The logo of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory.
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is a free multiplayer first-person shooter, based on Return to Castle Wolfenstein (RtCW). Released May 29th, 2003, it featured the familiar Axis and Allies compete over multiple types of objectives. Teamwork is a core element of gameplay. The game was originally supposed to be a mission pack for the original RtCW, but ended up being a free stand-alone class-based team action shooter, reminiscent of Team Fortress.
Story
There is no real story in this game. The setting is World War II and both sides (Allies and Axis) are in the middle of the conflict. In game, they are fighting for various territories using different unit types.
Gameplay
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is an online multi-player game, where the players interact with each other over a network in two teams (Allies and Axis) to defend or destroy mission objectives. The game is playable over the Internet or a Local Area Network. Like many online games, cheating and exploit communities exist. To counter this, the game has support for PunkBuster, an anti-cheat solution.
There are six officially released maps (North Africa Campaign: Gold Rush, Siwa Oasis, and Seawall Battery; Europe Campaign: Rail Gun, Wurzburg Radar, and Fuel Dump), as well as hundreds of custom maps made by the internet community. On each map, the offense needs to complete a certain set of objectives within a limited amount of time. The defense needs to keep the offense from completing objectives until time runs out. Some objectives may be optional, and some objectives can be carried out by either team. These minor objectives assist the team completing them. Depending on Game Mode the action will continue on another map (Campaign Mode) or the same map (Objective Mode, Stopwatch Mode, Last Man Standing).
In all but the LMS mode, dead players respawn all at the same time, every X seconds. In the default maps - assuming that the server settings aren't changing it - Allies spawn every 20 seconds and the Axis every 30 seconds, the only exception being Rail Gun where both have a 20 second spawn. With default settings, you can see the spawn timer in the right side of the screen. Experienced players should watch the timer all the time - dying to a 1 second spawn practically means losing your position (and a life, if the server has the rarely used Limited Lives feature enabled) and resetting your health and ammo, while a 30 second spawn can be deadly if there are only a few players. A good tactic is to find out the spawn time of your enemy, for example looking at the mission timer, and time your attacks so that every dead opponent will have to wait a full time spawn.
In the official six-map campaign (most common on public servers), Allies are offense for all but one map. In Stopwatch Mode (most common for locked or LAN servers) two teams - most common setups: 6vs6 or 3vs3 - will play the same map twice, once in each side and the winner is determined of who have the fastest offense (it can be a tie when both teams defense manage to keep the offense from completing the objectives until time runs out).
Players may earn experience points in several skill categories. All character classes may earn points in Battle Sense and Light Weapons. Class skills are generally restricted to the current class, the exception being Heavy Weapons (the Soldier class skill).
Players have certain abilities based on their character class. The player has a Power Bar that provides 'power' for their special abilities. The power bar regenerates slowly. Constructing the Command post speeds up the recharge rate though. Players have up to eight weapon slots, depending on character class. The classes that are available are engineer, soldier, field ops, medic, and covert ops.
Classes
Both sides of conflict have the same classes.
Soldier
The Soldier is the only class that can use heavy weapons. They are: mortar, portable machine gun (MG42), flamethrower, and bazooka/Panzerfaust. On the No-Quarter mod the Venom machine-gun and the BAR (Allies) or StG44 (Axis) have been added as well. Leveling up gives the Soldier benefits such as the ability to run with heavy weapons (instead of being slowed down).
Medic
The Medic has the unique ability to drop health packs, as well as revive fallen players with a syringe. They also regenerate health at a constant rate, and have a higher base health than any other class, which makes them the most common class for close-in combat. When a player has achieved skill level 4 in medic, they get Self Adrenaline which enables them to sprint without draining the sprint meter and take less damage for a certain amount of time.
Engineer
The Engineer is the only class which comes equipped with pliers, which can be used to repair vehicles, to arm/defuse (dynamite or land mines), or to construct (command posts, machine-gun nests, and barriers). As most missions require some amount of construction and/or blowing up of the enemy's construction to win the objective, and as defusing dynamite can be very useful, engineers are often invaluable, and one of the most commonly chosen classes. The engineer is also the only class capable of using rifle muzzle grenades.
Field ops
The Field Ops is a support class which has the ability to drop ammo packs for other players, as well as call air strikes (by throwing a colored smoke-grenade at the target) and artillery strikes (by looking through the binoculars and choosing where they want the artillery support fired). This class has low initial health, but makes up for having an unlimited supply of ammunition.
Covert ops
The Covert Ops is the only class which can use the scoped FG42 automatic rifle, the silenced Sten submachine gun (or MP-34 on some Mods), and a silenced, scoped rifle (M1 Garand for Allies, K43 Mauser for Axis). The covert ops has the ability to wear a fallen enemy soldier's clothes to go about disguised, throw smoke-grenades to reduce visibility temporarily, and place and remotely detonate explosive satchels. By looking through a pair of binoculars, the covert ops can spot enemy landmines, bringing them up on their team-map. The covert ops also shows enemy soldiers on the team-map.