In an unexpected move sure to delight fans of classic multiplayer FPS games, Bethesda Softworks has announced it will be dedicating official servers to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, a game originally released back in 2003. The announcement came via Wolfenstein's official Twitter page on September 7.
In a statement on its official website, Bethesda acknowledged that several community servers still exist for multiplayer combat in the nearly two-decade-old game. Those servers, however, allow for the existence of mods and custom-made maps by the fan community. And while Bethesda encourages its fan base to check out how the community has driven the evolution of the World War II-themed shooter across the years, the dedicated servers will present the game in its original, vanilla form, which will provide a historical and nostalgic window to the past.
In addition to the new dedicated servers, the company is making the game available on the Microsoft Store. It has been available as a free download on Steam since April 26, following the shutdown of Bethesda PC Launcher, and has enjoyed very positive reviews since its rerelease. However, recent reviews of the game — those made within the last 30 days — have had only mixed results, with several users complaining that the modding community has spoiled the game's classic appeal. "Don't bother playing this game for nostalgia. The community and modders have ruined the original game," one negative review states, while another adds "the stupid servers have made this game almost literally unplayable."
Perhaps in a move to combat these criticisms, Bethesda is launching a total of four official servers — one each for the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Australia — which can be found under the names "id Software Official Vanilla Server (region)." Games will be able to support a maximum of 16 players each for eight-on-eight combat with friendly fire turned on and no weapon restrictions by default.
Developed by Splash Damage and originally published by Activision, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory was an unexpected free-to-play multiplayer addition to the Wolfenstein series. While it was originally planned as a paid expansion to return to Castle Wolfenstein, released two years prior, it instead received its release as a standalone title. The open-source nature of the game's coding has encouraged modding by its fan community, which has extended its lifeline to the point that fan servers still exist today.
The Wolfenstein series has stretched across 13 games, including one mobile and one virtual reality game, since its inception in 1981 with the launch of Castle Wolfenstein. Wolfenstein: Enemy territory predates seven of those games, and no new entry has been added to the series since 2019, when both the console-based Wolfenstein: Youngblood and the VR-based Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot made their respective debuts.