I somehow missed that Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory came to Steam back in April, 19 years after it was first released. Now Bethesda have announced that they’re launching new dedicated servers for the free World War 2 shooter, which will all run the six original maps with no mods.
“Though the community has hosted – and continues to host – servers with a variety of mods and custom maps that we highly recommend, we also understand that many players are looking for a more nostalgic experience,” said Id Software’s announcement post.
There are four dedicated servers in total, with one each for the US, Europe, Australia and the UK. These official servers can be identified by their name, which will be “id Software Official Vanilla Server – (Region)”.
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory was developed by Splash Damage and originally intended as an expansion, and then a standalone spin-off, from Return To Castle Wolfenstein. The project was scrapped however, and its multiplayer mode was released for free in 2003 as Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. That’s free as in free, not free-to-play, too.
If you never played it, you missed out. Wolf:ET was excellent, building upon the objective- and team-based multiplayer Splash Damage had built for ROTW, and I know people who played it daily for years. It is, I think, Splash Damage’s best game? Probably? Gears Tactics is great too, though.
Whether it’s worth returning to now, I can’t say, but it’ll cost you nothing to find out by downloading it from Steam.