Unfortunately, I had to stop playing RTCW because of studies (I was playing 24/7 ^^) and when I finished school I wanted something new, yet with the same core gameplay elements - it had to be fast paced with objectives and classes. I found out about what I called "RTCW 2" back in 2007, and thought that this game would be the obvious successor to RTCW. After all, the Wolfenstein franchise had been all about awesome MP lately, with W:ET being an obvious testament to that.
I decided to make a website where I could share all the information I found about what is now called "Wolfenstein" – there was hardly any information available to anyone, really. Being interested in multiplayer primarily, I was disappointed when it slowly became apparent that the developers of Wolfenstein didn't want to promote Wolfenstein as being a multiplayer game (or even as a game with any sort of MP component worthy of note), thus ignoring the legacy and the fan-base of the last 2 Wolfenstein games, RTCW and W:ET.
It became clear as we were nearing the release of the game, that the developers were trying to re-establish the franchise as a singleplayer franchise. And this was, to my great disappointment and surprise, at the expense of MP. A week or two before release, we got the answers back from the Q&A on Wolfenstein MP, which we had all been waiting for. The developers really didn't promote the multiplayer any further than that (a couple of articles on Gamespot and IGN appeared a week or so before the Q&A, but were not very informative compared to the Q&A). Kudos to Sokal for setting it all up, but in hindsight it was very telling about things to come that Wolfenstein MP didn't get any sort of noteworthy promotion (gameplay vids, Q&As, hands on sessions, etc) besides a Q&A for a fan site.
The multiplayer was leaked and to me it seemed that 99% of the community was worried about the state of the game. We were promised that the leak didn't represent the state of the final game, but that was not true. Even though a day-one patch was released, the multiplayer didn't seem to have been improved in any significant way. The game didn't sell, it's over a month after release, and there are less and less people playing this game every day. I don't see this game ever taking off.
What went wrong? I have touched upon this before, but I think there are 2 problems with the game. First of all, the game was designed for the consoles, so you get stuff like a simplified server browser, no trick plants so you can only plant where the game tells you to plant, no Vsays and voting because it would require too many different buttons, and the XBOX 360 controller doesn't have a whole lot of buttons, 6 vs 6 pub matches (8 vs 8 hard coded) and much more. In all, I feel the game has been dumbed down because of its console focus.
Then there is the engine itself that is supposed to be a modified ET:QW engine, yet Wolfenstein plays a lot worse (in terms of smoothness) than ET:QW even though they removed vehicles, deployables, megatextures and made the maps tiny. Something is just "wrong" with this engine, and I think that every single person who has been playing Quake 3 engine powered games will agree with me.
So here we are. Wolfenstein has been released, nobody is playing it, and we haven't heard anything about the new patch. I cannot get myself to playing Wolfenstein, it's just not fun (because of the above mentioned issues.)
I currently don't see any future in Wolfenstein. As soon as COD:MW2 is released I believe that the majority of the already extremely tiny Wolfenstein community will have migrated to that game. And even if the developers release a patch before MW2 (and it needs to be before), and it fixes a lot of the gameplay issues, there would still be the engine issues that needed to be fixed. I just don't see that happening. If it wasn't in their budget (of the entire game) to improve the engine, I don't see they have any resources to fix this in a patch.
As for the future of Wolfenstein Zone, we will continue to have forums for Wolfenstein (2009) but I'm not going to be focusing on that myself. It has become clear to me that my passion lies within RTCW. And some people will probably say that this is a step back, but I actually feel that Wolfenstein is a step back – not an evolution of RTCW / W:ET but a devolution.
We will expand our focus to include the older Wolfenstein games. Simply put, Wolfenstein Zone is not going to be about Wolfenstein (2009) but Wolfenstein (the franchise). People who want to talk about Wolfenstein (2009) can do so, and people who want to talk about other games in the franchise can do so too.
And it doesn't end there of course. We will also be providing coverage on future Wolfenstein games, too. Unfortunately, John Carmack has stated that the priority of making an in-house developed Wolfenstein on id tech 5 depends on the success of Wolfenstein (2009), so that is not very promising.
There has been talk about W:ET Live however, and maybe it won't happen, but if it does, we'll be there. I'll of course be digging up any info I can about that, just like in the early days of "RTCW 2-Zone".
We will continue to have our Wolfenstein servers, plus we'll have at least one RTCW server and I will see if I can get games going on that, for the people who are interested.
Technical stuff:
Incidentally, we will be moving to a new server, probably today, so be aware of that if you can't access http://www.wolfenstein-zone-com. The domain will have the new server's IP assigned to it, and it can take 12 hours for it to work for some users (due to TTL). So if you suddenly can't access Wolfnstein Zone, you may have to wait for up to 12 hours before you can.
We've also implemented a completely new site design, and an improved CMS on the front. Please note that the design is not 100% complete, so please bear with us as we complete it within the next few days. The site is feature complete, and you should report any issues you may find in the "Site Feedback" forum.
- When you see the new site, please delete all Wolfenstein Zone cookies (and possibly also temporary internet files).
- You can log on through either the portal or the forum, it doesn't matter which one you pick. You also only have to log out on either of the two.
- It is highly recommended that you use session cookies (on forum, check "Log me on automatically each visit" or on portal, check "Remember me").
Known issues:
Uploaded avatars need to be re-uploaded.
You might get this message very rarely: "Your session has expired. Please log in again." You simply have to log in again, if you get that message.
It also happens that you get logged out of the front page automatically (after you've closed your browser and open it again) but not of the forums. Simply log in again at the front page.
It can also happen that you get logged out of the forum automatically (first visit to Wolfenstein Zone in a day, or if you visit forum directly after you've closed your browser, fx) but you're stilled logged in to the front page. In that case, simply click on the front page (Home button) and click on Forum, and you should be logged in again. If it doesn't help, you must log in manually.
These issues will be fixed in the future, but please report them to us. They occur because the front cookies and forum cookies haven't been perfectly synced yet.
I would like to hear what your thoughts are on Wolfenstein and the future, and please take this topic seriously - no flaming or spam. It would be great if people used well founded arguments instead of
posts to get their points across 
Sokal wrote:You have been warned.
