Quake Wars Beta 2 hitting Internet during QuakeCon

Splash Damage's Paul Wedgwood says that Beta 2 of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars will be released on the Internet "today or, if not, in the next couple of days" to coincide with QuakeCon in Dallas.

We'd caught up with Wedgwood on the floor of QuakeCon's vendor area, which a sort of mini games convention where PC hardware manufacturers and a few game developers are showing off their stuff to attendees and bombarding them with free T-shirts. We ended up with three and don't even remember taking them.

He said that Beta 2, which focuses on another of the game's 12 maps, Valley, ought to keep existing fans happy and address the concerns of those who took issue with Beta 1. "Basically everything anyone's been complaining about on forums, we've tried to deal with it," he told us.

What's more, if you're reading this from QuakeCon's BYOC (Bring Your Own Computer) LAN party area, Wedgwood says you'll be able to grab Beta 2 from the network today - and each BYOC copy will also come with a Public Beta key so that you can continue playing when you go home.

An Xbox 360 build of the game is also running in the vendor area - presumably similar to the one shown at E3 - and at a glance it looks just as visually impressive as it does on the PC. Both PC and 360 builds are playable, so we'll obviously be having some of that pretty soon. If we haven't already. Whistle.

What's more, the build on QuakeCon's booths isn't restricted to Sewer or Valley, the two Public Beta maps, but also features Ark (being shown today) and Area 22. We'll be talking to Wedgwood about each of them and more during the show, so if you have any questions about Quake Wars, post them in the comments and we'll ask.

For a fuller list of changes in Beta 2, check out Splash Damage's blog.