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There are only 2 situations here: Actually, you missed one. The person has legal access to documents because they are publically available.

If I'm right, I think this was a person guessing the file-name of a press release when it was uploaded to a public server when the main page didn't contain a reference to the release. If so, it would make it more difficult to make a criminal conviction - based on sites such as Notpron, I doubt URL rewriting is much of an issue.

Epic Games announces the finalists for the Mod category for Grand Finals of the NVIDIA $1,000,000 Make Something Unreal Contest. To even make it to the Grand Finals is an amazing accomplishment for these dedicated and creative teams. To be selected as a finalist for the Grand Finals is to be the cream of the crop. Each and every one of these mods are the best of the best and worthy of play by all.

Deathball
Domain 2049
Frag.Ops
Strike Force
Troopers: Dawn of Destiny
Red Orchestra
Metaball
Alien Swarm
Air Buccaneers
Damnation
Robin Hood
Chaos UT2
UnWheel

-Technology lacking, not enough bandwith to handle the control needed.

Debatable. Current - hell, even 1999 Half-Life - technology has proven that a single server can handle 20 or more players at a low enough latency to make realtime/fps/action gameplay possible. BF1942 servers regularly deal with playercounts two or three times that too. On the MMO side of things, Planetside seems to be able to handle large numbers of players in realtime fairly well.

-Boring, who wants to play right field?

True. No one likes to be a benchwarmer. Maybe 'traditional' sports games aren't the best foot to start out on though. Find something high action and fast paced to suck people in, then convince them to stand around for 20 minutes in the outfield doing nothing. Its the perfect MMO timesink.

-Pub jerks, Xfool goes offsides, 5 yards. Xfool goes offsides, 5 yards. Xfool goes offsides, 5 yars...

Always a huge problem. Fortunatly there are always methods available to dealing with lamers. For example, maybe an auto-coach that would sideline a player for commiting repeated fouls. Make a note of it on their RPG-style record, and pretty soon no one wants to play with Mr.Llama.

-Coordination, Can't run any plays without lots of practice.

Enter the clan scene. Join up with a group of dedicated friends, design plays, practice them, and use them in competition (ladders, etc).


As proof of concept, has anyone ever heard of Deathball? Its a UT mod in the theme of a sport. Its like a 6 on 6 version of gridiron football (hitting), euro football (passing/volleying/curling), and handball or hockey (small teams, use a ball launcher/gun/tool thingie to charge and shoot the ball).
Its lots of fun, even if it has a bit of a steep learning curve. But I could see someone taking a similar idea and turning it into a MMO. You could keep stats, form leagues for clan play, and do all that good MMOx stuff (like charging people money for it).
Heck, why not just take it a step further and roll the whole genre into one. Call it "Ultimate Sports Online" or something and then just throw games at it and see what sticks (hellooo expansion packs!). People could be 'universal athletes' and compete in a variety of sports from traditional (football/hockey/basketball/etc) to exceptional (paintball/rollerball/ultimate) to fantasy (deathball/gravityball/whatever). They'd bounce all over the place, being a competative player in one league (say, hockey), casual in others (paintball and rollerball), and just every once in a while indulge in a quick one on one in tennis or foosball or something.

Why wouldn't it fly? Even if its not the greatest game in the world, surely it'd be capable of at least floating above the sea of MMO-garbage on its uniqueness alone. Maybe publishers are just scared to try it. It'll probably happen one day though... and just watch half the industry try and follow suit if it turns out to be a success (especially with Joe sixpack).

IMO it could happen. Just because it hasn't yet doesn't mean it never will. But maybe i'm just being uncharacteristically optimistic today. (Now wheres my +1 spelt-a-big-word-correctly? :P)

1. The 84 MB is a self-extracting zip file. OS X users CAN download the exe, change it to a zip, open with Stuffit Expander (open with>stuffit expander, the default app will not open the file, so Stuffit must be used, this works, I am on OS X and have successfully installed the new updates), and manually move the content to their UT2004 app folders if they wish to do so before MacSoft gets around to releasing a Mac installer. Just don't move the DLL files (no need on Mac OS X) and you don;t have to worry about overwriting your user.ini.

I'm sure a similar Linux workaround can happen as well before the Linux version is released, but I don;t know exactly how it would work on Linux.

2. The ECE update does NOT contain any mods that will ship with the retail version; just the maps, models, vehicles and engine tweaks. If you want the mods that are shipping with the retail version you can download them from their respective sites:

Air Buccaneers
Alien Swarm
Chaos UT2
Clone Bandits
Deathball
Domain 2049
Frag.Ops
Jailbreak
Red Orchestra
UnWheel

Most of these mods come with installers (.exe), or are UT4 files (UMod), while I know Red Orchestra has a Mac OS X installer and others can be downloaded as zip archives for manual instilation for OS X and Linux users..