I was excited at seeing this appear on Steam however that quickly turned to disappointment when firing it up. Why have they released it in this state when you have to do so much tweaking to get it to work properly?

Bethesda.

A total turn-off for any potential new players.

This is not a remake, and the game is like 20+ yrs old... i'm just glad to enjoy some nostaglia old-school no frill graphics and great gameplay/balance.
Suprised it even run on modern systems (multi-core, large ram etc) when those early days would have been Pentium 3 with 256MB ram or something lol
Funny it still spins my current GPU fast at 300+FPS

A total turn-off for any potential new players.

Yeah, hopefully some people take the time to check discussion and guides
Others just don't even try and post a negative review :/

This is not a remake, and the game is like 20+ yrs old... i'm just glad to enjoy some nostaglia old-school no frill graphics and great gameplay/balance.
Suprised it even run on modern systems (multi-core, large ram etc) when those early days would have been Pentium 3 with 256MB ram or something lol
Funny it still spins my current GPU fast at 300+FPS :cleanfloppy:
That's fair enough. I will have to check out some of the guides to get it working.
I bought RTCW on day of release and played the multiplayer to death. Never really gave ET much time as it didn't seem to run as well on my PC back then.

This is not a remake, and the game is like 20+ yrs old... i'm just glad to enjoy some nostaglia old-school no frill graphics and great gameplay/balance.
Suprised it even run on modern systems (multi-core, large ram etc) when those early days would have been Pentium 3 with 256MB ram or something lol
Funny it still spins my current GPU fast at 300+FPS

That's fair enough. I will have to check out some of the guides to get it working.
I bought RTCW on day of release and played the multiplayer to death. Never really gave ET much time as it didn't seem to run as well on my PC back then.
You are correct though... it did take me a solid 1hr of searching through 20yr old forums to find some good settings to suit my setup/playstyle, but now it runs great (besides the MODS).
They do have an example.cfg in the steam installation folder, that you could change to autoexec.cfg (edit the file for your r_customheight, r_customwidth, r_mode -1) (check >M@tEo$< guide).
If I can work it out, i'll post the good bookmarks i kept and also upload the tweaked cfg file for you.

Someone get in contact with Splash Damage somehow and let them know their beloved game could use some help, if they even have any control over its Steam listing at all..

^ You are more reliant on ET:Legacy team doing what they can here. Here's a post from the ETL discord:
Big and important news for every ET enthusiast. Yesterday, Bethesda added Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory on Steam - 19 years after its original release in 2003. You can find and add the game to your Steam here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1873030/Wolfenstein_Enemy_Territory/
.
We have already noticed quite a big spike in activity across all ET mods. The release also creates a potential opportunity to add ET: Legacy on Steam in the future. The ETL dev team is already taking some steps to make it possible. We will keep you updated.
The ET available on Steam is a slightly modified vanilla version of the game. However, it is possible to replace the Steam ET version with ETL. @Aciz made a short tutorial on how to play ET: Legacy with ET Steam release (to make it possible to launch ETL with Steam), which you can find here:
▶Watch on YouTube
.
Admin Team
^ I would follow that advice

Bethesda being Bethesda and doing stupid things. At least with the YT video you can install the proper version and get steam overlays and such. Not as good as a real release but the non-ETL version is missing so many much needed features.

Bethesda dropping the ball? Imagine my surprise.

Agreed, therefore thank god mods exist...
"Want something done right" i guess

Its good to see they brought this game back but why in gods name did they not remaster it?? What a hugely missed opportunity..

♥♥♥♥ remasters, ET needs to be in it's former glory!

Bethesda doing the bare minimum as usual.

♥♥♥♥ remasters, ET needs to be in it's former glory!
They didn't have to remaster it but they could have at least fixed and updated the graphics options to reflect current PC systems.