If you aren't paying you don't count. We won't miss you.

Yeah, you clearly know your business. "Who cares if no one plays the fucking game and we have no expectations of getting bigger? at least we have 17 players paying".

There's no shortage of players:
- Right now, weekday and not peak hours, there are 25 populated servers on the US (9 premium), over 100 in Europe (exactly 52 premium), 10 in southamerica (4 premium), 5 in africa (3 premium), and lol australia 1 standard 1 premium. That's not "dead".
- Paid online tournaments every week and competitions going on almost every day. Adroits right now (duel and tdm international lan), next month dh:s (seems like it'll be duel only).

Feel free to check the veracity of what I posted. Just remember to use the "all populated filter" and consider using the "premium" filter shows more premium servers (some are shown with both so do it correctly).

The only shortage is subscribers, but at least people do play on premium servers after the rotation+noCV patch.
I think the only complainers are 14 year old boys that don't buy stuff online and people that got used to playing everything for free, both that somehow think throwing shit at the game means it'll be free.

btw do you know any other game of any genre that's as "free" as QL? I don't, not even tf2 is.

There is a clear curve of duel players since ztn was not free and they deleted the ability to callvote for free too. Check the graph at qlranks.
Having a big influx of players EVEN IF THEY NOT PAYING IS KEY. Quantity is everything in e-business.

That graph is not working right. You can even ask the people in charge of that site: it goes from a steady 1k for a week then 4k for the next one out of nowhere.

But if you want to use it, right now it says there's the exact same amount of duels being played daily as the month before the patch.
http://qlranks.com/duel/

Sources?

In any case, you don't need a graph to know if you are not paying the game isn't playable anymore.

#5, and what do you propose instead. Advertising did not work, regular subscriptions neither, and now with removing content people started subscribing and using premium servers.

Also you haven't replied to the question I asked at #5. If you have played recent games lately you should know by now there's no such a thing as a "f2p game", and that QL is by far the most "free" game I have ever played or known about.

I don't know, but making the game shit unless you pay will not work. The people that has been FORCED to get premium to play some duels will not save ql's death.

About f2p games I dont know, but I know Hawken will be free.

It did save it for now. Did you watch quakecon2012? They said it twice on stream (carmack and the long haired porn actor).

So you don't know any other game that's "more free" than QL yet you demand it to be even more so or even completely free like it used to be? rofl. You really have no clue whatsoever.
Wait and see how hawken and dust will have dlc and others. I can tell you that even when they are not released yet

Q3 is completely free. There are installers that install everything for you and you are set to go. It's stupid that they pretend people to pay for content that it's already free just because they put a stupid ass browser system on it, with a failed ranking system and a failed 'duel inspector' crap that they ended up removing.

What they should have done is instead of wanting to manage all the servers themselves leave the community manage the game as it should be and we would have a ton of different servers with custom maps and not the same boring shit everytime. Result = you don't need to spend a peny on servers and people have fun anyway.

Quake3 is not free. Also making QL was not free and companies want to make money; id software is not charity and not a single gaming company in the world releases full games (11 mods, 100+ maps, servers in all continents, supported for 4 years and counting) for free.

hf trying to find a populated q3 server on your location, even more so of a decent mod.

It's not free because id is stupid as fuck and pretends to make money out of games that aren't even in stores anymore and anyone with a brain cell can get downloaded in 2 seconds. They should declare the games abandonware since the games are that, abandoned. There will be not a single update on the games anymore.

right now it says there's the exact same amount of duels being played daily as the month before the patch.

nope

http://s18.postimage.org/6ej6i92tz/trackedduels.png

First of all, as I said that graph is not working properly. Secondly, a 20% decrease in duel activity is a fair price to pay for keeping the game alive (i.e. not shut down from id's side). 80%>0%.

Why are you so stubborn to pay $24 a year. Are you poor or what.

The game is getting shut down anyway, just less players will notice and id will get some extra cash from them.

oh really? I played QL 2 days ago (all matches on premium servers) and been doing so since January 2009. Fun times, and I can tell you there's an awful lot more people (public servers) and activity (lans and others) in QL than in late q3, globally and in my location.

Not for too long.

If they followed your "I want everything for free!!11!" scheme it would have been shut down 2 years ago. You are delusional, there's a thing called money and companies don't like losing it.

Hawken will be free and it will be a success.

I bet you one plus a day for a whole year (rofl) that in around 2 years of its release hawken will implement dlc and/or other source of making revenue, exactly like QL did.

But the game will still be fun to play.
Also screen capped dat shit-

just remember it's "around 2 years", because those things get announced like a month after the 2 year anniversary.

The duel graph was inaccurate for a bit just as megaman3 says (see current graph showing the 1k-ish duels a day in September - this was flat out wrong)

Pre-patch we tracked about 4500 duels a day
Post-patch we track about 3200 duels a day

"But if you want to use it, right now it says there's the exact same amount of duels being played daily as the month before the patch."


you have to be shitting me. its friday, i checked in the late afternoon..there was 2 public non-premium duel games at one point with 4 people playing. and now get out dude

Read the last paragraph, check again. Which is your location?

i live in germany, and i browse using the setting "in your vicinity" and it shows servers from all over europe (from sweden to spain..from UK to ukraine). when will you start to have an argument dude?

> Having a big influx of players EVEN IF THEY NOT PAYING IS KEY. Quantity is everything in e-business.

Nope. It would be true if the freebies generated decent money. But if it was the case, I don't think QL would have gone out of beta with a new business model... Right now it looks more like freebies COST money instead of bringing any. Add more and you only lose more money. The only thing they are good for is to provide playing partners to subscribers.

Tons of people playing the game for free = more people telling each other 'play this awesome game' = more people will be tempted to subscribe.

Making a game unplayable unless you pay = no posibility of expansion = no expansion = doomed game.

It worked like that for 2 years, with free players receiving more than half the full game and look where it got the game: in a position in which it was needed to restrict content, and it worked.

As you say :
More people playing -> More people will be tempted to subscribe.

However, there is a big flaw. Because "More people will be tempted to subscribe" does not imply "More profits".

You can be profitable with 100 freebies + 100 subscribers but not profitable with 10000 freebies + 500 subscribers.

Let people manage servers = you have tons of extra servers that you don't have to pay = it's sustainable.

Lots of QL servers aren't paid by id software but by the community, yet it isn't sustainable with advertisement alone. Actually not a single game is.

Now you've got something. However, you need to work on it a bit more. What would QL offer if not id managed servers?

- The server browser? These already exist and they work with other Q3 mods too. Nobody will pay for that.
- The stats? Without id managed servers, nothing can be trusted and stats would be completely unreliable.
- The mod itself? Most of what QL does was already done by other mods a long time ago. The development wouldn't be limited to the small QL team with other mods too. Why choose QL then?
- The friendlist/clans/account management? Maybe. I think it would be QL's greatest asset. But would that be enough?

I feel like id's servers are the central element of the whole model that makes the thing possible. Without them, there's no cohesion, no control.
However, while I think nobody would have been interested in QL in the first place without that element, since it now has a playerbase then MAYBE the switch could work and people wouldn't spread away on different mods and accept the loss of the stats. Will id take that risk?

Independentent servers = infinite maps = active mapping community = custom mods such as defrag active again = just infinite possibilities of development.

id just should do the browser enviornment (not even a ranking system or anything, just the actual layout and thats it) and let the community do it's job. There is enough hardcore love for quake that if the community had free access to work on it they shouldn't have to spend a peny (look at QW). The fact that it would be browser based could make everything easier.

For me having Q3 alive (in QL form or whatever) is a matter of legacy and homage to the golden era of shotters and trying to make cash of something which is 10 years old and isn't even available in stores anymore is stupid and was always a failed business. id should declare it abandonware and let the community keep it alive. If only 500 people are playing it so what? id could take the pride in having the ultimate competitive fps game in easy access for everyone to play if they want. But who can talk about values like honesty and love for something in a monetary system?

I told you like 50 times already. Without restricting maps people simply don't buy subscriptions, and people not buying subscriptions = QL shut down. Games are made and maintained with money not love.

Q3 is dead. All that can be done there but literally no one plays q3 anymore, except some russians. There's your legacy and all that you wanted, but fact is no one is there even less in the ql server browser copy for q3.

Everyone who cares to play QL PAYING would pay it if it was free (100% managed by the community).

Making profit from Q3 in any given form is stupid and a failed business from the letgo.

paying 24$ a YEAR for a redone (and in a worse way) game that is over 10 years old..is a funny business model. also you make me look at fucking comercials and shit. and the player population numbers you list down there are just pathetic. more people come to my house at the weekends than people playing quake worldwide on a weekend.

and to make it personal, you sound bitter

so what do you propose. I already explained to our current QL forums retard (nemeccel) that advertisement did not work and also didn't a subscription model without restricting a big portion of content, and q3 is in a laughable state (check the master server).

There's around 150 populated servers right now on a weekday. How big is your house rofl.

I already explained that they should give the game away as a semi-abandon ware product and LET PEOPLE MANAGE THE COMMUNITY SO THEY DON'T NEED TO SPEND A SINGLE PENY. They could do the browser thing which is cool and makes the game more accessible for newbies, and that wouldn't cost shit for id to maintain. The rest (servers being 99% of outcome) would be managed by the community, just like the free Arma 2 version has a very healthy playerbase because guess what: Anyone can rent a server for little money and you have all possible customization possibilities you want instead of the shitty stuff you can do with your 'pro server'.

Bottom line is, the game is 10 year old and if it ever became playable online was thanks to the OSP+CPMA crew + people that rented servers, which none of them worked for id.

#34. It has always worked like that, and you are not considering other costs (for example paying salaries to employees for 5 years and running costs that aren't servers) and the fact companies want to make money with their projects, not just keep people entertained.

Bottom line is quake3 wasn't free to begin with.

you have a beautiful personality. you are...quiet something

they dont have a strategy, microsoft fuckin Sam has more IQ than all of them combined

phew......

thank you

you can vote at the end of the match :p

lol

pay up or play q3. seems pretty simple to me. dont get the whine tbh.

Still not getting it? Guess I'll have to whine EVEN more in IRC :p

subscribing is like renting a server in my mind.
why rent a server for a game with no competitive scene?

and WE GO ROUND AND ROUND

Of course I've been saying since 2010 that I will gladly resub as soon as just ONE other team forms in North America that plays TDM for the love of Quake and not to practice for some gay money LAN and then quit.

I'm not gonna sub to public duel/ca/ctf... its just not what i want out of quakelive and also not worth renting my own server to play the game that way. I need clans. Real clans :p Obviously id isnt the only reason for the NA comp scene to get to this point but they also can't claim to be completely innocent. Lots of mistakes, atrocious planning and foresight, a poisonous community left over from ra3, and boneheaded league admins more concerned about sponsors/viewcounts/prizes/legendary players coming back instead of actually providing a place for EVERYONE to play competitively... theirs lots of reasons... but theirs really no point in talking about it now unless some guy invents a time machine. The damage is done here.

That's not the fault of id software but how the NA scene turned out to be.

Do you have a tdm team? Bought a pro account to make things easier for your team? Organized a tournament or a sunday cup?

yes to all 3.. well not the 3rd but one of my clanmates from team Nx has made a few cups :) and another likes to stream and cast when he can... i just play man, thing is the games have stopped.

2v2 sunday cups
problem solved

ive signed up to 2v2 cups over here where not even a single other team bothered to sign up

in all fairness i dont think u can blame id's business strategy for how lame the na community is. lets face it. the game hasnt gotten new blood in ages.

i think barring some really really serious advertising strategy that goes along with a NEW game with fancy graphics and what not and lots of new content, the deathmatch genre is never really going to regain the sort of popularity it enjoyed relative to other games that it did during q3's peak era.

not complete blame but they share some of the blame. Go back to 2009, QL is getting lots of talk and hype, people that never got to play the quakes before the communities died off like me were amped to be able to get in on the relaunch of q3a as it were. There is chatter amongst tfc/cs/dod/ut/cod teams that Quakelive could be something worth looking into. The old STA league from qwtf and tfc is gearing up for a quakelive division... then ql got released to the public, WITHOUT PRIVATE SERVERS. The terrible server browser and queue times didnt help matters.

But you can't release a game as competitive as this one (probably the most competitive game ive ever played) without any place for skilled players / veterans / teams / friends to play for gods sake. There was nowhere for any new community to grow, its like the tried to grow a new tree but instead of planting it in soil they opted for the desert, and then instead of watering it they just pissed on it!
They definitely share some of the blame of their complete lack of foresight, planning and community management.

i said their business strategy wasnt to blame. didnt say they werent responsible.

eh well whats the dif between "business strategy" and project strategy? :) i just lump it all together. Lets just agree that id sucks either way :p

dude...the fact that they didnīt release private servers and all just gets me raging. why did you bring that up. how can you be so calm about this....
...still [+]

i was promised a free game with maybe "millions of players". not my words. so just another unfullfilled promise. something to whine about.

you should be whining, too if you payed for quake live.

pay for what? empty server? Thanks, i'm paying already . Helps a lot.

that, or i can go play shining forces with standard people all day. Stupid, stupid fuckin situation going on right now.....

Why beat a dead horse that you yourself have just shot?

i do my part by playing this game. i didnīt kill this game for sure.

is non existent.

new suggestion



10$ lifelong pass. maybe 20$

iīm ok with that. i would even get a credit card just to pay id. but 24$ a year..making me laugh mate

Are you trying to say that 24$ for a whole year is a lot?

its a ridiculous amount for what quakelive is, yeah

What would you call a fair price for QL?

them reimbursing our money :))))

less than it is now

We wrote tons of 'how to save quakelive' threads years ago in closed beta, in open beta, when it was released etc

syncerror never replied to any of it, barely acknowledged it, etc

The game was doomed, anyone who didn't see it was fucking blind. I'm just glad I got my fun out of it

raped lots of bitches, made people moan and rage by owning them hard.

it was fun while it lasted, NOTHING is forever , so get your jollies quick and then get out

ez

well put.

would plus if i could

ps: free jamalz

cant plus you for some reason... so, PLUS! :)

same, so i plussed u instead.

^ got banned for being a pussy.

You should see doom 3 bfg multiplayer, everyone running around with massive pings in the hundreds.

this aspect of the game is utterly unplayable. I cant believe you are actually allowed to release something like that onto steam and not get prosecuted for it.

Its that bad....

lol