Classic Wolfenstein Game Gets Surprise Update Nearly 20 Years Later

By Tanner Dedmon

Games as old as Bethesda's Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory can typically only look forward to bad news such as announcements about the creators pulling the plug on their games, but in this case, the opposite has happened. Bethesda made the surprising announcement this week that the Wolfenstein game which is coming up on its 20th anniversary now has dedicated servers instead of community-hosted ones. These servers run off of specific rules which makes standardizes the matches played, but above all else, those still active in the game shouldn't have to worry about spotty servers any longer.

Announcing the shiny new Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory feature in a blog post, Bethesda first thanked the community for their continued support and the effort that players have put into the game to keep its player base aloft. Acknowledging a request for "a more nostalgic experience," Bethesda said it's put together some dedicated servers and rulesets for players to partake in.

"So, starting now, you'll be able to find official servers running the vanilla Enemy Territory Campaign ruleset, with all six original maps and no mods!" Bethesda said. "We've set up servers across multiple territories to better ensure players from around the world can play with relatively low ping."

Servers were deployed in the United States, Europe, Australia, and the United Kingdom. The "Campaign" multiplayer experience offered in these servers is governed by the following ruleset:

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory Rules for Dedicated Servers

  • Server MOTD: Official & Vanilla Servers hosted by id Software. Enjoy! These servers are unmoderated. For issues, help.bethesda.net
  • Game Type: Campaign
  • Maximum Players: 16 (8v8)
  • Friendly Fire: Yes
  • Punkbuster: No
  • Anti-Lag: Yes
  • Max Lives: Off
  • Weapon Restriction: Off

While certainly unprecedented as far as updates for games decades old go, there's at least some reasoning behind why this particular game got this sort of feature. Back in April, Bethesda moved a few of its older games onto Steam after shutting down the Bethesda Launcher and also made those classics entirely free. The Wolfenstein game was one of those and welcomed a new wave of players once it landed on Steam, so it seems Bethesda has decided to further support that reinvigorated community.

Bethesda also announced that the game is releasing on the Microsoft Store, too, in case you'd prefer to acquire it there.

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