Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars Public Beta has been officially confirmed. The ETQW Closed Beta has been going extremely well and yielding excellent results. But id wants to get more feedback on the game so they're going to open a Public Beta with 60,000 slots available.
The Public Beta build will consist of a single map named "Sewer", which is part of ETQW's Pacific Campaign. Set in Japan, the map revolves around a Strogg base hidden in, well, a sewer. It's an interesting mix of outdoor and indoor, vehicle and infantry combat, deployables and counter-deployables and good old-fashioned FPS combat.
If you want to just play a game for free you may find the public beta a frustrating experience. This Public Beta is not the Demo - it's not the finished game, but an opportunity to get feedback from a large group of people while testing stability and performance on a wider range of hardware combinations. The Public Beta will also collect some information on your hardware configuration, so you shouldn't apply unless you're comfortable with that.
When the Public Beta opens, participants will be sent their unique license code that is required for play. As id doesn't have the infrastructure necessary to download tens of thousands of clients, FilePlanet will help distribute these license codes along with the beta clients.
A fixed number of beta slots are being set aside for Fileplanet subscribers, so if you already have a FilePlanet subscription, you're in the front of the queue. The rest of the slots will then go to those with free FilePlanet accounts. To be clear: You don't have to pay anyone anything to participate in the ETQW Public Beta. It's up to you if you want to pay FilePlanet for use of the improved download services they provide.
id will reveal more details on the Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars Public Beta, including the official start date, in the near future.
