Every single server manipulates the client, changing menues, background image and worse , like in the days of the worst 1.6 it changes what servers are shown on the server list.
it is injecting code into the client, not just providing you with new maps.Most servers are full of bots, some servers lag despite low ping which is really weird. Some maps lag while others dont on the same server.
Get rid of this abomination.

Just like the good old days.
There are quite a few servers with human players. It's an old title that hasn't been maintained in almost 20 years. It really is provided as an "as is" product.

Just like the good old days.
There are quite a few servers with human players. It's an old title that hasn't been maintained in almost 20 years. It really is provided as an "as is" product.
No, in the good old days this ♥♥♥♥ didn´t happen. Like oldschool 1.5 or 1.6 CS was full of tight communities and normal servers. Same with Wolfenstein .
Then reasonable people moved on and really unreasonable people came in. Then Valve stepped in and salvaged 1.6 from the romanians who were pumping out servers like some kind of business model.
But nobody was there to do it for ET.
There are other games like battlegrounds where none of this happens.
But until the community steps up and its fixed the game should be removed from steam tbh.

Just like the good old days.
There are quite a few servers with human players. It's an old title that hasn't been maintained in almost 20 years. It really is provided as an "as is" product.
No, in the good old days this ♥♥♥♥ didn´t happen. Like oldschool 1.5 or 1.6 CS was full of tight communities and normal servers. Same with Wolfenstein .
Then reasonable people moved on and really unreasonable people came in. Then Valve stepped in and salvaged 1.6 from the romanians who were pumping out servers like some kind of business model.
But nobody was there to do it for ET.
There are other games like battlegrounds where none of this happens.
But until the community steps up and its fixed the game should be removed from steam tbh.
CS, Quake, UT, TFC all had stuff downloading for servers as far as I can remember, at least in the early to mid 2000s, it was pretty much a given. Some of them were pretty interesting, like a BF2 XP mod for CS 1.6 around 2007.
Again, these are fairly old titles, and you can't expect the same type of support and community structure like a fairly modern title like battlegrounds. Old games have problems. I would rather they be around than totally gone.
Find a community. No one is obligated to provide for you, most certainly not when the product is free.

Im talking about this battlegrounds: :P
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1057700/Battle_Grounds_III/
My bad.
Yeah im also not talking about legit mods.
in ET i literally had a server inject code so that it removed the majority of servers in server browsing, put its own servers on the menue replacing other buttons, changed the colors of my menue and changed the background of it.
Its like spyware but only limited to the ET game.

Im talking about this battlegrounds: :P
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1057700/Battle_Grounds_III/
My bad.
Yeah im also not talking about legit mods.
in ET i literally had a server inject code so that it removed the majority of servers in server browsing, put its own servers on the menue replacing other buttons, changed the colors of my menue and changed the background of it.
Its like spyware but only limited to the ET game.
I remember something like that happening a lot in Modern Warfare, as well. It was really annoying. You couldn't even choose you servers there.

Absolutely agree with you. 98% who play this game is bots. Cant also set up my resolution 1600x900 16:9 so i played 1024x768. Game is lagging even on servers with low ping and bots behavior in action is questionable. Also funny reload animations here. I guess in 2003(when i was 2 years old lol) that was popular in computer clubs or something. But now it's unplayable(at least for me). Too bad Bethesda not gonna do something about this.

Absolutely agree with you. 98% who play this game is bots. Cant also set up my resolution 1600x900 16:9 so i played 1024x768. Game is lagging even on servers with low ping and bots behavior in action is questionable. Also funny reload animations here. I guess in 2003(when i was 2 years old lol) that was popular in computer clubs or something. But now it's unplayable(at least for me). Too bad Bethesda not gonna do something about this.
You actually can, with a small bit of rerouting:
https://fearless-assassins.com/forums/topic/86189-how-to-run-et-at-any-custom-resolution-1080p-or-more-enemy-territory/

Absolutely agree with you. 98% who play this game is bots. Cant also set up my resolution 1600x900 16:9 so i played 1024x768. Game is lagging even on servers with low ping and bots behavior in action is questionable. Also funny reload animations here. I guess in 2003(when i was 2 years old lol) that was popular in computer clubs or something. But now it's unplayable(at least for me). Too bad Bethesda not gonna do something about this.
You actually can, with a small bit of rerouting:
https://fearless-assassins.com/forums/topic/86189-how-to-run-et-at-any-custom-resolution-1080p-or-more-enemy-territory/

I am really surprised by the overall sentiment. I occasionally dig out an old boxed copy of a game that has not made it to GOG or Steam, and there is always some work that has to be done to make it work properly. More so if it s a multiplayer title. Prior to the age of GOG, you had to download a bunch of wrappers and shells to make a game even run. Really, I just ended up getting a capture card that can accept VGA output and linked an old computer to it that I treat as a console that runs Windows 3.1/98. It's funny, because DOSBox and DGVoodoo made those game run better than they ever did on native hard/software environments.

Yeah, some servers force you to download useless sh*t like soundpacks or models. Bethesda won't do anything about it, since they don't maintain anything, it's a full-on community game, so whatever you'll download is decided by those who set up the server you're trying to connect. Sort servers by playercount, usually servers with lots of players don't force you to download junk. Personally I stick to F|A and Teammuppet servers. Sometimes you have to download a map, or mod if you don't have it already.

Bethesda won't do anything about it, since they don't maintain anything
I have a lot of complaints about Bethesda, but do you honestly expect them to maintain a game from 2003 that they didn't even have a hand in developing? The game has an average of about a few hundred players at the highest peak times. Bethesda has no financial incentive to sink money into ongoing development unless they plan to promote a related product (like with Doom Eternal). I would love for them to update Quake Wars, but it probably isn't going to happen. I would be ecstatic if they just re-released Quake Wars on Steam as-is.

do you honestly expect them to maintain a game from 2003 that they didn't even have a hand in developing?
No, of course not. I was just informing the OP in case they didn't know.

Just like the good old days.
There are quite a few servers with human players. It's an old title that hasn't been maintained in almost 20 years. It really is provided as an "as is" product.

Err, no. In the 'good old days' it played great - and on very low end systems. If you were playing it at the time you would know this.

Just like the good old days.
There are quite a few servers with human players. It's an old title that hasn't been maintained in almost 20 years. It really is provided as an "as is" product.

Err, no. In the 'good old days' it played great - and on very low end systems. If you were playing it at the time you would know this.
"Great" subjective. It ran OK on my GeForce 2 MX on lower settings. I still have that machine. RTCW actually required new technology to run that gave a lot of people headaches at the time, including pixelshader. Even then, it was based on Quake 3, so surpassing that wasn't super hard if you had a relatively modern dedicated GPU.
In any case, it was a joke about the connectivity at the time, and overloading the base game with clutter. Dial-up was still common in that era. DSL was also still considered favorable. A 5-10 Mbps line was incredible in a non-business setting. At least by 2005, I remember servers downloading their custom scripts and enhanced Quake 3 callouts. RTCW was certainly well optimized, but running well on "very low end systems", especially on dail-up, was not something I remember.
This is completely ignoring that this game is running on tech that was developed in the 1990s. It can't be expected to act predictably on modern hardware.