Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is just one of the upcoming big games that’s sweeping the GamerNode offices so when any updates comes around, we’re all over it like Frank on Flash Games.(Gee, I didn’t think anybody noticed my 40 hr. a week habit. — ed.) Today, Splash Damage announced some information about the upcoming public beta for Quake Wars.
First up, they are planning to send out 60,000 public beta keys to both FilePlanet subscribers and free FilePlanet accounts. Looks like the key distribution will be split between both too.
Eager fans will get a key either through FilePlanet, or subscribers will be getting their keys by the time you’re reading this, so keep a watch out. Also the key distribution will take a few days, in order to get as many players as possible into the beta without any frustration.
As for the actual day these keys will be available, "…Day 1 of key distribution is currently scheduled for the middle of this week…Public Beta will go out in just a few days!" Well, I would consider Wednesday the middle of the week, so maybe it’ll be tomorrow!
In a related story, Neil Postlethwaite, Managing Director and Producer for Quake Wars, made a post about how the game will support in-game advertising. Upon reading that sentence, I’m sure many readers will get pretty angry about this, but keep on reading.
Splash Damage is very keen on continuing support for Quake Wars well after its release. Of course, persistent stats, severs, running the community site and game updates cost money and in order to keep the actual game "free" to play (minus the retail cost), in-game advertising is a relatively "painless" way to cover those costs.
Neil states, "The ads aren’t intrusive and you won’t have to interact with them; they’ll just be part of the normal environment…all our ads are appropriate for the game world and we have absolute approval rights in this area. If it’s not appropriate or it’s distracting, it won’t go in.
"The company providing the ad system does not store any personal information or data that otherwise can be used to identify you. All they track is if and how long you look at the advertisements."
