With the Quake 4 release date being "officially" announced according to sogamed.com nostalgia set in and Quake 3 memories came flooding back. These memories may also have been triggered because I’m listening to some old music that was popular in the clubbing scene at that time.

My friend in college persuaded me and a few other friends to try out Quake 3. This was our first experience with online games and it was amazing fun. Everything was completely new to us at the time so we had a lot of learning to do. Even though we got owned hard we still had a great laugh. There are a few things that stuck out in my mind.

At the beginning the community was huge, just that factor alone made the game enjoyable because you met a lot of people in the same situation as yourself. Secondly the transition period from 40fps and a dialup connection to 125 fps and a cable connection. That alone was like a complete overhaul of the game and it changed our experiences for the better. Going through that period with your team mates was a good laugh, added more to our arsenal on our assault in the lower divisions of the Q3CTF leagues.

There were other things that kept us interested. There was the CPL and Clanbase Eurocup lan finals. I remember odb now zooming in on some girl’s ass and interviewing the CS players while taking the piss out of them and Polosaity's unique style where he played with the keyboard on his lap and his death stare. I remember Sujoy on channel 4's big breakfast. Fatality owning it up. The competitiveness between UNR and 4K. There just seemed to be so much going on back then.

I believed at the time that no other game could top Q3, especially with the community and coverage at the time. CPL / Clanbase Eurocup / Barrysworld etc. Also the wide variety of crazy mods catered for everyone’s needs. I remember a mod called weapons factory arena, that was a good laugh, freeze tag, ra3 etc etc. Unfortunately a game created on id's Q2 engine was Q3's nemesis and that continued to grow stronger. As it did Q3 was dropped by the CPL and Clanbase Eurocup came to an end, leagues began to disappear and so did the community. After that period I left the Q3 scene in the 2002 summer time because the scene dried up and me and my team achieved our goals. Also 80% of the team had other commitments university, wife and kids etc. I think I was kind of lucky to play for only 1 clan and stick with them for 2 years. We had a good variety of guys in the team. It was a mix of young and old.

Now to the present I don’t think I’ll have anywhere the experience I had with Q3 in Q4, purely because it was a completely new to me then. Even downloading, chatting on mIRC etc that was new to me. Also the bunch of guys I played with, I doubt they’ll ever be replaced. I don’t think there are any places like mplayer.com or wireplay any longer? That was an excellent idea at the time, you could just chat with your friends, meet new people. Go into a room and launch a game of Q3.

It makes me think that a lot of people will probably have a similar experience with Q4.