I played RTCW and RTCW/ET a lot. Mainly ET because I think gameplay was superior to RTCW. ET still retained Quake physics, aim, and skills needed to be good at it, no silly all over the place kickback from the gun but an ideal amount of spread if you're not crouching/running, a tad of trickjumping and a much higher emphasis on teamplay than old RTCW. I also only played on limited lives/friendly fire enabled/1 minute spawn servers which automatically filtered out noobs/idiots, any idiot that failed to follow advice on how to improve was kicked. I usually played medic because I had better than average aim and reflexes and because adrenalined medic like that would often break the defenses in order for engineers to advance. However, the server I almost exclusively played at was also a 1 minute spawn server, so it put an even greated emphasis on teamwork and good engineers/field ops/heavy weapon soldier because people would memorize the spawn times and target tight spots with heavy weapons/artillery to stop the other team from advancing. Later mods also made cov op keep his uni if using silenced weapons which was a great addition because it not only made cov op class playable, but actually enjoyable and fun to play. Good times, good times...
Too bad there were really only two limited lives/friendly fire servers in NA: ND80 and tjw/firespeed. ND80 died out, tjw now hosted at firespeed is still limping along, but it's empty most of the time, just about the only time you see players on it is on Sunday night when old timers still gather to play. I've been meaning to stop by on one of those Sunday evenings even though I basically gave up video gaming, for old times sake...