Yeah so I guess the most recent iteration in a long lived series will now be available to the masses at no cost.

What a great thing to happen.  I'm excited to step back up to this game and give it another shot without spending any money.  It turns out it will be the original game and all the expansions as well so if you can follow (or remember) any of the story, you'll get the full MechWarrior-y dosage of it.  This comes on the 25th anniversary of Battletech and after the recent announcement of a new MechWarrior in the series.  From the newly released trailers, it looks like a strong title in the series.  We'll see how it plays out.

I played MecWarrior 4 a few times but never owned it.  It's a big step (in gameplay) from the classic MechWarrior 3 which I thoroughly enjoyed.  Anyone who played MW 3 knows that you had the advantage of mouse aiming which was really easy.  When MW4 came along you lost that, but gained the realism of the torso turning.  It made aiming a whole new deal, but using a joystick made it a lot more fun and challenging.  Once the word gets out there, the multiplayer will probably jump back into popularity and we'll get some online fun.  The last time I played a mech game online was around the time Starsiege came out... whenever that was... and it was a pretty damn good time for being a game that skipped under the radar of popularity.  Getting back into the seat of a giant bipedal war machine and blasting it out with some others will be a fun little trip.

I'll post more information when download information comes out and maybe host it if necessary.  Hopefully we don't have to wait too long.