Quake 3 was the first game (that I'm aware of at least) that absolutely required a video card
I believe this was the main reason the game was a commercial failure, the system specs were just too high
The masses either kept playing Q1/Q2 or moved on to UT
UT had pretty decent graphics in software mode compared to Q2 due to some shit called MMX (I don't even know what it does)
Then CS got its commercial release. The game had been around for a while for free but wasn't really that big, then suddenly it was on the shelves of your local walmart at a really low price.
Once CS exploded in popularity, Quake became a pretty niche game
Quake 4 bombed (even as a singleplayer title no one liked it) and here we are today
That's my memory of the situation

Wel that's one thing how many copies were sold out, and another how many ppl got hooked on it. As far as I remember we had around 300-500 active q3 players in Hungary between 1999 and 2002, now it's around 10. : )

same here

I would like to do/show a parallel/shortcut with a similar situation in UT.

First of all, the way I understand it, in all honesty and in term of people having an internet connection, it's like currencies. Those 300-500 in 1999-2002 would comparatively represent, or worth... way more now, because at this time having internet at home was way less a common thing that it is now. So imho, from what I know of the french standards in 2000'ish. Those 300-500 would represent maybe 1000-3000 people? It may have been different for hungary's population internet connection spread in the 2000's and feel free to nuance my assumption regarding that.

Second of all, in early 2000 (same for UT once again), what did you have if you wanted to have fun with real people (in term of gaming experience):
- getting people: at your home and play ps1
- getting people: at your home and play ps2/xbox, possibly (but unlikely) via internet (in all honesty and despite sincere efforts I can't clearly remember a single friend that had ps2 network and maybe 1 that had the xbox live)
- Doing lans at home

So.... the only easy sloution left was mutliplayer PC via internet. So ofc, every excellent multiplayer games had great success because it was the only viable, easy, comfortable solution to play with other real people. That's partly why, UT99 and Quake 3 was "big". It was the only alternative (somehow..).

Notice the similarities was pushed once again with new franchise titles. ut2k4 managed to still be "big" and started to really gradually decline 2006-ish, aggravated by the release of the next gen ps3 and xbox 360 was released with ofc having the online mutliplayer in focus.

UT3 and quake 4, having to face that shit (the race to get people to play) had to cater to this new casual audience and developed their game according so (fancy gfx blabla) imo. They came 2007ish in a market where ps3/xbox/Wii internet gaming market was pretty well developed.
Now, your alternative to play with other real people comfortably lying in bed in underwear to play were: ps3 online, xbox online, wii online and multi pc online. There was a naturally split in term of possible options. Imho, that's why Quake 4 and ut3 relatively failed in term of online mutli. They had to face a new 13yo kid online influx (gameplay blabla) and a natural split in term of options (all the console networking).

Not to mention the nowadays humongous number of actual mutli online game options: fps, driving, mmo, blablabla you name it...

tl;dr: comparatively saying to the number of people having internet in 2000-ish, you would have to mutliply this number by 3 or 5 to "accurately" compare it to nowadays numbers. You also have to consider there were way less options in 99-2000 for online multi than there are nowadays.

We could estimate the numbers even more appropiate, using statistics comparing the number of households having internet connection from the previous time with the number of households having none. I guess the difference is way bigger than only 3-5 times more, because nowadays almost every household has an internet connection and children know about eSport videogames and this new phenomenon caused by YouTubers.

Yes indeed, I just wasn't motivated at all to look for Hungarian's 2000ish households stats related to internet :p !

Indeed, it would be as simple as comparing the 2000 number with the 2015 number, get the ratio and multiply the boundaries given by dash in the message aforementioned to get a rough idea of the 2015alike numbers (for the comparison) :) .

Good old days of the EarthQuake lans! Awesome times!

3/4 of the q3 population were people who downloaded it and didn't play in 1.32 because of no cd-key.

id

huge
giant
most popular benchmark test of 00!

Smaller than Q2 at its peak.

that's because q2 is dabes

Does anyone have statistics on what was played more in 2000, UT99 or Q3?

.

It was a reasonably big online game in its peak, for that era. But it was never even close to having 100k people playing it online at any point in history. If I recall correctly from various stat trackers, it was 40k at the absolute most, probably less.

Do you think the reason it may not of done as well is because it didn't have single player? I remember Romero mocking Id's decision (really, it was Carmacks call), saying that a multiplayer only experience wouldn't sell as well.

I can't seem to find that Carmack video. I was think it was him that said that the game didn't sell over 1 million.

no, everyone who's into multiplayer games didn't care about the single part even one bit.

i played a combined 10 minutes of doom3 and quake4 single player. a good 10 minutes more than everyone else i knew who was into those two games, including players who to quakecon (d3) and eswc (q4).

1999 was a whole different time. The main reason why Quake 3 was the worst selling id software games (since the Doom days) was that it lacked single player.

That actually still holds true to most FPS games today. People buy the yearly edition of Call of Duty for the single player.

buy != play (especially multiplayer). i'm not and was never disputing the lack of sales in id's eyes.

i remember playing space ctf all day back in vq3, there was this one guy called 'kev1n'. he always said 1 million people are playing quake 3.

if that was true, where did they go.

checkmate atheists

heh heh heh... wait a minute. i am being strong to my fatih.

i do not understanding your post dogja haha !

your faith is nothink on the lan

kev1n knows his shit, guys

god bless him. who knows what happened to him these days.

It's funny how all competitive FPS suck ass compared to Q3. Actually sad. Why do they even try.

Quakeworld>

you're asking different things, q3 might've sold less than id wanted to (who said it was a flop, you?) but that's not saying much about if it once was considered a 'big game'.

if you come here to ask esr this, most people are not concerned with sales. q3's community and the game's general standing was huge at one time as it was one of only two or maybe three competitive fps, esports or not. imagine that.

well the quake community always had the worst case of megalomania, no surprise here

Because it was made strictly as an arena shooter made for online (in 1999) with no single player.

In those first 3 years of Q3 it was like 1% QW, 4% UT, 10% Q2, 25% Q3 and the remaining 60% all went to CS of course. There were LAN Parties all over the place, big and small. We had Bavarian, Czech, but most notably Hungarian and Italian players coming to Austria to compete with each other, it was a blast.
It was mostly TDM, but also duel. Q2 duel for a while was bigger then Q3 duel, even though it was way inferior (imo), even worse than UT.
The best part was once in a while going around to look for QW players, as they where the 'daddies' of quake and watching them made you get goosebumps all over. Also AQ2 was still a thing, and it was hilarious.
BTW I think I am the only one left from that time, and it makes me sad, not about the others, about myself ;)

Q3's problem was that not everyone really preferred it over their previous game, be it QW or Q2. Many people still switched over because they wanted something new, but because people didn't really love the game, they eventually left.

On the other hand, most people who dont play quake are most fammiliar with quake 3

How big was it for duelling? And TDM? Were there many competitors for these game modes?

Every LAN I went to up until 2006 had a Q3 competition or two (Norway). There was a big enough community here in Norway for me to always have someone to play with and we all knew or knew of each other.

yes

I hated q3 at first. Couldn't get into it like qw and q2. Took me almost three years before finally transitioning to it. I only played ctf and rocket arena. Until threewave I thought q3 had nothing y to offer. Then ql came out and asked for money to offer us even less. Much less.

Fuck you id.

Off-topic question : Anyone tried to play Quake Live on Intel Bay Trail cpu, like Atom Z3735F ?

what i noticed: punkbuster reduced q3 playerbase dramatically. it didnt help anything against cheat, but helped killing q3

According to this list Quake I sold more than Quake II.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_games

But none of that matters, Quake III was clearly one of the biggest fps games of it's time.

In any case, Quake 3 was way, way, way smaller than what people think it was. Counter Strike was the big thing back then, not Quake, and today's numbers in the industry as a whole are way bigger than ever.

I met a fair share of quake players in my life. I dont remember many with a cd key tho

I recall the first big national tournament I went to for Quake 3 in 2000, had 512 duel signups and 32 TDM teams. And this was with a sign up fee and 4 man teams. This is in South Africa, so that was pretty huge. However, CS was just getting popular, and the next year the quake signups was down to 32 duel players and 8 teams, and kept getting less after that. CS was a cause of it, but at the same time I think the skill difference between the top and average players also contributed.

Quake 3 was big enough to house thousands of umpaloomphas's's...how is that not Big enoigh?/!;::'!/????!?

31.10.1998 - Half-Life release
19.06.1999 - Counterstrike first release
05.12.1999 - Quake 3 release
08.11.2000 - Counterstrike 1.0 (meanwhile acquired by valve)
18.12.2000 - Quake 3 Team Arena
m|

Too little, too late. Niche game by design. Game treated as tech demo as usual. Pick one..