I pulled this on some other site and it should give more information "Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries was a game that Microsoft released in 2002. The game engine, even then, was widely scorned as "unfinished".. with a number of bugs and exploitable issues. Even Microsoft's "Point Release 1" update for the game did little to asuage these complaints.
Microsoft also released two update packs for Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries, the Clan Pak, and the Inner Sphere Pak. Each pack was sold separately in an obvious cash grab, and did little more than unlock 8 mechs (4 per pack) that were already available to NPC's in the game.
Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries' only saving grace was it's multiplayer gaming, though it's limited number of players per game, and limited number of multiplayer game types made it quickly boring. Still, like had happened for Mechwarrior 2: Netmech, several "leagues" formed around the game, with multiple teams vying for seasonal titles for scoring in ladder games.
MekTek first entered the scene as a group of modders who were able to hack the game. The Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries gaming engine was never intended to be moddable, and so special techniques had to be developed to fool the game engine into using new mech designs, new images, etc.
Over the years, MekTek released 4 major content patches, or "MekPaks".. Meckpaks 1, 2, 2.1, and 3. MekTek is also credited by some for the popularization of the phrase "Soon™" and the resultant Soon² , Soon²·¹ , Soon³, and of course, Soon³·¹ due to it's eager promises of new content, and long periods of silence between releases. These Paks, released sporadically, months and even years apart, added dozens of new mechs to the games, with artwork created by fans, for fans. Among these fanmade mechs were old favourites, the so-called "unseen" which had to be removed or redesigned from the official Mechwarrior products due to intellectual property conflicts with the makers of several anime including Macross (Robotech), Crusher Joe, and others.
MekTek's last major release was MP 3.1.. which was made after MekTek gained access to the Source Code, in a deal with the game's owners. This allowed the fledgling programmers to really get in and change some things in the game code, rather than piling on hacks and patches. MP3.1 however, while it added support for widescreen monitors and changed some ingame elements, added no new mechs to the game.
Prior to MP3.1, MekTek's previous patch release was in 2005. That's almost 5 long years between MP3, and MP 3.1. 5 years that have seen the death of the organizer of MW4's largest league, and some pretty serious advances in both console and PC gaming the likes of Half Life 2, Portal, Battlefield 2, and beyond.
Saying that the MW4 gaming engine is dated, is something of an understatement. While MekTek has some ability to upgrade the engine, and fix it's bugs, we are talking about an 8 year old game for the PC, whose graphics were considered subpar in 2002 when compared to the first Halo installment (released in 2001). Since MW4: Mercs was released, Microsoft went on to create MechAssault, and MechAssault 2: Lone Wolf for the Xbox. The Mechwarrior/Battletech gaming franchise, once a pen and paper role-playing game franchise, and a tabletop miniature combat franchise, held by gaming giant FASA, soon became a collectable hero-clicks-style card game by Magic: The Gathering creator, WizKids.
Now, standing the the shadow of an upcoming video game reboot from newcomer Smith&Tinker, Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries hasn't aged well. And even a free release of this 8 year old game is unlikely to bring back those pre-secondlife glory days of 4v4 or 8v8 capture the flag league matches. Compared to what's on the market nowadays.. Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries isn't even in the running."""
