hehe

Does making frag movies count? :)

As long as they are good ones ;)

You mean like ZOTAC not even being able to fill a 64 grid anymore?

You're deluding yourself if you think that QL is in any better shape right now than Q3 was before QL was announced. If you feel like you really needed to convince the biggest Quake community site that the game isn't dead, what DOES that say about the game? It's not totally dead, but it's on life support - and in pain. You know you should pull the plug, but you're still pissing time and money away into it, even though you know it won't be around much longer.

Games like Doom 2/Q2/QW/etc don't need to connect to a central server that won't be around when id pulls the plug for you.

Sounds terrible... you should see your doctor about that problem you're having.

Nah, it's your problem now - I kicked it to the curb a long time ago.

My point is if you like the game play it.... who cares if it's not holding million dollar tournaments and on the 10 o'clock news. I'm not deluding myself of anything, just playing a game.

Paying to play a game, and doing so at the cost of real interests when you have to KNOW that the game won't be around much longer. It's not like Q3 where people can just play it for 10 years - it's all web-based and goes through a central server. It dies, and stays dead. Nobody would go back to Q3 when you can't even get people to play QL with matchmaking.

what you're saying has nothing to do with what I said... you're making up things that haven't happened yet. No one is forcing you to pay for or play QL dude. No one is forcing those who do play and have paid either, so who cares. People who don't like QL act like it's a dictatorship or some kind... you don't have to participate.

If id listened to everyone who bitched out their games then Quake would of died a long time ago, because there are a million stupid complaints for every 1 good idea.

don't listen to vedic, he's a troll |:

Yeah, don't listen to people with other opinions, they're just trolling.

it's almost as if you don't know how to use google trends

is this post as hilarious as i think it is? or are you being serious?

http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22starcraft+2...amp;sort=0


sad to see that starcraft 2's fame is over already ://////////////////

Yeah, the numbers certainly show a decline in new players, but that's to be expected. Not that it needs much more, when they've already sold over 3 million copies. Let's put it in context for you, shall we?

http://www.google.com/trends?q=starcraft+2%2C...amp;sort=0

...and more:

http://trends.google.com/trends?q=quake+live - seems this quakecon didn't even bring is as many new players as the last one. =X

http://trends.google.com/websites?q=quakelive...0&sa=N - Still looking bad on site hits, but August results haven't been added yet, so maybe there's hope that you caught up to last Quakecon after all! (hahaha, j/k)

one of these days someone should tell you about sarcasm.

Glad you've seen the light.

*sigh*

You have to delude yourself to not see the future of the game. You're living in the "now" with absolutely no foresight. You don't see the dictatorship, because you don't understand that everything must now go through id, and the future of the entire game rests in their hands. As soon as QL loses support from id, all of Quake comes down with it.

You can say the same thing about starcraft 2.

Yes! They both suck.

Indeed - it does pose an issue for SC2, but it isn't in danger of dying.

Well I guess it has the other set of problems that come from being under a "dictatorship" , that quake is just getting over (hopefully).

How do you think quake will get over this?

Apparent monthly content updates, and better LAN support.

ID pulls the plug = quake(live) dies.

You don't have any sort of independence (you can't even play your own maps), you can't make a LANparty before ID signs it off and at the end of the day, you don't even have a guarantee that the servers will still be up tomorrow.

I wasn't denying that, I was pointing out there is more than one problem with so much control being with the developer, and QL is hopefully getting over these.

Fair enough.

24 more monthly updates until quake live becomes CPMA

he could also say the same thing about WoW and CoD...

The reality is, everything in pro-gaming will become a 'dictatorship'. Id is actually, like with many things before, merely the 1st to get there. Think about it... if billions of dollars a year went into pro-starcraft2, you really think Blizzard wouldn't use their legal rights to seize all such assets by denying everyone else the rights to use starcraft2 for commercial venture? By not doing so, it would be like giving away billions of dollars in profits (a year).

The only reason everyone has not already consolidated, is because the money has not warranted such action. These are not monopolies either, as one game competes with every other game.

some kinda failed quakelive player

he is just bitter that id didn't value his input as much as he would have wanted.

and what was his input exactly?

That quake should be viewed from the top down? that walking should be done by pressing "a" and then left clicking on a mini-map in the lower left corner? That spamming 300 useless commands per minute pops up a window with "u so gosu kekekeke".

I hope they had a good laugh at ID from that spastic.

so you dont waste your time with QL anymore, incase you waste it on a website that is around 90% about QL and giving 0 ratings to QL movies... sounds much better idd

This site is about trolling, and hopefully will provide a nice platform for SC2 when QL is dead.

who the fuck plussed that shit?

primord22 ;)

You're deluding yourself if you think that QL is in any better shape right now than Q3 was before QL was announced.

You're factually wrong once again m8.

Proof?

You'd know this better than me should you've at least slightly objective, there's no point in pointing shit out for you for the 100th time. Now go back into your mental cage and convince yourself I'm saying this because I do not have proof.

So much for "factually wrong", eh?

As long asn you can find games in a minute id not consider a game being even close to death :P
Id say QuakeLive has at least four more good years in it before the trouble will start.

The scene will get to old, people will start having kids if they dont already and leave the game entirely.

You're making the same mistake that the OP has in assuming that it's in the hands of the community. id will drop it when they're tired of losing money (sooner than later), which will force people to go back to Q3 in a best case scenario.

Quake 2...does not

as vedic said that type of game can't totally die, given that there're no central servers and everyone can play it without paying anything. That's why multiplayer console games will inevitably die, halo 2 being the most recent example.

on the other hand of course you can consider a scene dead at some specific place (for example....quakeworld in Chile) even if there're some people still playing the game.
For me dead means less than 8 stable teams (no walkovers) with regular leagues, because on that scenario there's no way to revive that community or to make it at least stable. For others it means having trouble to play a public match, and another criteria is the lack of lanparties (without considering how many online heroes are)

speaking of, I can't always find a quake 4 game, but Quake 2 is plenty active in North America. The Tasty Spleen servers are always populated, as well as random other servers.

even on that case I consider it dead since there are no leagues (besides some random grenade only ffa)

You are like me. I need a certain community size to be satisfied after that it becomes a hassle to keep playing. Sure a game is never dead as long as you keep playing it alone in the dark without anyone else but I need other people to play with.

this!!!1!1 no seriously word keep the hype

I prefer terminally ill.

realistic raoul says it's in bad shape

You know a game is dead when the team modes die

That would make quakeworld more active than quakelive

I played reaction quake 3 in regular clan wars for 2+ years with only 6-7 different clans total existing in the entire world. It was great. A great game comes from awesome gameplay, not from having 3000 people playing it on servers you never even join. Respect the Paco - play your game.

and aq2? it should have more people than rq3

aq2 does have more people, but I didn't find it as fun, I wasn't a big fan of the feeling :D I play the game I like best! Juegen AQ2 en chile? :D

my coche esta arbol morado con queso. Chilito burrito, andale yepa yepa

yep, we do. At least until this year because there have been some server issues, so the game is more or less dead (even with about 10 teams). It lasted for more than 10 years

Respect the Paco

~10 (?) major LANs in 2 years in quite good.

q3 didnt have that much even in its glory moments

Q3 had an active community in addition to the 17 pros though.

Yeah - they played FFA and Urban Terror.

In 2000 TDM was still popular.

qw and q2 were better than q3 maybe ?:D

haha ++

QW? Yes.
Q2? No.

I get what you are saying, if a community grew strong for QL again I'd give it a shot but I'm not so committed to QL myself that I'm going to spend any effort or money on it. I need more than pub play to hold my attention. I need a tourney/league that run fairly often and a private scene where people play pickups.

Based on what I know I'd consider NQ, QW, Warsow, Q2, Q3, Q4, QL, etc all pretty much dead in NA. Sure you can still find games for them all but the activity level is so low that it's a pain. Much easier to just play something else with a more active community. The funny thing is the initial communities which grew up to surround all the Quakes before QL were much stronger, bigger, and longer lasting. QL has been the worst Quake as far as community, tournaments, etc go. The only thing it has going for it is sponsors keep holding duel tourneys. I do still consider ZDaemon still alive just because of the IDL but if the IDL ever went away it'd be dead too.

there are tournaments with cash prizes for halo 3 (!! ... ) in the us, seriously, what do you expect?
why do ppl play counterstrike or battlefield instead of enemy territory or et:qw?
why do ppl play fps on consoles in the first place?


because every braindead bimbo can learn the game in a few minutes, someone just explains it to you and you can play..

for games like quake, warsow or even UT and ET you need to practice if you are new to this kind of game and that is what most of todays "casual or hardcore gamers" (even the word is retarded..) just can't stand: get a kick in the nuts over and over again only because they suck, then they go on, blame the game and play something else instead of trying to get better (which is, as i already stated, not that easy in classic deathmatch games)

there's one big problem with your logic: starcraft

hmm, can't remember talking about rts games :p

"because every braindead bimbo can learn the game in a few minutes, someone just explains it to you and you can play.." (etc).

Starcraft is way more difficult to learn and to be decent than quake and every other "hard" single fps game (mouse+kb), but it has a way larger playerbase, money involved and influence than those, and even than the "easier" fps games

That's not the only factor to it.

that's why i did not mention rts games in the first place, because that is a completely different situation ..

so read carefully: i was talking about fps games.

let me spell it out for you: noone likes your "classic fps" games because there's illogical shit going on, like timing items to win a game. bottom line, it's just not fun.

yeah because respawning and auto-heal in CoD is so incredibly realistic :>

or or bringing a mouse and a keyboard to a battlefield! bellend.

you could knock out an enemy with the keyboard and choke him with the mouse cord tbh


;)

marketing, hype, graphics

I still play hardcore deathmatch as it comes, ZDaemon CTF!

Have you ever played an FPS on a console?

goldeneye and turok2 on the n64

k every console fps is brainless and takes 3 mins to learn c:

name some where you need to actually learn every aspect of the multiplayer mode please (note: maps do not count)

I don't know - I haven't played any. You seem to be an expert though, so all is good.

ok fine, i still love you though :D

herp derp

quake died when pcs were finally fast enough to maintain 125 fps and people just started to jump to get out of the way of rockets. also with higher sv_fps and cl_maxpackets being extended to 125. all of that resulted in rocketlauncher not being able to be the dominant weapon overall, and the game became random

.. as witnessed the last few years of q3, when the best players at 1on1 changed ever more frequently. and now in ql there just isnt a "best player", and pretty much every tourney is won by someone else

decreasing shaft and rail strength is just worse. it's not supposed to be easy to hit and do little damage. it's supposed to be hard to hit and do loads of damage. that's what allows the game to work out tiny little differences in skill

yep.. that's what quake was: you could be the best and maintain it, because the game was such an accurate test of skill. nowadays the retards can win too - good too, as "going mainstream" mostly means you'll get a looooot more retards

that being said, ra3 took a lot away from q3 as well, and ql including clan arena was the final nail in the coffin

until ra3 started to appear, it was a time where certain TDM and 1on1 servers were always bursting in the evening, and stayed populated until after midnight. 1 year after ra3 came out, there pretty much never were any full TDM or 1on1 servers anymore. you'd always find a game, but players were less motivated, left earlier etc. there was less eagerness to play and improve your skill, as you could always throw in a few rounds of ra3 where you'd have success anyways

ra3 just removes the last intelligent stuff from quake, even much more so than ffa. in ffa, you at least have to collect the weapons before you use them, and the importance of picking up armor before engaging in a battle should have been apparent to anyone too
lastly, you have the importance of position. if you're high up, you have the strategic advantage - in ra3, you can rocketjump yourself pretty much everywhere without having to work too much for it (did i mention that not hurting yourself while shooting yourself is fucking stupid?)

im sure quakelive without clan arena and more intelligent re-working of weapon balance and overall feel of the game could have gone a long way - id decided for short term marketability, so it wasnt going to happen

rockets are faster in ql now, making them powerful again, but yeah, pretty much nailed it.

Spot on.

it's not supposed to be easy to hit and do little damage. it's supposed to be hard to hit and do loads of damage. that's what allows the game to work out tiny little differences in skill

Exactly.

and pretty much every tourney is won by someone else

what are you going on about?

there are tons of games where the winners are way more random.

rapha won what, half of the big tourneys of the last two years? And if he didn't win he placed very high. Hardly always someone else.

if you count out the EU tourneys where he didn't participate, he won a couple more than half

he didn't win this quakecon and gamescom, and didn't attend dreamhack. don't remember if he attended last year.

won everything else iirc.

yeah, but do you remember fatality and zero4 respectively owning it for a few years each without ever losing a game?

No I don't, actually.

fat only won consecutive stuff in 2000, and was beaten in that same year by z4. who then owned it up for 2001. But he didn't keep on doing that in 2002.

So, fat dominated for a year and z4 for a bit over a year, neither did for "a few years".

okay whatever.. there still was a feeling of those guys being the best, period. there is no such feeling with rapha today (rapha won most tourney in the last 1, 2 years but was beaten by enough players inbetween), and there hasnt been a definitive "best player" since cooller. and when was that? 2004 or so?

from there on it has been who? toxic, czm.. then who.. cypher? none of those were dominant

Rapha was dominant. He won every international QL tournament he attended (which was like 5 or 6) for roughly a year. It was as good of a streak that anyone in the past has ever had.

And there have definitely been "best players" since Cooller. Toxjq, for one, defined dominance. Cypher would have been a "best player" but there weren't enough tournaments during his 2008 time to showcase it.

No "retards" are winning tournaments today. They are all very, very good players with lots of experience.

I honestly believe that it's simply a thing that happens over time.

Now the memory of the games is fresh and you can remember the times when rapah struggled and so on. But in a few years you will mostly remember how he won so many tournaments and it seem more impressive.

I honestly believe that it's simply a thing that happens over time.

Now the memory of the games is fresh and you can remember the times when rapah struggled and so on. But in a few years you will mostly remember how he won so many tournaments and it seem more impressive.

I honestly believe that it's simply a thing that happens over time.

Now the memory of the games is fresh and you can remember the times when rapah struggled and so on. But in a few years you will mostly remember how he won so many tournaments and it seem more impressive.

I see what you did there.

I honestly believe that it's simply a thing that happens over time.

Now the memory of the games is fresh and you can remember the times when rapah struggled and so on. But in a few years you will mostly remember how he won so many tournaments and it seem more impressive.

No wait, I don't

I honestly believe that it's simply a thing that happens over time.

Now the memory of the games is fresh and you can remember the times when rapah struggled and so on. But in a few years you will mostly remember how he won so many tournaments and it seem more impressive.

but maybe I do ...

I honestly believe that it's simply a thing that happens over time.

Now the memory of the games is fresh and you can remember the times when rapah struggled and so on. But in a few years you will mostly remember how he won so many tournaments and it seem more impressive.

Nah, false alarm :(

there are 2 different concepts of the game "dying": player base, which is what this thread is about (read OP), and gameplay, which is about personal preferences.

the market doesn't work like that, not even remotely.
It's not like the playerbase will increase if id does some balance changes or that q3 died because of ra3, as you said on your last paragraph.

in the end that distinction matters, a lot. From a player perspective I prefer having a very good game with people to play with than a "perfect" game (subjective) without someone to play with. The first case is quake live, because it truly revived quake and at least here most probably it will be the last popular fast fps game. The second case consist of some unknown or dead games that I love, but can't enjoy now.

Lot of that is true. I've grown to seriously dislike rail and even now LG. I much prefer fast player movement and up close high damage combat. The dumbing down gameplay I feel is partly to make up for the lack of integration of community. The best Quake was TDM and CTF but you needed a clan or team to get into that seriously. The tactics and strategy is very deep in these not to mention getting proper configs etc all set up. Most players would never even figure out IRC or where the league websites were so they were never clued in enough to compete.

all of that resulted in rocketlauncher not being able to be the dominant weapon overall, and the game became random

wat

sry chump, ra3 is tons more fun than collecting shit and adding numbers in your head. if you want to accessorize go play with dolls.

can't believe it man you're full of shit. You could team up with Vedic the kankerson sc2 blind fanboy. I bet you're ugly irl. Keep your nostalgia in your ass. Go suck cooller's dick he's still playing QL these days. Ask fatalat1ty to butt rape you with his amazing creative mouse. You're another ugly nerd who think that he has a brain, but here is the reality for you : you are ugly and you don't know how to aim with hitscan weapons (maybe you know how to aim with your rail @ 150dmgs and 5 secs reload time), then you try to make yourself look like a smart, oldschool and knowledgeable guy... Keep wanking in your basement.
You want a game with armors, weapons collection, hp regen etc ? Go play your fucking World of Crapcraft. TDM is full of crap, who cares about this fucking 4x dmgs items ? I don't need a fucking 4x dmg item to dominate my opponent, ffs. And your talking about self dmg, I lol'ed. You want friendly fire [on], self dmg etc ? you want a realistic game where it's "hard to hit but when you do you make a lot of dmgs" ? Go play your fucking counter-strike crap and try to control this fucking useless random spread so that you're finally able to make a fucking fake virtual headshot with only 1 bullets and 5 years of practice. Keep talking about the RL, you fucking clueless dinosaur, the rl @ ql is faster than the vq3's one, get some clue ffs. You want to see fatal1ty dominate the scene again ? FFS go back to 2000-2002 and play your crap dm6 and t4 with your crap netcode, crap hitboxes, 150dmgs rail, 600dps LG on your orange smoothie production (LOL WHAT A NAME) deepcrapshit mode. We don't like T4, we don't like dm6, we don't like any oldschool maps (except aero & ztn), we don't like the ugly all money american fatal1ty, cooller is all fake, so pls now just stfu.
What's wrong with rocket jumping everywhere in CA btw ? Quake isn't a game where you're supposed to camp at the same place with a fucking instant kill rail. We're not in 2000 anymore, it's time for you to evolve and accept changes, and learn to adapt. It's time for you to realise that people in 2010 aim and play way better than the so-called wannabe all money & girlz 2000's progamers. Grow up some proper logic, and if you don't like quakelive, then, fucking go back to q3 osp or quakeworld ffs, you'e uslesss we don't need you in quakelive. Just RIP with your fucking osp.
Man if one day i play you in DA, omg i would just need my shaft to show you who's the real dominant guy between you and me. You're such a fake coward it's disgusting. I don't even care about your rockets, i just dodge them all, I don't even care about your instagib rail, i keep just keep controling your mental health with my shaft, and never look back.
Sosi. DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA ! PENIS 8======D

www.valium.com

I stopped reading at the third ugly.

yep, if i were you i would've done just the same.

i can understand that people are having their thoughts on the future of the game, but i really CAN'T understand why they only spread out the negative apsects of their opinions.

Facts from my point of view (subjective!!): Playing and monitoring almost only on german servers QL is by far the most busy quake-game in a loooong time. Whenever i connect there are more than enough 1on1 games on all skill levels (at least the skillevels i see), always a good pool of CA games, same with CTF and in the rush hours i can see a lot of FFA-games too. Ok TDM and FT are a little under my hopes and it's sometimes hard to find a game - but face it, public TDM and FT are not always enjoyable anyways. But then don't tell me in Q3 there were always plenty of those games - simply not true.

Also fact is there is no real alternative choice when it comes down to competitive, halfway balanced (that is surely another discussion on another level of detail), non-realistic fps-games.

For sure there will never be a run on this game like it was on q3 in 1999, for various reasons (gfx, skillborder, dumbed-down consoleplayers...) so the playerbase will not grow or at least not grow fast - rather it will shrink.

My personal advice on that... enjoy QL, support it in any way possible and lets hope it will stay around for a while. The community needs to grow up and stop crying about EVERYTHING, id needs to take the right decisions and then we can accompany the game on its hopefully very slow death ;)

..and STOP CRYING!

"Facts from my point of view (subjective!!)"

stopped reading here

pretty clever to bump into a discussion on a public forum (hope you know what a forum is or should be) without even trying to understand... naaah READ other opinions.. haha classic.
you should aim for a career in politics.

you're being subjective

Quake is dead.

i like the argument that quake is on it's way out because id has centralized it, taking every ounce of power from the oh so victimized community. from where i'm standing, they have taken a 10 year-old game and incorporated all the popular modifications over those 10 years in just about 3 years (including development) and now offer it as service that, at the highest level, costs you about $4/month when you pay annually AND have the audacity to assure future content updates with even more existing community content and HOLY SHIT new content. Those fascists!

sure, in q3 you could host your own server in your room, on your residential bb connection, in windows (or linux if so inclined) to have noone join or play for a myriad of (obvious) reasons. or you could rent a 16-24 or whatever slot server costing at least $100/year that you need to configure yourself cfg-wise and wait around for someone to install any mod, if the provider even supports the mod you want on the server in the first place. but hey, it's free to the players right? they just fire up a server browser and connect til their hearts content, no hassles whatsoever. hey, you bought/downloaded the game once however many years ago so you've paid and are entitled to EVERYTHING at zero cost to you! Yeah! No need to organize leagues/ladders yourself or learn how to map cause you're tired of the snorefest dm6 has become. Someone else will do it, AT EXACTLY NO COST TO YOU, right?

clearly, it's the players that are ruining q3/qlive. if you can't see that then you are the one suffering from self-delusions, not those that are finding positives in a seemingly doomed venture with the lack of involvement from the player-base that we are YET AGAIN plagued with today. Sure, i may wake up tomorrow and OMG the servers are gone, but so may every other goddamn free or pay service offered on the planet. Moot point. Move on, please.

You can still play scbw or q3 with a friend if you like. I doubt we will have ql in 10 years.

edit:

and incorporated all the popular modifications over those 10 years

Are you trolling?

id has to.

it's their only game that's actually being played right now, because they haven't released a decent one since q3. If they shut it down then the company would lose its current reputation and being news at some websites, especially when rage and doom4 seems to be mainly single player titles

Still, you have to depend on them. If they decide to shut it down, it's gone.

yep. Doesn't sound terrible to me though.

So is this site. So is googlewave (oh wait...) or ANY OTHER SITE ON THE INTERNET.

are you just realizing this?

We are talking about games, not sites. If blizz decides to shut down bnet you can still play through hamachi or so.

it's a service now, any way you want to slice it.

Inferior to what could be done by the players themselves.


There are some positive aspects though, such as a somewhat unified playerbase and subsequent money tournaments.

All very good points.

Even when the community had a big role on this type of genre it's not its obligation to keep actively supporting it, whether doing donations/micropayments/etc. or giving away time for free to the game itself or to local communities. We are now out of uni or at least college you know.
That didn't happen with any other gaming genre, besides mobas maybe. Back in the day you didn't see people pushing others to do that kind of stuff in sc (pc gaming. Actually they even charge for hosting big tournaments in Asia), consoles (nintendo's not begging its customers to give them money, or capcom creating local communities); you just have to pay the game and there you go have a good one.


As I said things don't work like that: now comes the quake live post.

If you look at stats the biggest problem of id playerbase-wise is that they have more than a million registered accounts, but 1-2% of them play regularly and about 40% of the total didn't even play one match (this is more or less myself pulling facts from my ass because that's what I remember from the google stats thread of last year). There are 2 issues there: keep people playing (that 1-2%) and getting those players back if possible, but seems like id gave up on that idea since they are removing idle accounts.
The thing is that 40% of people was id's fault (the ones that didn't even try the game) because of queues when the game went open beta, plus the idea of a mandatory placement match against a bot (VERY discouraging). Players had nothing to do with that.

Also there's a 2nd big problem here: the specific genre .
When the first doom and quake games were released they had a huge player base because those were the only pc fps games, and actually the first good ones including consoles (goldeneye came afterwards, and the console reference is also to keep in mind consoles have always dominated the market by far). Those 2 IPs had a huge negative impact the minute counter strike was released, and the others went to the alternatives (ut and fps on consoles) or returned to other games (the next mario installment).

And to end this huge wall of text: this is one gaming genre, that's it (3rd problem). You don't have to stay playing the same game or genre for over and over, or to keep playing videogames in your spare time or whatever.
Quake3 players tend to keep playing the same game for over and over and nothing else, and some not even have more important hobbies to them. idk why that happens.
Life itself had a big role on the decreasing player base and active support, and that was not capitalized by id but Blizzard did with sc2, which takes advantage of the nostalgia factor (IP) plus being attractive to new players (it's a new game, quake live it's not).

tl;dr: it's the market and id. You can't blame players or customers. That's a misread of the company.

this is a valid argument though it speaks more to, as you stated many times, the genre and life changes of the genre's core player-base since the game was released and not the game specifically. i don't necessarily agree either that the games success is completely up to id though they have made huge strides in the last few weeks.

the point i was trying to get across, which was sort of eluded to in your post, was that it took quite a bit of effort of a select few to make the q3 community what it was and was often a thankless job or forgotten outright. with qlive, the sole act of purchasing a subscription, either prem. or pro, is leaps and bounds ahead of what a very large portion of q3's player-base did to support q3 outside of just purchasing the game and playing it.

the mindset that i loathe to hear is that of a sense of powerlessness wrapped in entitlement when it comes to, of all things, a video game. when cpl decided to ditch OSP and go with vq3 in cpma, people lost their collective shit for a bunch of reasons but instead of trying to get the cpl to switch back to OSP or get their local server admins to stop putting cpma on their servers, they bitched at arQon, the unlikely (ONLY) ally of vq3 players everywhere and laid all blame at his feet. the guy that literally hate the very gameplay that he ultimately was the last person in q3 to support. regardless of what anyone says about the guy or the decisions he made when it came to vq3, he was right to fix the things that he did. noone tried to get cpl to switch or put OSP back on their servers.

by this time mass qlive invites had gone out at what turned out to be the final months of the closed beta and that was that. still, people complained, myself included, that qlive was shit (and it was).....but they still played it. noone went back to q3.

and here we are at the next, maybe final, major change in quake's long history and here still are the people spewing negativity and pointing fingers, laying blame and nothing is over yet. bottom line is this shit is supposed to be fun. when it stops being fun then don't do it anymore, re: q4. this isn't your job (most of us), we're not your family so you're not stuck with us. you can leave. you can move on. why waste your time even just talking shit about something you obviously cared about at some point but don't any longer? pretty sad.

Sure, i may wake up tomorrow and OMG the servers are gone, but so may every other goddamn free or pay service offered on the planet. Moot point. Move on, please.

Wake up tomorrow with id no longer supporting Q3, and you can still play Q3. Moving on is exactly what you'll have to do when they kick you to the curb.

tell me again why Starcraft 2 having no LAN support is a good thing :)

It's not good or bad until the game is in danger of losing central support. It's not.

"ok".

No, it's not good or bad, it's fucking horrible. I don't understand how can you claim that the sc2 playerbase has it that much better than ql's, when it's also clearly held by the balls.

Oh yay, more moniez in tourneys, and the people from Blizzard are good people!

Being "held by the balls" as opposed to... what? What did SCBW have in that regard that we don't have now? ICCUP? Sure. On the flip side, we still had no control, and there is/was rampant cheating.

The problem with QL is that id has no clue how to balance the game, and no interest in supporting what the game REALLY needs. Additionally, they don't have the kind of revenue to just operate at a loss and hope it turns out okay.

Would it be bad for SC2 players if the game died out and some people still wanted to play? Sure. We don't have to worry about that.

LAN? Also, was there rampant cheating on ICCUP?

With their gimmicky solutions to some problems I'm seeing more and more parallels between id and the blizz team.

LAN?

LAN isn't crucial, and is merely just an excuse to complain.

Also, was there rampant cheating on ICCUP?

Yes, and still is - most notably the crash hack. Maphacks and drophacks aren't uncommon, and the community's "anti-cheat" seems to be nothing more than a slight annoyance to cheaters. The central server system of SC2 means that you have to pay another $50 when you get caught, and Blizz is much better about closing their holes.

With their gimmicky solutions to some problems

Name one.

you seem to not understand that it is inferred in my post that i don't give a fuck. here, let me spell it out for you:

i don't give a fuck.

i'm enjoying it now. i'm actually having fun playing a video game. i must be doing it wrong...

Your tunnel vision will come back to bite you when you DON'T have something fun to play. You're just putting off your complaining until they kill it - a time when it will be too late.

To be fair, it's likely too late to even repair the community by going back to Q3, so I guess you shouldn't feel too bad.

The market for games is so big now that there is always something else to play. New fad games especially have strong player interest for a while until the next great thing comes out. I know many people who just go to new game to new game and are happy with that. I enjoy mastering a game then competing in it like a virtual sport. Most people never can master anything so they just move fad to fad and the new shiny keeps their attention for a while.

There are a lot of casual games on the market, but SC is the only real competitive game left.

so lets hope quakelive is just an pre-alpha of whats coming in the (far?) future. i'm pretty sure they thought about that next step on a similar platform a long time ago. why else would they start this huge project on the back of a 10 year old game? Cause a few hundred freaks were still playing that game 8 years after release? Naahh...
sounds a little fanboyish (yay) but i think those guys aren't that stupid as some claim.
let's see what future brings..

id is strictly about licensing engines, not about making best-sellers. The last big game they made was Doom 3, to which it owes it's success to Doom 2. Quake 3, Quake Wars, Wolfenstein, Quake 4 - they all sold less than 1 million (wolf with like 30k)

The most likely reason to make this engine is to sell it to OTHER people. The browser gaming market is likely about to explode, and they just want to be there first. This is likely due to the fact that they're playing catch-up with epic's Unreal engine (as Epic got just about every licensing deal ever in this generation) and they need money.

carmack said the exact opposite thing at quakecon 2010

He hasn't been in charge in a long time.