Last time I was shrieking about deployables, and what they can do to you. Now let’s look at what you can do to them. OK, so how many ways can one destroy, disable, hack, freeze, knock out an enemy deployable? In no particular order, because you never know which class you’ll be when the opportunity presents itself, let us count the ways...

Hello again. Apologies to all those of you who mailed wanting to hear my free-form Jazz poetry, but I want to use this devblog to talk about deployables. As you may have noticed, ETQW is several games at once, nested within each other, simultaneous and interlinked. Something we set out to avoid was the combat falling into separate infantry v infantry, vehicle v vehicle and deployable v deployable battles. If nothing else, the very fact that you can’t complete objective while inside a vehicle forces the action to centre on infantry combat. The different class roles should let you play most of the time at the speed and range of your choice so don’t just run directly at the enemy, shouting, unless you really want to, because you’ll die. But whether you’re a twitch-kill close-in DeathMatcher, a lone wolf long-range sniper or a selfless support mensch going wherever you’re needed, you’ll need to know how ETQW’s deployables work, how your enemies are going to use them, and how you can win the deployables sub-game.

We rolled out the Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars Public Beta Client Update a few days ago and the gameplay feedback has so far been very positive. The response to the prediction improvements in particular has been really good and the server browser fixes are something that I’m sure a fair few of you appreciate. Our in-game updating tool also worked without a hitch and all our testers were able to download the client update from within the game.

As noted in yesterday’s blog, we’ve been closely monitoring the Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars Public Beta feedback and we intend to update the beta client. Since ETQW is a work in progress, whenever we want to release a new version of the beta client or something to show to press, we have to create a “fixed” build of the game for that purpose. Builds are essentially treated like a proper game release. Everything is locked down and additional changes or additions cannot be made. In the case of something like the ETQW Public Beta client, a new build is produced every single day here at Splash Damage, and those that we think will make a good release candidate go on to id and Activision for more feedback and testing. The testing process is quite extensive to ensure that the build is as stable and bug-free as it can be.

So, how about that beta? Looks like we managed to get all 60,000 keys out without too big a hitch - there were some issues here and there, but overall the rollout went extremely well. Several of us from Splash Damage, id Software, and Activision, hopped on a few public beta servers in the past couple of days and it was great to see so many players having a good time and discovering the many layers of Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars. With the beta in the hands of players around the world now, we're beginning to turn our attention towards your feedback and improving the game with it.

I want to share a few numbers from the past couple days with you. We knew already from the forums that the beta launch was highly anticipated amongst the game’s fans, but the response has really exceeded all of our expectations. We've had some tremendous traffic on the community site over the past week, with the forum member count doubling, and over 25,000 new posts. To all the new faces, welcome to the official community site for Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars - we hope you enjoy your stay!