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There's a review of OpenArena in Full Circle Magazine Issue 19 (http://fullcirclemagazine.org/issue-19/). It's not bad, but it recommends version 0.8.0, which makes the article a bit outdated.

It says also "the latest version is 0.8.0" so, it's a little bit outdated. :P

There are more than just the 4 game modes they listed.
They also said you need no real tactics to play, which implies the game is simple. In CTF and 1v1 especially, tactics are crucial.

However, it's good to see OA is getting reviews. Can't complain about that.

Well, I would say that the the review is fair and mostly positive. The reviewer is right in that this game is not for beginners, I still remember my frustration when I played a Quake game online the first time :-) Alas, too long ago (it was Quakeworld in the early nineties).

And this brings up another pet topic of mine: modifying the game play to make it more satisfactory for a wider range of players. Please, don't flame me: I know as well as anybody else the credo of the ioq3 staff which says that they will never ever modify the basic gameplay of Q3A. On the other hand, the guys at ioq3 are not omnipotent gods who have a mandate to tell everybody else what to do and not to do. Changing the gameplay is a matter of intelligent decision and careful weighing the pros and cons. As somebody already pointed out, the hardcore Q3A gamers will probably never switch to OA anyway, so who cares if they might be offended by our changing the rules.

I have been playing with this idea for a long time. Actually, I have my own version of Q3A (called Q3M) which is based on a heavily modified Q3A engine. I have made several significant modifications to the Q3A engine code, including:

- spawn protection (player is invulnerable for 5-10 seconds after spawning, but also unable to hurt others)
- different, adjustable fire rates and damage for all weapons
- faster (adjustable) player movement speed
- better weapon switching scheme (new commands, user definable weapon groups)

and some of other goodies (if you are interested, please. go to my WEB page: http://menczel.extra.hu).

My point is that because the the source code is fully available, we could make OA a better game than the original Q3A. The guys at ID are great, but there is good stuff also in other games (e.g. the secondary weapon firing mode and locational damage in Unreal Tournament) that we could take and incorporate into Openarena. This would be effectively a fork of the ioq3 code base, but the code IMO is mature enough, and OA does not have to depend forever on ioq3 releases.

(DO NOT LINK) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/NOTTODO

There are OA-specific mods. Find them, use them, love them. But considering no one hosts overload (even though it deals with a lot of the flaws of CTF) Harvester (Which isn't fully functional yet)  or Domination/Double Domination, there's plenty of things that are part of the core game but unused.

That's your decision and I cannot (and don't want to) do anything to change it. However, if I ever feel the need for a different OA (for example to play with my friends, or just to prove my point), I will just create it and nobody can do anything about that, either (c.f. GPL2). And don't worry, I will not call it Openarena, I will find another suitable name. Speaker's Arena just comes to my mind. Does it not sound grand? :-)

Do anything about it? I would encourage it. The whole media project would loose its point if not used. If you can get a new audience to FOSS games by changing the gameplay by all means do it!

I have always liked that Open Arena was not too heavily themed since that allows you to go in many directions if you want to take it further.