it's closer to Call of Duty gameplay-wise than the games it's supposed to be a sequel to. It is speculated that CoD players will not be interested in the game as a new CoD game is coming out in November, thus leaving RTCW, ET and ET:QW players as those who the game will be the most interesting to. However, as it is seen from many comments here on crossfire.nu, the competitive community is well... not exactly thrilled with the new game.

Lets take a look at some statistics.
http://et.splatterladder.com/?mod=statistic
http://etqw.splatterladder.com/?mod=statistic
As seen from the above links, ET has a larger active player community than ET:QW does. It is almost certain that this information is not precise, but it's enough to point out the difference in player quantity and prove that ET is the game Wolfenstein could "draw" more players from.
Yet Wolfenstein has not succeeded in doing so as can be seen from sign-ups to the Clanbase OC. 36 teams have signed up for Wolfenstein (5on5), while 105 teams have signed up for Enemy Territory (6on6). Even though this could be argued by the fact that game is still new, the crossfire community certainly wouldn't agree with taht.

The question rising here is what is the right track? Should the mods try to turn this game into sequel to RTCW and W:ET? Should they treat it as it has nothing in common with those two games and only improve original gameplay?
The second choice is safer, but it might not be the right one, as game could suffer the fate of ET:QW.
The RTCW and ET community were waiting for a sequel to these two legendary games for a long time, yet developers were incapable of delivering a good game. But the game can still be made into something that those players will enjoy. With changes, enough players might switch to the game to keep it alive and maybe, just maybe, earn it the reputation that a game of the Wolfenstein franchise deserves. It is still not too late to save this game from the almost certain death that awaits it on the PC platform.