I’d be more worried by this if it wasn’t suddenly July already. Where the hell did the year go? At this rate, 2007 will arrive next week!
Splash Damage’s Paul Wedgwood wrote for his Developer Diary on Gamespy:
Following E3, Splash Damage and id spent weeks reviewing the status of Enemy Territory. 2006 has been a great year for us, with incredible response from the press and the community. It’s also been a challenging year, as the team here has given extraordinary effort towards completing the game this year. Unfortunately, sometimes effort isn’t all you need — sometimes you just need more time. To ensure the quality we want, we’ve decided to push the release out of 2006 to allow for extended testing, feedback and game balancing.
The rest of the interview touches on what made Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory so special – the insanely good balance of the original maps:
Each ability of one team needs a counter-ability for the opposing team, which in turn needs a counter-counter-ability for the original team: every great sniper location needs opposing concealment for attackers; each open vehicle route needs cover for defenders; every choke point needs fortification.
That’s a succinct summation of the mapping/gameplay strategy that made WET such a guilty, addictive joy to play. I’d love to be on that beta, but I’ll bide my time. Oh yes, it’s my time, and I’m biding it. It’s going to be bidden.