Just one short Earth year ago, a Stroyent-filled Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars arrived on store shelves everywhere and has been dropping Deployables on unsuspecting teammates ever since. It's fantastic for us to see so many people around the world still enjoying the game and that is in no small part thanks to our community - undoubtedly one of the most passionate and dedicated to be found anywhere in the Intertubes.

Better yet, the modders and map makers out there have a ton of new content in the works, and with great mods like Wheels of War and Tribal Wars, and a boatload of user-created maps on the horizon, there's plenty to keep ETQW fans everywhere excited. Happy birthday, ETQW!

In a somewhat odd development, Battlefield: Bad Company appears to be making the rounds here at the office some four months after its initial release. Initially, the single player demo with its, shall we say, lengthy mission design seemed to put most people off, but now that a few of us have actually played through the game and dipped our collective toes and trigger fingers in the game's multiplayer, the Bad Company virus seems to be spreading from one employee to the next. Thanks to the simplicity of Xbox Live, we often hop into each other's multiplayer games in the evening and proceed to grief each other in the most hilarious and obnoxious ways possible. It's therapy of sorts.

Anyway, if you ignore the numerous Bad Company posts below, it almost sounds like we're playing the latest games. We've also got a few new faces in this update, with Richard 'Rahdo' Ham and Mattias 'dof' Engström making their blog debut.

Our latest staff interview explores another inhabitant of our level design department, with Lloyd 'LloydM' Morris rolling around in our rather bright interrogation spotlight. One of the longest serving members of Splash Damage, Lloyd worked on both Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars, and has been working on the legendary CTF Tempest Utopia for most of his life.

To find out more about Lloyd, including his tips for breaking into the industry, his work on QUAKE Wars, and the shocking story behind his nickname, read the full interview while trying to avoid Lloyd's constant stream of flyer drones and the rather impressive circumference of his sombrero.

Tribal Wars is an upcoming total conversion modification for Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars that promises to bring a Cyclops-sized dose of Starsiege: Tribes to the game. The mod is said to focus heavily on CTF-style gameplay and will feature all-new weapons, player models, and levels. For those of you wanting to see and read more about it, the Tribal Wars website is now online and features a trailer, screenshots, concept art, and a development blog. There's no release date yet, but the team is looking to have a public beta at some point in the unspecified future.

Update: Apparently there were some DNS issues with the site that have now been fixed. All systems operational.

Original story: The Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars Community Site is currently down because of difficulties. We've let Activision's server elves know about the problem and as soon as we hear back from them, we will let you know. In the meantime, if you're looking for your daily forum fix, why not pop by the Splash Damage boards? They're quite friendly, we promise!

Please step behind the yellow line and mind your limbs, another edition of our ETQW user content showcase Snap to Grid is about to arrive!

This week, ETQW Mapping's Chairman and world-famous duck collector Terry 'Salteh' Seidler takes a look at the latest beta version of After the War 3: Nightraid, an earlier version of which was featured in the second installment of Snap to Grid. This latest version features all the objectives along with a few other tweaks - read on for a full description of the map, along with screenshots and download information!

One of Splash Damage's guiding principles is independence and we're often asked why this is so, or why people should come work for us rather than choose a seemingly more secure position at a publisher-owned studio. Our development manager Stephen 'malarky' Gaffney sheds some light on this issue in this freshly typed column on Edge Magazine's website, where he explains that being independent often results in better games for gamers, and that it is in fact more secure for employees.

All this and weekly recipes, fashion tips, and tv listings, all in... I'm sorry, I'm reading something else. But malarky's thing is right over here.

A few weeks ago, the good folks at GameRigs announced the launch of a new product line built around Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars, offering high-end gaming PCs and laptops, as well as console skins for the Xbox 360 and PLAYSTATION 3. All the machines feature unique Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars art on the outside and some of the best components available today on the inside. Needless to say, we were keen to find out the hows, whats and whys, so we caught up with GameRigs to talk about the machines and the idea behind them. The resulting interview along with bonus pictures can be found here on the Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars Community Site!

Breaking our tradition of only interviewing people named Chris, we sit down with level designer David 'Davros' Edwards for our latest staff interview. Davros originally hailed from the Wolfenstein community and came aboard as a level designer for Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars. He then proceeded to brush-build and entity-place his way through quite a few of the maps in the game, including competition favourite Salvage.

To find out more about Davros, his tips for breaking into the industry, his work on QUAKE Wars, making just noise on his guitar, and much more, read the full interview in his freshly compiled and leak-free staff profile.

With Spore, Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise, and Mercenaries 2 coming out last week, our wallets are finally able to go back on their diet while our thumbs revel in this rather sudden call to action. Rather bizarrely, opinions on this latest batch of games are not as positive as one might expect, so this installment of Currently Hurling Controllers / Mice reads a bit like something written by grumpy old men (which, mind you, may not be far from the truth). It is a bit odd that VP2 and Spore, which both got good reviews in the media, drew such a mixed reaction from our local gaming lot, while Mercenaries 2, which fared considerably less well in the media, is making for some good coop times around these parts.

In any case, let's hurl some eyeballs at the following:

Since last week's Chris was so well received, we decided to follow that one up with another member of our Chris army. As Splash Damage's Animator, Chris 'Hauser' Bull is literally responsible for getting things moving, at least as far as game characters and models are concerned. For Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars, Chris handled the bulk of the animation work, and he is now taking things to the next level by animating the first real-life Splash Damage baby.

To find out more about what Chris does here at Splash Damage, how he ended up here, his work on Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars, and much more, put on this ridiculous looking mo-cap suit, pretend to be an emu, and waddle your way over to his profile. In related matters, we're totally trying to go for a Chris hattrick here (a Christrick, if you will), so keep your fingers crossed for Chris Dawson next week.

After Sunday's and Monday's partial disruption of the Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars Community Site and back-end authentication and update servers, normal service appears to have been restored. We're still not sure what caused the routing commotion in the first place, but Activision's server wizards continue to investigate. If you're still seeing connection problems with the website or in the game, please let us know in the comments and we'll pass the information on.

We're currently seeing some connectivity issues with the Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars Community Site as well as the back-end authentication and update servers. It appears that certain ISPs are unable to establish connections to either one (we're actually unable to get to the Community Site from the office, for example), while others are completely fine. We've let the folks at Activision know about the problem and they're currently working to fix it. As soon as we have more information about what went wrong and when we can expect normal service to resume, we'll let you know.