Quake Wars Beta 2 launches

The second Public Beta release of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is now available for download following its debut at QuakeCon. Fileplanet's hosting the 768MB file and inviting people to sign up for keys. Up to 20,000 are available, and keys for the first release still work.

Beta 2 introduces a new map - Valley - as well as offline bot-matches, Punkbuster and LAN support and leaderboards. You can read much more about the individual changes, how Valley works and all that on developer Splash Damage's community blog, which also thanks everyone for feedback (positive and negative!) that, it says, has generated "significant improvements".

It's certainly proving popular at QuakeCon, with virtually everyone we've been talking to claiming they've downloaded it, even giving it preference over the games they brought with them. A tournament featuring a few well-practised clans competing on Valley and two other maps, Ark and Area 22, has also helped generate buzz.

And if you fancy a go, you shouldn't be short of a few people to play against, with Splash Damage's Paul Wedgwood telling us that around 38,000 of the 60,000 Public Beta keys were actually used the first time around.

Be sure to bang on about what you think about it in the comments here and on Splash Damage's blog, too, because they promise they're listening.