Id Software's John Carmack, one of the worlds most celebrated game makers, projects that Quake Live will have "hundreds of thousands of players, if not millions."

"Early on, we were tossing around two different orders of magnitudes - anywhere from 50,000 to 5 million people playing. We have no idea where it is going to be in there. The fact that 70,000 people have signed up in a week means that we’re going to be looking at hundreds of thousands of players, if not millions. We hope that that can be a sustained critical mass of a community that can play this type of game, and be self-supporting."

Further in the interview, Carmack mentions the ever present discussion of whether or not PC gaming is superior to consoles and takes a dig at Crysis, saying that a game like that is "not necessarily that exciting of a direction for the PC to be going in the future." He mentions World of Warcraft as an example that the PC games have a lot of potential and says that id Software will stay true to the PC platform:

"And even though the PC doesn’t get the focus that it used to, in many ways our hearts are still there, and we’d like to do things where the PC is the appropriate platform. [We’d like to] do something that really speaks to the future of where the PC can be superior to consoles."

Carmack plans the introduction of Quake Live's counterpart of the BattleNet match-making system known from StarCraft or Warcraft 3 so that inexperienced players are not discouraged:

"Skill-based matchmaking is extremely important, so when you jump in, you’re going to be someplace appropriate. But we’re also adding things like bot-guided training levels offline. When you initially set up your account, you get to give the system an indication of what your skill level is. After a few matches, the game will see how you’re performing and adjust your choices."

The full interview can be read at GamesRadar/PC Gamer.

Quake Live beta signup page