Hi. I bought ETQW a long time ago, and have been away from the game for quite a while, roughly since the initial Activision debacle, waiting to see how things would pan out. Now, over a year later… it seems all that’s left of the community site (community.enemyterritory.com) and stats servers (stats.enemyterritory.com) is still just this little corner of cyberspace on SD’s website. Am I missing something? Has the lost content remained lost and little/no effort been made by the companies involved to restore the previous level of function? While I will concede this trio of forums is at least something… it’s still a far cry from the highly polished, QW-specialized site we had back in the day when I bought the game. It seems the latest ETQW version is still 1.5, too, which I recall playing last (though I played more in 1.2 and 1.4… I still want my shotgun back!) As the developer, Splash Damage ought to have the full source to everything… couldn’t you guys pretty easilly at least make a 1.6 (or 1.51, whatever) patch that enables fans to host viable master stats trackers for psuedo-ranked server stats, and sort out who’s trustworthy enough to host ranked servers amongst themselves? I assume it’s not possible to do so as-is or fans would already have done it… Presumably you also have the ETQW-proprietary source code to the stats tracking backend (at least the database handling part, since that has to interface directly with your own code in the game servers?) as well, why not release it if no corporation is going to run it anyways? Theoretically all the server patch needs is a cvar to pick the stats server to report to, and a release of adequate documentation of the stats server protocol (which source to the stats tracker server would serve as?)
I’ve heard conflicting claims of it being either Activision or id Software that was responsible for the actual drop of the sites - what’s the truth? Whose servers/IPs did those actually point to when they were functional… is it really the case that id Software hosted the servers, IP, DNS and all, and has them redirecting to Activision to try to shift the blame? The more detail, the better, because everything I find about this seems pretty… glossed-over.
Will Splash Damage be making full (including engine, not just the SDK) source code to ETQW available at some point after the release of id tech 4 source? John Carmack, bless his heart, still intends to do his best to ensure his word on already-shipped and purchased titles is honored and that id tech 4 source will be released - I realize you can’t release full ETQW source until that happens, and wouldn’t hold it against Splash Damage if there is no release in the event Carmack fails (which I hope is unlikely, but that’s between him and ZeniMax.) But provided he succeeds, do we have a reasonable degree of certainty Splash Damage will follow suit within a few years of that release with a release of ETQW’s complete source code so it can similarly benefit from complete modding? Is this going to eventually be a fully open game in the old id tradition, or is what we have about all we’re going to get in terms of mod support code releases? I bought this game on the assumption that between being id tech-based and even using the QUAKE name, it would eventually be open-sourced as previous QUAKE games had been.
On a related note, my current boycott list includes Activison Blizzard, id Software, (both in part because of their apparent mishandling of ETQW, among other unacceptable conduct over the years, and compounded by ZeniMax forcing id to not license id tech 5 in the customary manner among other gestures I regard as bad form and anticompetitive) and basically anything owned directly or indirectly by thier ultimate parents, ZeniMax Media Inc. and Vivendi, which I consider the root source of a lot of problems in the modern game industry (the bigger the company, the more likely customers are to get arbitrarily trampled on, in my experience: those two and thier children are among the biggest offenders IMO.) Anything with any of said logos is an immediate ‘do not buy’ in my book, as of something like a year ago. FYI, yes, that means this extends to Brink regardless of Splash Damage’s own status because of Bethesda Softworks’ involvement and ZeniMax’s ownership thereof (remember, ZeniMax is id’s parent company as well…), which worries me that similar complications may crop up. I would strongly encourage Splash Damage to seek publication methods not involving them in the future.
And yes, I am aware of Activision’s statement on the box. However, if they choose to exercise it in this manner, I will exercise my option to not buy from such an untrustworthy company ever again (as I do.) In my book, it’s one thing to reserve such rights (in case of unavoidable circumstances,) and another to use them in this manner. This is not acceptable conduct for a game publisher like Activison. Withdrawl of corporate-provided servers should ALWAYS be accompanied by release of the necessary resources for fans to provide thier own fully-functioning equivalent.
Thanks in advance for any light anyone can shed on these issues. I am keenly interested in who is responsible, what can and can’t/will and won’t be done, and exactly why.
