Hi,
I'm in the beta for quite some time now, and it makes me wanna puke when I look at what is going on with QuakeLive. With every day that passes, it gets worse: id shows more and more that they don't intend to create a game which could become successful also in the competitive scene. I am very aware, that it is called "beta", but when the devs continue working and making decisions like that, I'm afraid that QuakeLive will fail miserably:

no GTV
some people of id stated that GTV will make it into QuakeLive maybe after the release, depending on its success (search "gtv" @ ql forums). Needless to say that a QuakeLive without GTV or a similar spectating platform will fail. Look at what happened to Q4 or UT3.

not allowing to host own servers
again, an id employee told us that we will not be able to host servers when QuakeLive will be released (search "host servers" @ ql forums). Another way to make sure that QuakeLive will be a still birth (look at UT3 with no linux servers for the first months).

not allowing custom maps
I can't recall any specific statement of id officials other then "that will be decided later". Being linked closely to the point above but one more way to fuck QL up, especially if you consider the poor job id's mappers did in QL until now.

no proper bright-skins
Needless to say that the current "bright skins" are a bad joke. I didn't see any word on that from an id employee, although many people complained about that. Again, look at UT3 ...


From my pov, these are the major points that'll stop Quakelive from becoming successful in the competitive scene. If you still care, please post in the ql forums/thread, maybe id change their decisions.

There are a lot more issues that needs to be addressed if id wants QuakeLive to become the new star on the multiplayer horizon. (mainly: how to attract newbies and keep them playing) There are many good suggestions in the big QuakeLive thread here on esr.

[personal rant] The devs don't really seem to understand the game they are working on. That wouldn't be so bad if they would at least listen to experienced players. Just look at the recent weapon changings: instead of altering weapon values only where it is needed, they play around with the values, guided by their newbish gut feeling.
They say that they have 10 people working on the game, but the progress is painfully slow, compared to what mod devs achieve in their free time. I can't understand why they stop working on parts of the game before they are finished and start working on new ones, from my pov this isn't a good approach of working on smth.
The whole beta phase is quite a disaster, they opened the beta to ~3500 people now, because nobody played it. Instead of doing what the earlier testers suggested (which would have made the game playable and therefore would have made more testers play) random noobs have been invited who spam the forums with the same, useless threads. Devs don't seem to read most of the forum threads because of that huge spam amount. The few, good suggestions aren't read by the devs and the good people stop posting cause they feel ignored.

If I had very much money, I'd buy id immediately and fire most of the team. Then I'd hire some people with real talent (cpma/q4max team) and let them incorporate the bug fixes and most of the features from their mod. I'd close all beta accounts except of a few, good people (and probably pay them pocket money for useful posts).[/personal rant]


I don't deny that there are also few positive aspects in QL yet:
playing QL in the browser works amazingly good, they gave dm17 a nice overhaul and when you bug them often enough, they'll sometimes listen to your suggestions.

If id does it right, QuakeLive could be a huge access. If they ignore the points I wrote above, failure will be certain.