was the Test version. Q3test was released about 6 months before the official game release, to test the netcode, to do some weapon tweaking, to find bugs, etc... At the start it contained only 2 maps: q3dm17 and q3dm7. But what's more important is that Q3test was a free download. Litteraly THOUSANDS of gamers downloaded it and loved it! And in those 6 months the amount of players online was growing rapidly. It was the same for the servers...

I remember connecting to the Telenet FFA server. Awaiting gamestate... I went to get myself a drink, cause I knew this could take a long time. The timer hit 400... That's 1200 seconds!! 1200 seconds before ONE of the 16 players disconnected!

Communities were formed quickly, clans were made and people started getting to know each other. There was even a big LAN tournament with players like Sujoy and Wombat in it. (maybe even organised by the CPL? I don't remember). There were even demo's of it!

A lot of players were sucked into the scene. The scene already existed before the game was released!!

The day Quake3 was in stores, 90% of those players immediately went for it and bought it. From day 1, Quake 3 would be a success.

The reason I'm writing this is, that as far as I know, Painkiller was the last attempt at a fast-paced multiplayer FPS game. I am sure that PK would be a success now, if there would have been a test version of it (linux server included).


Dear Raven Software. Please release a test version for Quake 4.