It's possible to skip the launcher and launch quakelive.exe directly with proper command line, similar like it worked with quake3.exe.
It allows:
- faster launch - one click and the game is loaded.
- support for 2 accounts - two shortcuts to load one account or another.
- it's possible to load a map with devmap - may be useful for quick starting training map and for mappers.
- it's possible (but rather not recommended) to use different game directory.
- offline mode, remove +web_showbrowser "http://www.quakelive.com" part to avoid error message.


How to use in windows 7 64 bit:
1. First login using launcher so it has autologin info saved.

2. Open quakelive_launcher.log, located in c:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Temp\quakelive_launcher.log

3. At the end of the file there is proper commandline for quakelive.exe, after "Launch parameters", copy it.

4. Create a bat file (ql.bat or any other name).

5. Paste your launch parameters there (after quakelive.exe), the content of the file should look similar to:
@Start "" "c:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\id Software\quakelive\quakelive.exe" +set web_sess quakelive_sess=xxx +set gt_user "xxx" +set gt_pass "xxx" +set gt_realm "quakelive" +web_showbrowser "http://www.quakelive.com" +set fs_basepath "C:/Users/xxx/AppData/LocalLow/id Software/quakelive" +set fs_homepath "C:/Users/xxx/AppData/LocalLow/id Software/quakelive/home/" %*

6. Optionally make a shortcut to the bat file, and set Run: Minimized to hide console completely.


NOTE:
It's a good idea to run Launcher sometimes, it's needed to download the game and for updates.

Since a few hours no one can play QL... stuck at authentication.