I don’t know what the situation is regarding continued development of ET, but if there are any “Official” campaign maps in the works, I’d like to make a suggestion that would ensure that every player of ET gets any new maps.
With most online games, unless the players are somehow forced to download new maps, you can end up with only the core maps being played; vanilla RTCW is testament to this. Sure, you get the odd server here and there running custom maps, but that only leads to players having to hunt around for these maps when most players would really rather just fire up the game and get on with it.
My suggestion would be to include any new campaign maps with future patches. This way, if players want to stay up to date, they have to get the new maps as well.
The only problem is, what are the restrictions on you guys (Splash Damage) for continuing to patch ET? As I understand it, it would be pretty much the decision of Activision/id to allow for continued patch support for this free game. And another determining factor is going to be the fact that patches to a game should theoretically stop at some point, as ideally all known bugs will have been fixed.
Anybody care to comment?