First off, I know there's some concern that most of the 60,000 Public Beta slots will go to FilePlanet subscribers - this is not the case. In fact, the keys are split right down the middle, with half going to subscribers and the other half to people with free FilePlanet accounts.

Now, the ETQW Public Beta client will not work without a valid beta key. With that in mind, your next question is undoubtedly "How the *bleep* do I get a key?" Aside from the fact that this is a family-friendly blog and I won't have that kind of language around here, it's pretty straightforward: There will be a special Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars Public Beta mini-site going up on FilePlanet that will be available throughout the key distribution phase. When you log into this site with your FilePlanet account and keys are available at that time, you'll get your key along with a download link for the beta client.

Let's move on to the actual distribution phase of the beta. As you're reading this, the beta is being released to a very limited number of select FilePlanet subscribers - we're calling this the sneak peek phase. Essentially, we're using this to test the delivery process and to see if there are any last minute showstopper issues. If you are a FilePlanet subscriber, you may get the chance to partake in this.

If the sneak peek goes well and no catastrophic issues crop up, we will move on to the actual key distribution phase. This is going to last several days and on each day we will make available a number of beta slots through the aforementioned ETQW sub-site on FilePlanet. During the first three days of this process, keys will be available to FilePlanet subscribers only. This will be followed by two days of keys for anyone with a free FilePlanet account.

The best part, and I've been waiting five paragraphs to say this, is that Day 1 of key distribution is currently scheduled for the middle of this week. That's right, the first batch of keys for the Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars Public Beta will go out in just a few days! FilePlanet's ETQW sub-site will be going up that same day.

Now why are we spreading these out over several days instead of throwing all 60,000 keys out at once? Simple: We want to make sure that as many people as possible get the chance to obtain a key and we feel that scheduling a predetermined number of keys to go out each day is the best way to do this. We're also going to be gradually ramping up the number of available keys with each passing day, so as time goes on, more keys are passed out per day. This allows us to steadily increase the load on our back-end infrastructure, making sure we can effectively test that.

Of course, a multiplayer beta is useless if there are no servers to play on. Towards that end, we've been working closely with a select number of Game Server Providers to get servers for the Public Beta up in North America, Europe, and Australia. We will continue to work with GSPs around the world to make sure Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars servers can be found in every major territory when the game ships.