I'm not sure, but probably no more than 5 years UNLESS they release a new Quake. video games simply don't have the ability to become so culturally significant that it lasts forever, such as sports. they all have a lifespan, even LoL and starcraft.
I don't think Quake will come back anytime soon as id seems to have gone fully incompetent and lazy. They still make kick ass graphics but their gameplay and multiplayer is severely lacking (see Doom 3 and Rage). I could see another big new FPS which is Quakeish take off very easily if done right.
I don't think idsoftware really lowered the quality of the games, they were always more of graphic developers. All the important gameplay mechanics which were introduced in earlier idsoftware games like bunnyhops, strafejumps, rocketjumps etc weren't meant to be what they are nowadays, but in fact were all engine failures which we now should see as gift of god gameplay wise :D
But the sad thing is, that something godlike like flaws which turn out to be great features won't happen again so quake HAS to last forever.. AMEN :]
I don't think rocketjump is a engine failure. Imagine if you would not have knockback from your own rockets while your enemies gets knockbacked... that would be weird!
Ok your right, possibly rocketjumps aren't engine failures like bunnyhopping or strafejumping, but I don't think they were intended either. And if a few settings weren't the way they are(higher gravity, possibly way more selfdamage, less knockback), they weren't ever be invented by the players and so rocketjumps belong to the list like bunnyhops or strafejumping(lucky circumstances) I guess.. :)
Sorry but even Rage with full graphics and textures tweaks is way uglier than todays standards in terms of kickass graphics to put it that way. Not to mention the 60 fps cap.
I expect Quakelive to last until the next version of quake, which I believe will be launched with something similar to the current online infrastructure developed for Quakelive. If they aren't losing money and people are playing, I'm sure they will keep it, if purely from an experimental point of view.
Hope it lasts forever, but id has to pick up the pace. They take more and more time to push out a new game, and they are just starting to develop Doom 4, god knows when they finish.
Not sure how related will Reborn be to Quake, or when does it come out, but let's say it becomes popular, it's still a new FPS. So then we can say "Quake is dead, it's a new chapter in fast-paced FPS gamers life, it's now Reborn".
But then again, Reborn might just be a phase that connects Quake Live and Quake 5.
I really hope that Quake never dies, but nothing lasts forever. Even Earth will die in a few billion years.
The most fierce era has passed, but like chess it will remain appreciated and continue to be played by enthusiasts. I believe most people judge a book by its cover. So, when a casual gamer sees the texture quality, they will just assume it's old and something modern like Call of Duty is better. For this reason alone id should release a texture upgrade because before these people can appreciate the intricacies of Quake they need to appreciate the visual quality. I suspect that this is the main reason why popularity is not growing. Kids these days appreciate Transformers 2 more than Blade Runner. They just don't know any better. Anyway, that's my two cents.
Edited by Retribution at 05:01 CDT, 23 October 2012
Pretty much all CS:GO players are competitive players. CS 1.6 is like 30k casual players playing some q3amphi-like map all day long.
CS:GO esports scene is bigger than CS 1.6 esports scene globally, but if you host small tournaments in your local town, you have to play 1.6 to get the quantity.
Actually I almost like the thing that they're going to the direction they are (pay or fuckoff), but doubt that's gonna help long term if they don't improve the game, we'll see... IF they start working with the game itself anything can happen :) but if they don't and I'm afraid they won't, ql will just cause losses to idsoftware by late 2013 which means they're gonna shut it down and because no dedicated servers -> nobody can play no matter how dedicated you are!
I hope so but no I'm afraid it won't happen. Another possibility would be them stopping the dev and us paying for the servers and such for keeping it up and running, but doubt that's gonna happen either.
They did many years ago? QL is just a Q3 client/server mod with stat-tracking. Nothing the community is unable to reproduce. And it did, Fraglove or Aftershock come to mind. But it hadn't much impact.
I assume because of
- lack of players/advertising
- lack of organisation
- lack of interest
I also doubt they will ever release the QL specific code. Since the start of QL it felt like a sandbox thing for them to test out web-based cloud-gaming (or whatever you want to call it) for their future titles.
It will never die.. There will always be people who enjoy playing a challenging fast-paced high skill fps and quake is by far the best in this category.
Ever since I played Quake 1 it was my favourite shooter series. Quake will never die. There might be new, better Quakes in the future. Even if there are not - there will be a completely new fast-paced game, but it will also be referenced to Quake. (Reborn might be a good example, fingers crossed)