...in seriousness it is actually difficult to over-emphasize the sobering magnitude of this game's failure to attract decent player numbers. People often use Steam Charts to compare QC to QL or other titles but if you go down the list of top titles you will see that aged, obscured or in relative terms 'failed' games such as Insurgency, Battlerite, Counter-Strike, SMITE, Star Trek Online (to name a few) performing equally or better than this current title.

To be honest I'm not sure why I'm making this thread given the obvious paucity of discussion on ESR, and therefore (I think) the general acceptance of the game's irrelevance to competitive or casual play in previous Quake titles. But I do think its performance in terms of player numbers does bear reiterating in relation to other multiplayers.

A common response to the above variety of arguments is that the game is still in development. Yet it's clear that premature public release is the rule for both SP and MP titles nowadays rather than the exception. I wanted to make this a neutrally-toned post but I cannot restrain myself from saying that I will actually enjoy watching the remainder of this circus of a development cycle (cum development training programme?) play out in future. One thing I do feel sorry about is the players, to whom I mean no disrespect. But I think the top 20 guys know what they are getting into and have a good chance of a fair payback given the hours they're putting into the game.

PS inb4 tayski

RESPECT THE PACO

I was watching the stream video below and found stermy throwing out a big fat accusation that cooller (and possibly av3k) had thrown a match or matches during this tournament. I feel like this did not really get discussed much at the time - it certainly has not been talked about as much as the infamous WCG02 incident. Does anyone have thoughts on this? Did cooller or av3k really throw matches?