Published in Gaming

Quake Wars Beta 2 available now

by on05 August 2007

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Much improved



Enemy Territory:
Quake Wars Beta 2 is available for download today exclusively on FilePlanet. This came as a bit unexpected surprise to us, as we figured that they would not allow the public to download it until after id software’s Quakecon event held this weekend was over. Initial reports suggested that Beta 2 would only be made available to Quakecon attendees first. We downloaded it and tested it today, so we can fill in some of the blanks that we did not know when we posted our first info in our Beta 2 story.

The new map in Beta 2 is called “Valley” and it has been described as a GDF-Offensive map. Improvements have been made to the textures and four new GDF vehicles are available in this map for use.

Beta 2 is open to all ETQW Beta 1 participants, and an additional 20,000 keys will be available on a first-come-first-served basis. FilePlanet subscribers have a leg up on this because they have set aside some of the 20,000 keys just for FilePlanet subscribers.

We can see definite improvement to the “bots,” game physics, audio and game interface. The video and CPU performance have improved a great deal and this has had a very positive effect on the overall game play on our test system. New and improved Punkbuster support has been added to this release, as well as support for unranked servers. Partners Hypernia and MYIS continue to provide the ranked severs during the Beta phase, and we assume that additional ranked server providers will be added upon the release ETQW.

The ETQW stats have also been launched with Beta 2 and can be viewed at http://stats.enemyterritory.com . This includes full leaderboards and tracking similar to what we have seen in Battlefield 2142.

Overall, the improvements in Beta 2 have made the game much better and even more playable. While the downside of only having one map can get a bit boring after a while, it still does a great job of giving players a preview of what to expect from the final released product. The game has been called a “Battlefield killer” and I am not sure that this is the case, because while both games share some of the same concepts they are clearly different.

ETQW appears to be well on track and looks to be a winner. The improvements in the game running are obvious due to tighter and more tweaked code and should quiet some of the whispers about the poor performance of the first beta. If you are a fan of this style of game, we recommend it (if you can get a Beta key). It is well worth the time to download it and take a look. From what we see here a “floated” release date of October 3rd just might be achievable.



Last modified on 05 August 2007
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