The very same reason why they keep running empty premium FT servers.

when i asked about this in the focus irc chan i was told that it is not in their hands. i really wonder who makes the big picture decisions for ql and whats wrong with him

Iirc, Marty Stratton is the executive producer on the project, so he must be the guy who is in charge there.

I remember an interview where he said that everybody loves QL at id, and it's very special for them, and the team is so passionate about this game that we (the players and the fans) have a lot to look forward to in the future (note: it's not a quote, but it was something like that)

The question is; when?:)

iirc marty quit QL dev team a while ago

and here we have the problem. NOBODY is in charge. can someone please tell id, in case they didn't notice! :D

What else should they sell right now?

Exactly what they are already. Clan slots, creating your own server, more extensive stats.
If the player base did increase I'm sure advertising would become more viable too.

To be honest I think there's quite a few things casual players would buy that we may laugh at. Such as new models and skins, or maybe even alternative weapon effects. Things that have no or very little effect on the gameplay.

Well, if they make the maps and gamemodes free there is not much left that makes up for 25 or 45 bucks a year. Models and skins, or maybe even alternative weapon effects would be great and reasonable premium content though the QL team doesn't have anyone who is dedicated to working on that.

I can't even count how many times we asked Sync: "how can we help?"...
I know that's the point when we gonna get back to the "but the rights man, the rights..." debate, because that's the unsolvable problem we have here, the task to come up with a "id-software protector"-"badass"-"you must agree TOS" is apparently harder than landing on the moon was.

I don't like it either. Money rules the world though and id apparently isn't willing to expand with QL.

We do not ask for money, we only ask them to let the community contribute:(

Yea, I know that.. I don't know what is the problem with finally getting that sorted.

I think you are right.

If I can extrapolate from my own experience in my job, I think I understand why it is so difficult.

If you want the open public to contribute to your proprietary product, there aren't many ways. You have to do it right, by investing into releasing a proper SDK, and pushing a whole legal infrastructure that dictates the who and hows. Half-way solutions are simply not usable.

Unfortunately, this process is not something you and I design in one day. It takes a lot of working-time, and from a managerial point of view it has to be strategically important.

There is a point where we disagree a little on this one, because I see it as a mistake tbh.

"from a managerial point of view it has to be ."

That's my main problem about how they handled this whole project, because they had a "lot of working time", and yes mistakes happen all the time, but my problem is that I don't see if they want to do anything about it anymore. (and let me be subjective here for a moment, but I literally hate when somebody breaks something and have no intention to fix it just because noone can force him to do so)

They added so many things to QL which must have been a lot of work, and they did an awesome job indeed. I appreciate so many things we have like the ability to start a server anywhere in the world, or the things they implemented from the Q3 mods (e.g.:huds, cvars, etc), but the legal part should have been more important than those imo. Now we have a situation when all of those cool features and the fruits of hard work are going down because the game can't grow and develop anymore, while "we" could still have the resources.

They should have developed a system at the beginning to separate the community made content from the official ones while still make it possible to migrate those into the game (e.g.: like what Valve is doing with the unofficial servers and maps, and the user created content in the games/shops). For example, I think Sync could check and decide if a custom map is "OK" to be added, and could give that user "contributor rights" or something, which would require to agree a second obligatory special TOS and whatnot ofc, but it would not mean that id is adding anything to the official assets.

Imagine you are the producer of QL (or any game) and you have those well payed corporate lawyers all around id and Zenimax and you also have one of the most experienced and most skilled community a video-game ever had, and who are willing to spend their free time and money to host things and contribute for nothing else but smileys. Again:
1, Hundreds (or perhaps even thousands when QL started) of talented people willing to work hard on "your" project for free
2, Your company is paying lawyers to do legal stuff for you

I just can't understand how one can not see how much "strategically important" it is to make the legal contribution of those people possible. Id is out of resources for this project and the problem is not just suddenly popped out from nowhere in matter of seconds, but we all knew it's gonna happen if things won't change.
The only community related happenings we have now is Sync, who is trying to help sometimes if he can, with things like adding maps or undoing clueless bans, etc... This is not right:(

I agree letting people make community maps would help popularize this game for many.....
and lets face it....the most popular fps on the pc ....counterstrike....was a community mod. The best autobalance, which is valves... was made by their community.

but ID was never thinking long term with this game. Especially now i'm sure they've all ahd revelations about this veteran community. IMO was only ever a last minute idea for quick cash for rage. That became obvious after they sabatoged the game instanlty after beta with a greedy subcription model that was damaging to the playerbase. This game costs absolutely nothng to run... and only still exsists so id emplyees can play with friends. They don't care abiout anyone else.

They never even added an autobalance for pubs. that says it all about this community.


The only effort they ever made.... was stopping tier slumming in CA. exactly a YEAR after beta......right when the yearly renewals for most subscriptions were coming up.....because they were prolly a little in shock that half their playerbase instanlty quit the game after beta......... but still let newbs uptier...and let vets make abusive alts, so it was all in vain and they gave up. They dont have long range vision at all.

the most popular fps on the pc ....counterstrike.

stopped reading after this

hahah i stopped reading your comments when i realized your a banned hacker from ql.

also guess what.

CS is more popular on the pc then cod. it is more played online then COD!!!

LOL is more popular then WOW pvp online as well now.

your a non gamer...your just a quake hack.


oh heres another fact...even COD HAS AN AUTOBALANCE haha.

FYI: One should never bring up CS as a positive example among Quakers:)

never hacked in my life, mad?

btw you do realize that id software has always had the FPS genre on lock right? doom, quake, etc. everyone knows that valve games arent more popular

not to sound like an iD fanboy cause im far from one, but lets be real, did counterstrike / half life get its own movie? nuff said.

CS and COD are much more popular than quake every was tbh, but that won't change our attitude towards them:D

well thats a shame.

cause they both have autobalances and dedicated professional gaming leagues, which is what attracts new players.

not at all. doom and quake (moreso doom) were two of the most highly influential FPS titles of all time, without them there probably wouldnt even be a CS / COD. q3 basically set a new standard for the multiplayer FPS genre that cs, cod, and other games tried to reach, so in terms of popularity i still say q3 was more popular than cs and maybe even cod (hard to say since it came out years after q3's release)

cs is actually what killed quakes popularity. whole college dorms made the switch.

quakelive introduced the world to team deathmatch. which is the only thing it has in common with cs and cod.

quakelive introduced the world to team deathmatch

lol?

The CS franchise alone sold 25 million copies (and who knows how many pirated it), not to mention the insane sale figures of the COD games.. and we are not even talking about console versions here where COD really "shines".
Doom was very popular indeed (mostly pirated:/), but if you would add up all the Doom and Quake games altogether, you would still come out short compared to these mainstream monsters.

id games like Doom and Quake are the mothers' of FPS games indeed, but not the most popular ones.

buying a game....and playing online are two diff things.


if you go off steam and xfire......server statistics.....actually gamespot use to do this too till they stopped recenlty.

but on the PC which is all i'm talking about.....cs is just as popular as cod.... meaning people are acutally playing online....lmao.


not buying the game and using as a fkn coaster hahaha.

and actually tf2 is also pretty popular man. valve is still rocking the pc.

LOL is even more popular then WoW PVP now.......etc....

your ql profile says your banned.

and people have posted demos to this very site... numerous complaints about you not only botting. but your one of the biggest slum lords in the game apparently.


oh did i mention it said your banned from playing quake on your ql profile?


hahaha go look up mine now...

and people have posted demos to this very site... numerous complaints about you not only botting. but your one of the biggest slum lords in the game apparently.

i agree with the slumlord and noobs complaining about me botting part, but ive yet to see any concrete demos posted of me blatantly hacking it up lol do post.

my accounts were banned for repeated forum trolling, then they chainbanned all of my accounts for ban evasion (including the relove account which got you banned): http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/4771/dutra.png

Fierst there have never been demos of me bottingl

Second...your banned I'm not. ON more then one account too by your own admittance.

You seem to have intimate knowledge and are friends with many kniown botters your exposing here yourself.

Your fake dude......I think your exposing other botters nowl...in the hopes to save yourself.

I dont buy it. You prolly have dozens of accounts banned.

and now your linking the emaile of you being banned? hahahah are you happy about being one of the biggest unsportsmanlike players in ql?

are you like bragging about this now? hahah get lost kid. Your a CHEATER with a capital C whether you cheat or not.

ANd the fact you post the most here means this community is doomed.

Your a CHEATER with a capital C whether you cheat or not.

so im a cheater even though ive never cheated in my life?

lol what the fuck are you on?

Coolout logic, just ignore it.

i meant your Cheater with a capital C whether you "BOT" or not.

lol you guys know what i meant....

it still doesnt make much sense. do you know what cheating is? trolling is not cheating, as only noobs allow themselves to be trolled. creating alt accounts and slumming noobs, as much as you'd like it to be, is not cheating lol. its just rape.

"This game costs absolutely nothng to run.."

I disagree, they did lot of things and this game is probably needs a shit ton of money to run:S

All I'm saying that if they would not closed the doors front of the community and all the countless goods what that community made in the last ten years, the game could offer a lot more which would result in a bigger player-base.

If you think about L4D2 for example, you can choose if you want to play an official campaign on an official server, or a custom (community made) campaign on an unofficial server. The unofficial files are never touch the official Valve servers, they are only show up in the master-serverlist for the players, and frankly, L4D2 is not even downloading those maps automatically for some buggy reason, and people are still playing them.
Letting people run their own server is never wrong, and letting certain people in QL to add their own dedicated servers or mods to the QL backend would do no harm at all, on the contraray, I think it would make things much better.

When Valve hosting HL2 or Skyrim mods on steam, do you think they go out and check every pixel if that's an original content or something what's copyrighted somewhere else? Obviously they don't, they are just making sure that if something bad turns out they wont be responsible.

Also, as I wrote this down many times, since we have all the accounts on the backend, it's a nobrainer to let people make their own skins and tags and whatnot... Kids love to use personal things like hats in TF2, and pros will default to bright/keel anyway, so they won't get mad:)

I could write a book how things should have been done., but it's easy to be smart after it's done and that would change nothing now:(

It's hard to estimate how much they would make and I don't know what they're making at the moment. I assume they aren't returning a good profit.

If they aren't they need to try something new, since it's been long enough to test out the current model. If they haven't got the staff for a bit of content creation that's unfortunate.

I think everyone knows things need to change. The community, the developers etc. The question is if it is a smart business decision.

You are probably right. It's usually more complicated than it seems from the outside. If micro-transactions were implemented from the start it would be a very different situation.

I very highly doubt that they are making any sort of profit at this point.

My best guess is that they're just keeping it alive on life support until they cross some sort of event horizon where it will take 10 years to break even, and then they'll finally shut it down. I'd say that our best hope is for that to happen sooner rather than later and for Id to be awesome dudes and release everything it to the community for free. But that probably won't ever happen.

I very highly doubt that they are making any sort of profit at this point.

they said that they lose money running ql already

yea Im sure everyone would buy custom models in a game where 99.9% of players forces keel and tankj.

Anything what's not fundamental for a fair gamelpay, like: custom crosshairs, colors, huds, skins, tags, etc,etc,etc..
What all the other F2P game publishers are selling. It's really not rocket science imho.

Actually, a lot.

Let's see, if I were QL game designer, there would be two kinds of staff - basic and advanced.

Basic staff, shouldn't pay for:

- maps;
- game modes;
- matchmaking for random games (ELO rating) within all suitable game modes;
- any game settings and interfaces;

Advanced staff, have to pay for:

- leagues and ladders for all game modes;
- automated quick cups;
- clan features;
- current pro features;

if they wanted subscriptions, they'd have to take away some more stuff from standard:

- r_picmip and similar settings
- cg_hudfiles, etc..
- colored names
- able to bind stuff to buttons "bind x say :)"
- all profile pages and stats are only available from subscribers' browsers

Hey! You should definitely apply as id game designer!

You prooved that austrians are the smartest people again. :o

thats a lot of staff! someone call itemp.

the same reason why they rarely update the game anymore.

Map pools, Game Modes & Server Spawning is the only leverage id has at getting players to subscribe. That being said they've given us so much for free I can only surmise that quakelive was intended for three purposes. One to check if a game model using a central web site is feasible and scalable (It is). To generate some cashflow enough to cover the project(It did). To generate/keep enough interest in the franchise for the next release, Quake 5. Perhaps this is just wishful thinking on the last purpose ;).

i would say the last thing you mentioned is the most important. the userbase of ql is the most precious commodity to id. very loyal ($$$) so it's worth looking after and even paying for because it's a platform for future products.

You don't have premium?

I do. But it seems a waste that new maps have been made and such a small percentage of the community is playing them. It also saddens me that 1000s of players aren't experiencing the joys of spider crossings like I did in quake3.

do really like it in ql? i feel like it plays fairly bad. still better than most of the other maps but honestly i only like jap and ironworks in ql ctf.

What's so bad about it?

boring, defensive and hit scan heavy. combined with random powerups. god i hate random powerups.

Haven't had a chance to play it much, didn't know there was a random powerup.

How is it different from the Q3 version?

It isn't different from the Q3 version. QL is different from Q3. :P

the powerups arent different. i hated them in vq3 too.

You probably wouldn't like it in vq3 much either. It's probably less hitscan heavy in ql...

There are other alternatives besides just abandoning the map thing and giving everything away for free. One example would be requiring a certain % of premium and pro players on every server by having "auto-invites" or something similar.

Freezetag has been empty since it started. The only FT games I've ever seen are pickup games. That's it. Why that mode isn't free is beyond me.

I don't think Premium is worth it. It did split the community, Premium Clan Arena wasn't that popular. Premium Freezetag was dead, the whole time. What's the point of spawning servers if barely anyone plays anymore, and the people who do are trolls or cheaters. It's sad to see this game end up like this. So much potential.

They should just introduce the one premium membership. Make all maps free. Premium can be spawning servers, special clan profiles or whatever, and any other shit people apparently want. It's sad to see things like a Quad Kill Counter as premium only.

indeed they should, but

people have been asking them to remove the standard/premium split for years now.
people have been asking them to add more billing options other than annual (ie monthly, quarterly etc) for years now.
people have been asking them to add paypal support for years now.
people have been asking them to add an anticheat for years now.

hasnt happened yet, so stop giving them your money and feeding their fat bellies

also back when they forgot to fix the bug that showed the # of subscribers in the awards, this is how much money they made off subscribers in the first day of launch.

http://www.quakelive.com/forum/showthread.php...1#post3048

there's obviously more subscribers than that now, so there making well over 50k off this game.

obvious scam since day 1 sucks more people didnt see through it.

spawning servers the way it is, is useless unless it s local servers, then we could meet again and make lans or small lans and cybercafe parties.

It's absolutely not useless, I see it one of the best things we have. Yes spawning unofficial dedicated servers would be much much better, but that doesn't renders the current implementation useless in any way.

the system they addopted could have been a good idea back in the days, but now even in a farm the dude has ADSL 2 and in city we have some crazy shits like cable/optic fiber etc.

Are you implying that they should add listen servers? :O

freeze tag isn't free?


hahahahahahahAAAAHAHAH i can't stop laughing right now... i never kenw this.


premium is just t5. its all skill 80+ people. what skill 50 person would want to play to get slaughtered? hahahahahahah


imo ID screwed up. they are trying to sell graphicsl...on a 20 year old engine lmao. oh man.....this is too funny.


imo they should of sold the gameplay. they should of charged subcriptions to join clans... get stats recorded and ranked matches. even rank clans would be fun.

froobs should have all maps free but unrestricted and unranked.


its as simple as that..... I still can't believe the first ever e-sport in the world......has the developers and communithy with the least respect for e-sports. its sad and ironic.

Good thing


you used so much space for paragraphs



otherwise your post


would look like there's


a lot to read



and no one likes reading your




lengthy posts.

froobs should of all maps free but unrestricted and unranked

fixed

I think you know. If you don't, you should.

uhm ye, and? whats the point of this thread, they wont change shit D:

Has the quakelive project been profitable for them?

ya its profitable since there's always a handful of clueless people who show up years later that will give them their money for a dead game that shows no signs of progression, only to find out shortly after what a shitty waste of money it was. i wonder if they have a refund policy for unhappy customers.

maybe it doesnt make profits, but certainly it substains itself...

"id is losing money with QuakeLive" (c) John Carmack

srsly u belive that? :>

adverts+ premium/pro accounts are enough to pay for servers and 3 ppl salary...

yep, if they were losing money, then they wouldve revamped their business strategy a long time ago or done something different after he announced that. i mean come on. its obvious that they dont care about this game anymore, theyre just using it as a hub to get whatever cash out of it that they can before they sell it or shut it down. and yes, its obviously working. if their servers have been up for this long theyre obviously making a profit off of it.

im pretty sure that they decided to move to a cheaper server provider though since alot of people including me have been getting shitty pings everywhere lately and they dont seem to be doing anything to correct the problem. theres no reason for me to be pinging 70 to NY servers when i live in NJ.

I actually do believe what he said is true, I thought the same even before the actual/official statement. There are a lot of servers to pay, band-witch and other stuff which we don't know about. QL player base is itself low (and prolly getting lower), and those who pay premium/pro are maybe 5-10% of overall player base.

why would they keep it going then?

its simple economics:

1. If project is generating a loss - you close it
2. If it can substain itself - you leave it as it is, or try to invest more $$$ so it will make profit...
3. IF it is profitable - you try to sell as much as possible in shortest possible time...

Apparently Carmack still has some power in id and he said something like that QL project is close to his heart, but I wouldn't be surprised whatsoever when id pulls the plug and closes QL's door for ever.

I don't think they're loosing much money with QL, but still a loss is a loss.

i want to belive :-)

You don't believe in John Carmack's words? Poor you! I wouldn't want to be in your skin now, really!
There is no one who can challenge the John Carmack's words!

Ave J O H N ! Thanks for such a beautiful game.

hint: just trollin'

They changed advertising companies twice, at least. One of them went bankrupt. At best, they might have gotten a few hundred dollars out of it, which obviously didn't even pay for the time it took to code ad support in to begin with. When they changed advertising companies, they said that they had to redo the advertising code to handle the new ads, so that's even more money wasted.

Premium/pro subscriptions might pay for a single employee, but not for servers/upkeep/etc...

Do you think that deathmatch in the style of quake 3 is just flat out dead in todays world? If id made quake 4 arena would the game ended up being a sales flop?

Well, id already said that the fate of Quake 5 being developed depended on the success of QL. I'm not sure what they consider "success" to be, but they did say that they have not even begun development on a new Quake title at this time. Even if they started right now, that's 4-5 years before we'd see a release.

Commercially, every Quake game since Quake 2 has been a failure. For a new Quake game to change that, it would have to significantly raise the bar. I think the brand name has been damaged too much by the last few games, and any future iteration of Quake-style gameplay should be done under a different brand - be it Doom, or something new.

Do you by any chance have the sales figures for each of the quake games?

I don't think there are any exact numbers anywhere, but the only games to claim more than 1 million copies (which is the smallest milestone) are Quake 1 (with 1.7million) and Quake 2 (with 1 million).

They'll all have surpassed 1 million by now, given steam sales and the id pack, I expect Quake 4 even did it quite comfortably, the thing is 1 million sales for a big game is nothing these days.

Well, none of them managed to break 1 millions pre-steam, and id has yet to make such an announcement, so I doubt it. Q2 only managed 1 million, and that was at a time when id was still king. As you said, though, even 1 million is nothing, but Quake games can't even hit that milestone anymore.

another popular poster on these forums. banned from ql gameplay.

Does everyone announce when their games sell over a million?

I think the key thing to look at isn't the sales figures per se but how they compare to the competition; Quake 3 Arena got beat by Unreal Tournament and Quake 4 didn't come close to any SP FPS game.

To be honest judging by this one million isn't bad at all, I didn't realise so many games were flops.

Just about every game I have heard of announces when they hit 1 million, and id has done so for Doom 2, Q1, Q2, and Doom 3.

Most sales info that isn't directly released by the developer is inaccurate, since it isn't counting digital sales. For instance, Steam does not release sales information.

You put Quake 4, but I know you meant 5.

Even with a Quake 5 being made, I think a lot of people have lost faith in ID. It's all corporate bullshit with Bethesda now, make a product, push it out as soon as possible, make the money, move to the next project. Quake Live probably has been a failure in their eyes, so even IF they made Quake 5, I'd put as much faith into it as Brink. I expect very little, not from the people who work there, but from the company.

Fixed. =P

It's all corporate bullshit with Bethesda now, make a product, push it out as soon as possible, make the money, move to the next project.

Why on Earth would anyone get that impression from Zenimax?

Honestly they let id take forever to finish Rage, they spend years on each of the Bethesda games and other titles being published by them at the moment (e.g. Prey 2 and Dishonored) have been in production for a long time already.

And frankly I expect id would make a better game if they had tighter development times.

I think Rage only took 4 years, and Zenimax acquired id 2 years into its development.

So they spent 3 years developing that other game then threw it all away?

What are you referring to?

Well they released D3:RoE in Q1 2005 and Rage in Q3 2011 is just between six and seven years.

Carmack's mentioned before that they were initially working on another game be scrapped it because they felt it was just more of the same (Presumably dark-space fantasy stuff).

They were definitely making Rage over four years ago:

The game was first shown as a tech demo on June 11, 2007, at Apple's WWDC

The game had clearly been in production for some time already, more than a years worth at any rate. So I imagine they must have put at least five years into Rage specifically.

Carmack's mentioned before that they were initially working on another game be scrapped it because they felt it was just more of the same

I don't remember hearing about this. Do you have a source?

You forgot Q4/ETQW in between the D3 expansion, and Rage, so there's no way that they had any sort of real work done on it. The tech demo was quite limited, so they couldn't have had too much work done on the game itself.

Except id didn't work on Q4/ETQW.

id was overseeing every single part of Q4.

Overseeing yes but I doubt they spent two or three years sitting over Raven's shoulder as if every individual at the company was deeply autistic and needed one-to-one support.

That's what they claimed that they did in interviews. I might still have the magazine laying around where they said that they specifically were working either directly with them, or through directly overseeing all aspects of the game. They said that they wanted to make sure that it was going to be true to the Quake brand.

Not the whole studio though surely?

I'd have just thought it would be the 'heads'.

I'm sure it was just a team, but remember that id isn't very large.

It was mentioned in one of the Quakecon keynotes if I recall correctly, I don't have time to search for it now, it was never named (I imagine it was named Rage actually) or announced; he was just talking about how after Doom 3 he began the new engine and they started work on a new IP that they later scrapped because they decided it was too similar to what they've always done then they made Rage.

It was called Darkness or Dark, and was some kind of island shooter like farcry, might have been zombies I can't remember. He then said another game took the name before they announced it.

It was during a key note.

EDIT: http://www.shacknews.com/article/53992/id-rev...val-horror

I wonder if 'Deathmatch' has been trademarked.

what i replyed to mefajpe

+ bigger production = less costs for single item... especially when it comes to servers, as nowadays you can host multiple servers on once pc

I doubt that there is any money left over for servers, let alone enough to pay even one employee.

Back to Quake3?

Go ahead.

No stats.

That's a good thing actually.

I was trolling.

Remove stats and quake would be having FUN and getting better not statwhoring and tierslumming. It's kinda rare nowadays to see ppl playing for fun and that's pretty sad :(

Exactly, everywhere I look there are statwhores

fraglove.com

It is even more dead than Whitney Houston.

Too early broheim

free gamemods+free maps = win...

premium content should be premium eg: extra features[scoreboards, spawning servers blablablabla] and some other stuff... at the moment id is rather close to buy premium to get ur rg dmg 100 :X

great video link. pretty lucid analysis of the system.

i think the problem with ql is simply that they are not willing to put in the work/time required to create the products which would justify the subscription system so theyre taking the easy way out. its a short term strategy and unless they back it up with something long term (hi quake 5) which they dont half ass the way they did ql, theres not much hope for a good dm game any time soon. o wells.

Not to go to much off topic, but is doom 4 going to have serious multiplayer?

doubtful

Not in my opinion.

I'd love to see all maps being free and watch those fuckers still playing only ZTN all the fucking time.

ztn is a terrible bore to watch at this point.

True :(

But... what if ZTN was a premium map?! (wild... wild... theory)

They most probably would be totally lost and confused as fuck, Quake would be over for them :)

I still laugh my ass off when I see premium account with, lets say, ~5k duels, of which 90% is ZTN. Why they bought premium is beyond me.

To play TDM you fool!

They don't play TDM, fool :), maybe 5-10% of ZTN-ers.

more money than sense!

There are a lot of things that can be tried. The problem is that trying costs money and if it's not a success, they can lose even more. They seem to have a pretty stationary situation at the moment so there's nothing urgent.

However, even if it's not a lot of money, they can't keep losing it indefinitely. Shutting down the whole thing would be bad PR and would bring a lot of problems with subscribing members. The only thing they can really do is eventually to invest some more money in QL to work on the business model. It will come some day. Might be tomorrow, might be in a year, but it will come. If it doesn't work, we'll probably have to say goodbye to QL (and Q5).

That's how I see it.

even though QL has been run pretty poorly, and there aren't a lot of players, and I almost never use my Pro subscription features, I'll still pay 'em. Call me stupid but I never had the luxury of being part of the Quake community before QL. So for some people, letting go is maybe a bit easier since they've been around so long and have already really experienced the community, but I haven't been around long enough to be able to see QL shut down without feeling like I lost out on something. so, I'll give 'em my money, and even if it doesn't work out I can have fun anyways and know that I tried to support them 'till the end. :')

If QL went down you could experience it for free.

or if something more attractive pops up. but its unlikely that that will happen as it will take alot of creativity / marketing which i doubt anyone will bother investing their time towards unless there's a good reason (ie: nice return)

When people sponsoring (organizing) events with QL will decide it's not worth the expense, no more competitions will be held. Then QL will trully be dead.

Man, those tournaments which left now are only in existence because:
1. Some good people responsible for game titles loves Quake (UGC - stermy, DreamHack - blaze&co)
2. They don't have other competitive game ATM and they need to hold something for exposure (QuakeCon)

QL is not worth the expense in any of those cases. Sad but true. What we have is MAYBE 2-4 tournaments a year, that's even uber sad. Professional Quake is dead, but no one wants to admit it. It's ok with me, but I really liked to follow these tournaments, even with the same 12 people.

I've seen light in the tunnel in 2GD's actions once, sine he has some money from Twitch.tv for QL, so I thought we might have some LAN tournament(s). But when he cast strenx-k1llsen game recently he said he'll host some show matches for money and he wasn't as optimistic as months before; said nothing about hosting tournament(s). :S

Professional Quake is dead, but no one wants to admit it.

what? i think nobody would disagree with that aslong as dead means not enough major competitions to sustain an esports economy with pro players, teams. on the other hand i thing we will still have minor competitions and an active but small community in years to come

not enough major competitions to sustain an esports economy with pro players

when was the last time that happened? 2005?

With a free maps business model the pro subscription would be much more appealing for a lot of players and the number of premium subscribers would only grow if you add cool stuffs to replace the premium maps.

I remember the time QL beta advertisment "play ql completly for FREE" and ID's 1st april "joke" ql will cost... hahaha. ID claimed ql wont ever cost a cent...
and then I remember the joke becoming true... now ql is a dieing joke

whine is useless. You should accept ID just done care about ql and maybe never actually did.

QL is free, silly ever-cynical c1.

yeah its free like every limited demo version of a game but they made it even worse by adding those must watch 20sec adverts.

I mean its just ridiculos to pay for:
-a "prem" scoreboard we got a long long time for FREE in cpma
-basic maps like spidercrossing we got for FREE in q3 (btw q3 ctf pickups are still more fun since this coomunity knows how to play ctf properly in pickupgames)
-and so on and so on

ql dont have a single feature which cpma doesnt have but cpma is for FREE

so basicly ID want us to pay for things we can already have for FREE.

thats a genius concept to fool some fanboys and it works obviously... :>

u forgot to mention cpma gameplay is broken at its core

Not for free unless you pirate.

cpma and maps are FREE
q3 is not FREE except you have a friend who can lend you a key. Wanna be my friend? :)

Gee, all those wonderful models and sounds are free then I didn't know.

You can't use the maps or CPMA without a copy of Q3.

The game isn't free. And I never bought it anyway. However I pay for QL now. I don't understand how people won't pay $2pm for something they've spent 100+ hours playing.

Because time invested = value?

In a lot of ways time could be seen as value. I know my time is the most valuable thing to me. If I would rather play quake for an hour every day over another game, yet I pay more for the other game, which is better value? If I paid $40 for quake and $60 for skyrim, but never play quake but have played skyrim 100+ hours, which has been better value?

There are a number of ways to look at it, however in my point of view quakelive revived quake, especially in a small scene like south africa, and the only way to keep it alive is to actually pay for it, and for me spending what equates to 10 minutes of my time per month, to being able to play my favourite game as much as I like, yes that is value.

My point was really just that time invested in something shouldn't mean that it must be valuable to you. As much as I've played Quake 3, 4 and Live in MP I can't really say Live was worthwhile to pay anything for.

I see a lot of people make this connection and then waste serious 'investments' (not necessarily monetary) in that thing.

It makes sense for you in ZA I guess, since I'll take your word for about the scene, but in the UK it didn't really change anything at all. Perhaps a bit more active and the publics probably are a fair bit more active but the public FFA/CA scene is so far removed from what I care about that paying money didn't make sense to me.

Just to make it clear, I don't mean time spent in the past, I mean time spent now. Q3 != QL.

You coulda just edited the comment you know mate?

Habit of mine.

ql got players and active competitions?

I think it's probably just a case of the following:

ZENIMAX: SO U FAGGOTS WORKIN HARD ON QL RITE, WE GOTTA FIX DAT SHIT IF WE GONNA KEEP IT NIGGAS
ID MANAGEMENT: SURE THING BRAHSKIS COUNT ON US
ZENIMAX: AIGHT THEN. IMMA GET US SOME HOOKERS N' COKE
ID MANAGEMENT: OK DAWG! OLO!
...

ID MANAGEMENT: HEY GUISE GUISE U FIXIN QL RITE?
QL DEV TEAM: LOL ER, SURE THING BAWS, LOL!
ID MANAGEMENT: AIGHT CYA NIGGAS, GONNA GET SOME HOOKERS N' COKE
QL DEV TEAM: OK PEEPS GET BACK TO WORK ON OUR USELESS CTF MAPS LOL

The problems with QL:

- For a browser game its way too fucking difficult / complex

- For a competitive game (E-Sport title if you will...) the QL interface is a pathetic joke to be taken seriously on the first place.

- The game is free to play, but the players base is way too small to make developing an expensive and flawed anticheat worth.

Solution: Drop the free to play model and introduce 3way subs: basic, premium (competitive maps), pro (server spawning). People will start to come in/back cos of the absence of cheaters, or when they get what been promised to them. Since its easier to talk openly about the game being difficult than dumbing it down to the level of a browser game i think its obvious which direction you should take.. The money saved on not developing an anti-cheat can be spent on developing a new interface that is not a sad joke.
Stop deceiving the costumers, Quake is not a free-to-play fun and casual browser game. It is as far as a game can be from that...

If an id employye reads this: feel free to rake off 5% on your first mil for my genius idea saving your horseshit project.

kthxbai

drop the free to play? what?

hahahahahahaha. you do realize most of this playerbase is free to play don't you?

most of us dont' respect or take this game serious enough to drop money on it in the first place....mainly because most matches feel unfair and unregulated. The community and even the devlopers dont' take it serious enough.


MY idea is simply this. make all maps free...unranked and unrestricted.


THEN ONE SUBSCRIPTION>>ONLY ONE!!!!! for admin rights and server hosting options. for skill matching.....tiers.....for clans... and for stats.... subscriptions would include.....

1. 5 locked tiers (just as it was in beta!!!!!!!)
2. a shuffle based on skill ratings....
3. an autobalance to ensure even sided team numbers.
4. BAN ABUSIVE ALTS!!!!!

Only LAZY developers with a capital L would say that nothing can be done about issue number 4. And of course no system s perfect.....but any system is better then nothing... and would almost instantly retain some new players.

especially when there are plenty of other games that do just that.
and whats even funnier... is that its way easier to proxy a game like LoL where your latency is not as much of an issue as a game like quake where ping is detrimental....lmao


Maybe we should just assume that all these faggots that warp so much.... are using proxies to hide form their IP ban while playing on alts. hahahaha. come on id get with the program.

Country: United States of America

No further comments...

Timezone: Europe/

no further comments..

^banned from ql no further comments.

lol so are you http://www.esreality.com/index.php?a=post&id=2180495

Or just get rid of subscriptions entirely, since it's stupid for this kind of game. It would be hard enough to get people to pay money for an outdated game as it is, but the subscription model is out of the question.

I agree it would be better, but I also think keeping people on the site is much harder these days. Cheating is rampant and id cant do anything about it if the game stays free. An entirely free game with an anticheat would be much better, but simply theres just no money for it, so my idea is kind of a plan-b to save this pile of crap they created.

you do realize the guy vedic your replying to is already banned from ql gameplay.

esfantasy.com is a funny site man.

coolout is also banned: http://www.esreality.com/index.php?a=post&id=2180495

Im banned from the forums... for the exact same posts i post here.


Your banned from gameplay. hahah cause your a CHEATER!!!!!

yet your the most respected poster on these forums...lhahahahahah

vedic banned also...... who else..

shoudl i just start punching in names and checking ql profiles.


everyone go look at dutra's ql profile.


I don't cheat dude. and I wish ql was treated more with the respect of a professional sport.

and the fact you post here freely...while guys like me are on probation? probation for what? because of that post u linked.


and btw.....the guy who got me banned......is relove....is also banned from ql gameplay.

this site should be renamed..... to ESFANTASY.com

i am relove you fucking moron. yes, i got you banned. mad?

also, they banned my game accounts for trolling on the forums (ie: getting shitties like you banned). never cheated @ quake in my life. this game is ridiculously easy so its quite entertaining to read all of your paranoid whine posts about tier slummers & hackers lmfao.

They don't ban your game accounts for trolling on forums.

Your a cheater. They ban you from forums.....like they did to me.... for trolling on forums.

but they don't ban me from gameplay.... because they know i don't cheat and covet sportsmanship. But at the same time I guess they consider me spam.....w/e

the mods are not ID. if you look at my profile you will see a couple ID faces on my front page....I don't respect fake accounts.

there is never a legit excuse for an alt.


your a notorious slum lord......your a team stacker......and a your a tier slumming alt.........even if you didn't bot you deserve to be banned.....and none of your posts deserve any merit at all.

your unsportsmanlike and uncompetitive.

they never ban from gameplay for forum threads.

ya they do go ahead and ask them lol. it might not be in the power of the mods to do so directly but it doesnt mean they're not able to get syncerror or someone else to do it for them.

there is never a legit excuse for an alt.

alot of players play on alt accounts. if you feel that strongly about the use of alt accounts then maybe you should direct your hatred towards ID and not the actual individuals creating the alt accounts? lol. they can easily fix the problem if they wanted to, but they choose not to.

your a notorious slum lord......your a team stacker......and a your a tier slumming alt.........even if you didn't bot you deserve to be banned.

roflnoob u just want all tier 4 players and up banned dont u.

[+] for makin him get banned

Hmm? I'm most certainly not banned. They banned one of my accounts during closed beta, because I participated in walter's thread where he spoke about the beta. It was never an IP ban, and they didn't even ban my other accounts, which were still active up until I last logged in, shortly after QL went live.

If the name on the account is "Vedic", that is someone else. I never used that name in QL.

again....WRONG!!!!!!!

they never ban from gameplay for forum threads. Is that how you guys are still posting here.

You got the admins ont his site believing that nonsense? You guys are dishonorable players in-game. nothing to do with forums.... and thats why you banned.


take me for example.....IDIOTS!!! FAKER QUAKERS.....like most of this community.... They never even banned fudge until he started advertising a cracked server........your jokes vedic.

I bet like dutra you have had dozens of accounts banned....and yet here you are...one of the most popular posters on this very site....while a guy like me is on probation.


YET NOT BANNED FROM GAMEPLAY :)

Uh, yes they do ban for that. Slasher was banned for breaking NDA and couldn't attend QCon, for example.

if you're a nuisance to them enough on the forums or elsewhere like me, slasher, raythenoob, etc., then apparently they do, and will ban your in-game accounts and do whatever else it will take to get rid of you from the game.

http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/4771/dutra.png

you're the only moron here.

Obviously you haven't heard of the NDA, as even the focus group will get banned for revealing info. I was in the closed beta, and all of my accounts were given to me by id - you couldn't just create accounts. I had one invite from someone else, one invite given for Quakecon, and one more account through using one of my invites to invite myself to do testing. Only the first account was banned. Multiple accounts weren't even against the rules, at the time. Try not to be so clueless.

and i'm sorry but cooncidence you were a big rude ass and liked to slum ffa, never had a bad game and ridiculous stats on your profile.


all just cooncdences we are to believe right? haha.

whether you bot or not the fact you slummed FFA makes you the worst type of quaker there can be....you deserve your ban whether you ever touched a 3rd party program or not. although it wouldn't be a surprise if you did. its safe to assume that is the case with that type of mentality.

I've never played FFA in QL. I'm not banned, and you are. Deal with it.

ffa has no tiers

lmao.... first of all i don't troll IRC or send these guys emails everyday, or would I ever go to quakecon lmao....

I personally do not know any ID guys nor have i ever met any.


Still, I have never heard of anyone getting banned from the gameplay because of forum posts, in 3 years, IN CA, in public servers across the country. over 5k games played.... thats ridiculous. But i do know dozens of guys who are banned from forums that still play the game. And as well dutra has proved time and time again... You can be banned from the game and there is no problem posting on ql forums.... hahaha its all too funny.


and furthermore.....wouldn't i be the perfect example of why you two are full of it? lmao. as insulting and downright vile i am somtimes to ID on the forums...especially since i'm banned from ql forums.

the diff is i play in-game with sportsmanship and honor above all else.

and furthermore.....wouldn't i be the perfect example of why you two are full of it?

No, you wouldn't - as you obviously have no clue about this at all. Feel free to leak some focus group info, and see what happens.

I'm not banned from gameplay and my account is from beta 2009.

next fake banned ALT step on up and get tested.

the two biggest regular posters on this esfakeness.com site are
dutra and vedic ....and both are banned from quakelive gameplay on numerous accounts.

They are rude talk crap, severely harass HONEST players and cheat......yet they are some of the most respected players on this forum.....

You're banned, I'm not banned, get over it.

hey coolout remember this?

This is a real laugh. I get banned from the forums, for calling this guy relove a slum lord.

lol mad?

HAHAHAHAHAHA

I think ur mad right now dude. that was funny. exposed.

hahahahaha.

your a funny dude man. exposed.


and come on man what does that say about this community. I'm an HONEST PLAYER, so i'm not allowed to post? petitioning for measures to ensure fair play that other games already have? your a CHEATER so your not allowed to play the game but can post freely on all the forums... and spread lies? something is just not right with this community. talk about confused and mental.

and i still say whats crazy about that whole relove thread. is the fact the guy was posting on the QUAKELIVE forums......but the profile said that account was banned from the game.....hahahahaha.

expose this community more for me now man....your my best tool.

coolout, honest question, have you seen me cheating in-game? like really cheating? (ie:aimbotting, using qlhook or some shit, despite what you may believe, being a slum lord is not cheating lol) if so, can you post any demos you got on me so everyone else can see? im sure ESR would appreciate it. also, i dont post with the intention of spreading anything, i just post. i agree the QL community is shit, always has been, and there wasnt anything anyone couldve done about it. deal with it bro

I never even played with you, but your banned already dude... and are a notorious slum lord. I mean you play FFA. need I say more dude?


slumming is worse then botting.....please get this through your head now.

Actually i have played some games with you. Everyone on the server comnplained as soon as you joined. You were talking crap.......and of course dominating with a ridiculous scores in CA tier 3.

Your banned from the game dude... I can't believe your trying to justify this...and yet you must have some people convinced since you post freely here haha.


Slumming on an alt is worse then botting. get this through your head.

slummers and quitters deserve bans even more then bots.

the fact you disagree with this means your not competitive. So much for competitive teams for ql thanks to guys like you.

So much for competitive teams for ql thanks to guys like you.

competitive QL never actually was given a chance. it dug its own grave and limited itself in alot of ways from the start that could have been changed/avoided. it would be unwise to point the finger and put the blame on the people in the game who are just better than you

slummers and quitters deserve bans even more then bots.

ah ok makes sense now, no further questions lol.

I was through with QL the day they introduced that, I've played once since. I've tried to delete my accounts multiple times though but months later they are all still there.

i looked you up. noone by your name on ql.

Didn't use this name :)

The whole project has been badly handled really.

The web based stuff, fine, works alright would have been better if it was a no restart install from the beginning but whatever.

Centrally hosted servers, bad idea for this type of game, costs them money, no real benefit.

Premium was an awful idea, sell cosmetics and shit not stuff that actually matters, pro wouldn't really be able to exist if they had done servers right in the first place but they could maybe implement it for people who didn't want to rent a server but wanted the ability to have one if they needed.

Continual slow progress and no anticheat obviously didn't help.

Oh and not fixing the engine so it runs better on modenr hardware doesn't help when there's a big performance hit for the browser based stuff.

Honestly though I think the video ads they introduced for standard users did more harm than anything else to the population of this game.

yep this game was a flop from the start

again all this guy cares about it seems is netcode and graphic engine problems on modern pcs? what? its like the twilight zone in this community....i haha.


not even a mention about alt accounts? or team stacking....or the bad skill matching.

this game would be popular if ID created a serious tournament league and stopped fake abusive alts.

the first e-sport....with the least sportlike community out of any online multiplayer game online. its all just too ironic.

this game would be popular if ID created a serious tournament league and stopped fake abusive alts.

not really. the problem is that the entire execution of the game and the way that its been handled has been shit and no one wants to be bothered with it period. ID didnt create any of the tournaments in previous quake installments, it was all run by the community and other third party organizations (cpl, ogl, etc)

the fake abusive alt problem can just be solved by allowing accounts to /set name to whatever like in the old days and then just show their nick and their account name or email in-game too. ez fix tbh.

The web based stuff, fine, works alright would have been better if it was a no restart install from the beginning but whatever.

Terrible idea from the start. They would have been better off creating a lean executable and content that you could install to a USB Key.

Everything about the project has been handled badly from including all the Quake 3 Arena content, the web-browser side of things, the interface, ridiculous amounts of time tweaking the balance to the subscription scam.

Terrible idea from the start. They would have been better off creating a lean executable and content that you could install to a USB Key.

Totally agree. Every single site related feature(stats basically) could have been incorporated in a browser within the game. Making the game itself run through a webpage has brought nothing but problems.

if community would switch to q3 everything would be nice, ye there was q3 duel cups and stuff like that, but that didn't help a lot i guess. Q3 get for free take for free, free aero, free other maps and a lot moar maps. But arenas are empty. :(

Edit: 21st century u can play lan in computer class with classmates

Edit2: DH LAN

Q3 isn't free. A lot of people don't want to pay anything (nor pirate). I myself would never have discovered Quake without the F2P model. Same goes for effort in order to get into the game. If there had been a system requiring me to receive/send a sms, I wouldn't be here to write this today. If I had to go through the trouble of getting the right version, installing the right mods, configuring everything... I would never have played Quake.
Those are the biggest advantages QL have.

ESR comments also like we played q3 for 10 years free no it's more fair to pay them back or smth like that

Q3 is cheaper than a subscription to QL, and it never has to be paid for again. This is how most games work, and they do just fine. Your personal experience does not reflect on the majority.

I'm not saying Q3 is more expensive than a subscription, or even that it's expensive at all. I'm saying it costs something. A lot of people are attracted by free things. I don't know how many QL players joined the community because of that so I can't tell you, but you shouldn't assume it's negligible either.

I am convinced that a F2P model like QL is the key to get a constant stream of newcomers. Without it, your game will die faster. Since Q3 isn't a new game, you can't even count on the "new thing" hype. Would everybody make the switch and buy Q3, we'd have a great time there, but it would end up the same way it died before because of the lack of newcomers.

Games today can cost $50-60, and they still sell millions. WoW costs $15/mo and still gets millions. Free to play works on a model of demand, but there is no demand - people won't even play QL for free.

I don't think a game like Quake Live, today, can ever become widely popular. But saying that there is no demand is wrong. Anytime someone new comes across Quake, there's a chance he'll be interested and look around for more information. What's the difference between discovering Q3 and QL? The later is free to play and easy to install. Don't you agree that the probability for a random dude to try QL is much higher than to try Q3? This is what makes me think there is a future in QL while there is no in Q3. There are a lot of problems to fix, but I'm sure the F2P idea is what can save Quake.

But saying that there is no demand is wrong.

Why did Q3, Q4, and ETQW, all fail to sell well? Why are they all completely dead? Now you have QL, which is really just a re-release of Q3, and it ended up having as many players as Q3 did just before QL came out. The only people who want to play QL were the ones who already wanted to play Q3. The price here is completely irrelevant.

Why are we here? Are we not what constitutes "demand"? Yes we are. We may not be numerous, but we are there. And if id managed to fix its model and stop losing money with QL, that little demand will be enough to have a game that will continue to live and may even grow.

By the way, people who play QL are not all old Q3 veterans. On a survey made one or two years ago with people from the QL forum (and even here, maybe) had these results :

Have you played Quake 3 Arena intensely?
Answer Count Percentage
Yes (1) 216 48.65%
No (2) 228 51.35%

There ARE new players. There ARE still people that have yet to discover Quake and QL is our best chance to see them join us.

By the way, people who play QL are not all old Q3 veterans.

No, but they would have likely stuck with Q3 if they had played it to begin with. You're selling to the same people who you would have sold to before, and this isn't the first time that we've had to observe how people react. No Quake title has managed over a million in sales in over a decade. Each title is getting less players trying it, and even less players sticking with it.

There ARE new players. There ARE still people that have yet to discover Quake and QL is our best chance to see them join us.

Sure, but they are very few, and the majority of them do not stick with the game. QL is still losing players, and fewer new people are coming in each month.

I don't think a game like Quake Live, today, can ever become widely popular.

I disagree it just needs to obliterate the current death match models (Quake, UT, CoD4) and start from scratch. Analyse everything from the weapons and movement to scoring and timing.

^this

Duel needs to be removed entirely, IMO. It shouldn't even be left in as an option. Teamplay games are more forgiving to newbies, fun as a group when playing with friends, and have all sorts of general social benefits.

People won't even play QL when they are paid to methinks.

quick question. were the pro versions of t4 and dm6 done by id software? In not, then who made them?

free 2 play encourage new guys to play? Seriously?

Quake is still the most skill demanding game and I dont know any new player who didnt get raped the first few months.

Since ql duel is competive part its even worse to get into the game. Scores like 20:-2 dont encourage people to stick to this game. TDM games are senseless since you wont know about items and item spawntimes. CA will feel like crap since you dont know how to rocketjump properly. SO FFA is left to play but the first place wont be impossible since you are not aware of quad spawns.

The skill gap gets higher and higher the smaller the player base gets. There was a time a noob could play vs a noob instantly but nowadays noob has to play a decent opponent or wait wait wait until he find another noob.

Ok, you got frustrated but you want to become better. So you search in ql forums and esr for advises... unfortunaley you will see a lot of cheater threads. Whats will be your next thought? My opponents were cheating? I have to cheat? Looks like a game everyone want to stick with?

Except a guy like really hard tasks he wont stick to ql for sure! Thats why 70% of ql playerbase are q3 players, 10% qw players, 10% q2 players, 5% q4 players and maybe 5% are actually new but I highly doubt such a high value of new players.

Yes, I think that F2P brings more new players than P2P. What you're saying next is irrelevant since this problem is the same with both systems. (Sorry if it wasn't meant to be related)

About your next point : you now know someone who didn't get significantly raped when he started playing Quake. Thanks to the tier system. I started smoothly with FFA with other noobs and made my way until now with stronger and stronger skillmatched opponents. Is it still possible today? I can't tell, but since there are still people playing in Tier 2, I guess it is.

Finally, they say 98% of statistics are made up. Funnily enough, those which aren't don't seem to match yours.

No hard feelings.

its easier to give up a game you've spend nothing on instead of giving up a game you've spend 50€ on it.

I see you belong to the FFA guys. FFA is the only exception of being raped but its lacking of long time motivation. Every other gamemode is rape for newbies => frustration

I dont know the statistics for new players but its hard to believe those are more than 5% of the whole playerbase.

It's the same in HoN/LoL/DotA but they get new players still.

Easier to give up on a game you didn't spend money on... interesting point. I'll think about that.

I started by playing FFA. Like most people, I think. I don't play it anymore.

About the statistics, you might want to take a look there :
http://www.quakelive.com/forum/showthread.php...ive-Survey
On page 17. Of course, the question wasn't adapted to what we want to know, the fact that only people from the forums answered introduces a bias and it was two years ago. I might launch a quick poll on the forums to finally answer the question.

I just want to include my opinion that maps should not be premium content. Release all the maps for everyone and let premium and pro player pay for other things such as manageing a clan / team, start servers and such things. Dividing the already small community this way is just killing the game quicker. I have not even seen the new maps on a Clan Arena, FFA server etc and I do play a couple of hour / week when I'm active.... Just horrible :(

The F2P business model works when you have enough things that make the average player want to pay something (even just small amounts), and the enthusiastic players pay more. I've yet to see a really good suggestion for something that fits that, but works for Quake.

If you look at games like TF2 or Tribes (F2P FPS) you see that they have added RPGesque unlock elements. Those really fit with the F2P model, and they kinda work in the class-based shooter, but are absolutely "not Quake".

When people talk about things that should be free and things that should be premium, the list of things on the premium list hardly end up sounding very compelling, at least to the average player. Paying for the ability to start servers or join ladders or make clans all adds up to something most people can do just fine without.

Just as the Extra Credits vid in the OP talks about how F2P shouldn't split the playerbase, so it also talks about how you need to design the game with F2P in from the outset. With the original in game advertising model not coming through, it's difficult to see how to retrofit an alternative F2P model into QL. Until there is a better idea, a viable business alternative, I can't see how they can 'just release all the maps and game modes'.

Make stats premium (non-essential for playing), let free people play limited amount of premium maps per day/month, for example.

Also, ratings/ladders could be premium only too, id can give away data to qlranks only about premium players. I guess a lot of people would want to pay to participate in ranking.... If you think about it for some time, it's possible to come up with lots of ideas that id can at least try and see if they work, instead of continuing their approach of doing nothing about situation that clearly hasn't worked out well.

You forgot to mention LoL. the most popular and professionally played f2p.

Just remember one thing..... if it doesn't implement regulations to ensure fair play and competitive matches... its not e-sport viable.