oh pls get over it.

He's right though :P

I would but...

I feel like our favourite software house is about to unleash Halo 3 on the world and declare to everyone that this is what we've spent the past decade claiming deserves recognitition as a pro-sport o_0

I can understand your position but we're a marginalised group of gamers who will be ostracised by the majority either way you look at it.

Instead of viewing ql as a poor entry into the quake canon because it hasn't been able to fully realise the features that we, the diehards desire. Try and find some solace in that fact that there are alot of people playing quake again.

I for one hope that the numbers continue to grow because I just had several games of ca at 5am in the morning (in aus) and trust me, that hasn't happened in years.

Players will quit within a year after they realise Q3 FFA is as shit as it ever was.

The only thing that I'm really embarrassed about is how childish the community can be. Apart from that, I've enjoyed my time in quake.

Poop. Lol.

lol there's one thing more you should be embarrassed about. your mom.

As always, ESR delivers.

that's what she said

lol was predictable :P

They played right into my point ;p

oh yes :D

i played right into your mums point

haha, take that mr. maturepotato!

well, we dreamt of playing quake zero, but instead we got a light q3 mod ; not that bad, not that good

well that depends. are you feeling bad that it is not cpm or simply because it is the same as vq3 and not an improvement of sorts?

One would be kind of a fanboy thing and the other would be a bit more constructive.

The latter; where's everything that we, as development teams, added to vq3 to make it better and more functional? Where's all the shit that makes amateur competative play possible? Where's the huge array of map content that was tweaked and evolved over years and years of clinical play?

Infact tbh, where's anything other than a few minor client tweaks and the (glaringly) obvious weapon changes that numerous mods (not just cpm) made years ago...

It's a pathetic and very shallow reflection of everything that we (as the community that made this game successful; remember, product is nothing without the purchaser,) fell in love with and nurtured.

And there's something else vexing me here; for years, FUCKING YEARS, amateur hosting companies have made it possible for id software to make money selling games that are designed to be played online - people like my host lazeryattack and others.

wtf will happen to those guys now if you can't even run your own server now? wtf's up with that id? You wanna make some more cash so you fuck over the guys that put their hard earned capital into the industry that makes it possible for your genre to exist? I don't remember anyone like barrysworld still existing do you? The hand out days are long gone...

Everything about this stinks of one almighty fuck you.

I just hope Kevin has a real voice in that development team, rather than just being their to fix old coding mistakes. My first suggestion to id as arQon would be a phone call to Swelt and Scancode regarding content creation, given the pair of them are responsible for a good 75% of the currently played maplists. (Yes, ztn is popular and classic too, shut up; you know what I mean here...)

Very valid points. Agreed and I hope somehow they don't end up like you summed it up :/

Most of that stuff was added to please a core group of players who went way beyond the commercial boundaries of a game.

It was not essential to its commercial success. Essential to those who needed those changes to quench their socially acceptable addiction, but ultimately irrelevant compared to the target audience.

id's objective is to make a profitable game, the changes you talk about will only please those who count for 1% of their market and 99% of the bitching.

There is no loyalty in game indudstry :)

After that post I can better understand your points, sucks really.

And there's something else vexing me here; for years, FUCKING YEARS, amateur hosting companies have made it possible for id software to make money selling games that are designed to be played online - people like my host lazeryattack and others.

wtf will happen to those guys now if you can't even run your own server now? wtf's up with that id? You wanna make some more cash so you fuck over the guys that put their hard earned capital into the industry that makes it possible for your genre to exist? I don't remember anyone like barrysworld still existing do you? The hand out days are long gone...

Everything about this stinks of one almighty fuck you.

Are you seriously complaining that they provide public servers for free (and as it seems eventually private servers for a much lower fee than is normal today?

If so, then you deserve a fuck you as well.

id said more than a year ago that they will be hosting the servers for free, that should be a big sign for any half intelligent business man that hosting quake servers for money might have a less bright future. And then he should look for alternatives or look at his exit strategy.
You sound like someone saying fuck you to the companies laying electricity lines because it will put people selling lamp oil out of business...

Yes i agree about the maps but I think I read somewhere that there are copyright issues, same as with qsp and cpma code...

You're obviously one of the great unwashed who have little to no idea how much actually goes into providing game servers.

Now really isn't the time to be fucking hosting companies over; a new game with limited resource requirements per slot used would be ideal to kick start the server industry right now, instead they're taking their revenue in house as a big fuck you to the people that made it possible for them to sell their games. As if the pathetic requirements for becoming a ranked server provider in ET weren't enough, now they're taking hosting away altogether.

You're right i don't have much knowledge about game servers.
But I do have a good understanding of businesses in general. And as far as I can see server providers are earning money by using id's software. I don't know if you have to pay them a fee other then buying a copy as would be usual in normal businesses and it doesn't matter.

They announced they will be hosting their own servers and that's it. A normal business process. Why the hell do you believe server providers shouldn't be treated like a business?

I mean if I decide to keep my money at home from now on, will my bank come crying saying that now is not the time to fuck them over???

Go look up the word monopoly in the dictionary.

You go out, you pay your fee to id for the ability to run your own servers, then you find, to your dismay, that the connection quality between their chosen rack (in your country) and your home isp is jack shit. Packet loss and ping spikes aplenty.

What do you do then? Go play something else?

Yes, a game server provider is a normal business like everything else, but really, the situation is not that clear cut, and without the courage shown by game server providers in an already volatile market, none of the past ten years would have happened. How many have gone bust over the past decade? So for id to then fuck the majority of them over by taking away their customers for the one game that looks potentially financially viable to host (given the requirements of most games there days) is something close to plain vindictive. The provider industry needs something like Quake Live right now, especially in the reccession, and id are stamping their hopes out after relying on them for years to make their money.

"Go look up the word monopoly in the dictionary."

maybe you should, cause the product description "deathmatch first persons shooter" (or something like that) hardly only applies to QL. If the customers choose their services are crappy they will play another game, if the like it they won't. and when people can choose it is NOT a monopoly.
Competition is the word you are looking for, really.

And you know what you are actually very egoistic, you want us, the customers, to pay way more for your services than we have to if id provides the servers. Because you want to make a profit or at least earn money at our expense!

You make the mistake of presuming I'm financially involved in with the people I'm defending; I'm not, I just a situation where the big guy is fucking over the little guy in an unethical way and it makes me sick.

Kiss id's arse all you want in the mean time; just don't be surprised if this path we're about to walk down bites us in the arse somewhere not too far down the line.

Yes, I did. My mistake.

But serously. It would be fucking over if they had any kind of longterm contract or anything. But just believing that they will never provide servers themselves and else call them the bad guys is retarded.

Oh and again, in relation to the people who want a private server the providers are also "the big guy" and if those now demand that we pay their higher fees because we paid them before THEY are the ones fucking us over.

Or does your view of business romantics only include small businesses and no private persons?

Aso, if I'm kissing id's ass with my arguments you have already vanished up the server provider's butt...


I mean using a "monopoly" argument here is such a cheap cry for recognition...




Just out of curiosity have a ever bought a car at a licensed car dealership or do you just drop by and call them monopolists?

The routing would be no diff than public servers.. you wouldn't be surprised if you had played at least one game

If id was smart, they would have a program that would allow hosting companies to become "Authorized Quake Live Server Resellers" or something to that effect. Something where id would still have control over the infrastructure but still allow the hosting companies to do their thing.

But honestly, exactly how big is the game server hosting market in the grand scheme of the server hosting industry as a whole?

It's the sole reason you can play games online without a subscription fee, allowing for a few (nominal) exceptions where the developer or the publisher provides a limited number of servers themselves, of which most are configured for public play and run on shit quality lines in over worked server racking.

Without game server hosts, the past ten years beyond the death of barrysworld would never have happened in this country.

That doesn't change anything for the here and now though.

eh? Oh course it does; QL comes out, everyone migrates, tonnes of server contracts are cancelled, server providers go bust.

Much less server providers to choose from, connections in match get worse, everyone loses out.

Except id. Who suddenly start making a wedge of cash by reselling us the same shit we paid for 6 years ago and developed into something sustainable ourselves.

Can you not see what Quake Live is about? Do you really think it can possibly benefit us in the long run?

Better help us make PMX good then, neh? :P

Which part of mod development do you think can *ever* challenge a publisher backed development house adam? pmx could be perfect for all it matters; the great unwashed will follow the vhs route and you know it.

Take it as the joke it was intended as.

dont funny!

Counter-Strike? DOTA?

The past 10 years is what doesn't matter.

From id's perspective the Hosting companies don't matter because they're able to do it themselves and make money off of it.

From the Hosting companiess perspective it does matter because they're going to lose money.

From a players perspective, if id are able to supply well hosted servers in a variety of places so that bad routing to servers is rarely an issue then it doesn't matter. If id aren't able to, well then it's going to be fucking shit.

So the problem that needs to be tackled is, can hosting companies offer benefits to id software and integrate into QL without any problems? I'm sure they could and maybe later on id will go down this route.

Why wait till later and the financial damage has already been done? Why not start this process now so the (already crippled) hosting industry has some way of planning their business model?

It's a game. They don't have any obligation to server providers (why the hell would they?). And BTW, in the worst case scenario of every q3 server migrating to QL... that's a drip in the sea. Q3 was a very minor game already. If a server provider has designed its business model as hosting exclusively Q3 servers they deserve the bankrupt.

From a players perspective, if id are able to supply well hosted servers in a variety of places so that bad routing to servers is rarely an issue then it doesn't matter. If id aren't able to, well then it's going to be fucking shit.

already shit in my book. there isn't a single server in Asia. i know, i know... it's only beta and servers could come up in the future but the Asian market could be HUGE for them if played right... especially China, India and Singapore. people in India are attracted to anything that's "free" like moths to a flame... this isn't simply a stereotype. once they get hooked, they don't mind paying money for services that could give them some sort of benefits. there are about 1500 dota players on Garena client everyday... usually at any given time. a lot of them don't mind throwing away money for Gold membership at 4 USD a month for "double experience" and no waiting time in queues. now i'm not saying id's gonna get the same number of people in QL but my gut feeling tells me that there will be a lot of Indians wanting to play the game. i hope i'm not wrong.

if they do decide to put up servers in these parts, i don't know how they're going to handle it. routing in this side of the world is generally really flaky. i ping 5 ms less to a server in Singapore than one in my own country. a guy from UAE gets lower ping than me to this Indian server. my ping to the neighbouring country of Pakistan was some 500 the last time i checked. now if we can't host our own servers, we probably won't be able to play the game as i highly doubt id will put up servers in every single country.

this "World of Warcraft Realms" model will probably work for NA, EU and probably Australia/NZ. i wonder if id have plans for the rest of the world or if they just don't give a shit.

In the next couple of weeks we'll be adding game servers in:
Toronto, Canada
Spain
China - Likely
Japan - Likely

:( 150 ping in Quake Live.

better then 500 ;p

I think they should be working with the hosting companies just to make my position clear.

i figured but it's still no replacement for being able to host your own servers. i don't understand why we can't have both.

oh wait... that could mean less money for id since you have to buy a fucking private server to be able to call a timeout? if that's true, it's really fucked up.

you had to buy a game, and download a mod to call a time out before. Is this really worse?

much worse. we're in 2009. you think they'd learn about features that should be in a game right out of the box...

I like to play videogames, specifically not against the same 6 people that live in az/cali!

Quakelive has accomplished this, and made having your own private server many times cheaper as well. TY id software!

You're obviously one of the great unwashed who have little to no idea how much actually goes into providing game servers.

Well, I hate that you ruined any chance of me taking you seriously with this line. There's nothing to hosting a game server. And this is the only way to prevent one-zillion mods fragmenting the community into 10-20 player groups.

Quit whining, q3 server rentals are not going to "make or break" the game server industry. If Valve did something like this.. MAYBE, but even then I'm sure it'd all be ok.

While I agree with some things you say, you're forgetting a very important point, and it is that Quake Live is updatable in "real time". The features list has to be looked at under a different perspective than from a game like Q3 where each new point release meant a small chaos in the comunity.
Besides that, ye, I do think QL could have been more than just Q3 from the start. I probably miss very different things than the ones you miss, tho, since what I expected was some innovation here and there to make pub playing more interesting for the new generation of players who find oldschooll deathmatch just boring.

for the new generation of players who find oldschooll deathmatch just boring.

blasphemy

I think most are blinded by the numbers which are indeed impressive but if you take a good look what do you see? A half-assed effort where all the community content created over the years is ignored, many gameplay guidelines (like competitive map building) are ignored and yet again the advanced/competitive aspect of the game is ostracised so as to not offend the newbies. Goddamit. A decade of competitive gaming and they still don't get that you don't have to remove the competition features to protect the newbies, they wouldn't use it in the first place, so why ruin the experience for the experts as well? Why do I have to buy a private server to be able to /timeout?

On another note, anyone else feel really pissed seeing the atmosphere of the game totally ruined? It's quake GODDAMIT, it's pentagrams and satan and lava and abominations and flesh and blood. Now all you get is Crash talking like the teletubies.

buy a private server to call a timeout? ridiculous.

The bigger number of players is nice, and lots of old faces show up on the servers and it feels a bit like.. 2003? again. The whole thing with the website is cool, even as an experienced player it's nice to just login and play and not mess with any files and patches. And the modified gameplay is an enjoyable fresh blow in good old q3.

But other than that, it's crap. It doesn't represent anything from the hard work the community (or rather the devs) put into Q3 over the years as you said. Maps are the same old boring shit although it's nice to hop around dm6 and dm14 after all those years again. Weapons are tweaked which is good and absolutely needed, but it's probably not the best balance yet. The whole technology is just generations behind what CPMA has to over, be it the shit hud, the weird netcode (judging from playing on a shit connection though), the limited options in the menues, all the missing stats, all the features for competitive matchmaking, ...
This might not be the primary target of id software, and surely newbies will not care as much or appreciate different things. But jesus, this game could be lightyears more enjoyable and ready for competitive play if it was CPMA technology merged with the browser platform instead of that old crappy version of Q3 with some bloated graphics and a more than rusty featureset. :/

Exactly.

If you cater for the lowest common denominator you get a shallow product. I've had (absolute) beginniners running arond cpm3a/cpm15/cpm29/cpmctf2 in cpm mode having an utter whale of a time, with no issues whatsoever and a default install with nothing but their mouse sensitivity and the odd key bind changed... And by utter newbies, I mean; never played a PC game in their life type newbies.

You don't need to dumb a game down for it to be commercially successful, but doing so limits an individual player's growth and skill cap, and severely restricts the game's long term process.

This is everything people like Promode and OSP stood against, this is exactly what 5 years of hard work was there to prove, and now we're suddenly throwing all that to the wind happy to start over again? wtf? o_0

pmx is in the works for good reason I guess :>

Presuming it sees the light of day.

This is arQon we're talking about. It'll eventually see the light of day even if it kills him. Bitching from the community be damned.

Dude, you think arQon can be killed?

ArQon only wishes he was that epic.

i currently see absolutely no reason to play anything but cpma vq3/cpm

i currently see absolutely no reason to play anything at all

Have you tried roleplaying? ;)

not as yet no.... maybe i need to broaden my mind a bit ;)

You'll find that and the corset obssession will go hand in hand nicely.

Though you'll need to develop a love for drawing the curtains and listening to operatic metal...

i have to draw the curtains?! oh :(

Yeah fraid so - sunlight burns...

Doesn't mean you can't be an exhibitionist; you'll just have to invite the audience around ahead of time hon ;)

lol x

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3946/bu...speaks.php

it's good fun

i'm glad i don't take games seriously

its great fun, sure current settings suck, but according to id theyve already finished making comp settings and its only a matter of time until we have them.

only big problem I have with it is the maps, especially for TDM it looks bleak, but I guess that in a few months time we will have a few new TDM maps, all in all, this is the best thing that could happen to quake, it doesnt matter how good a game allegedly is if theres no one playing it.

I wont compare it to cpm since I know nothing of cpm, but compared to cpma vq3 I enjoy QL much much more.

and as far as those server providers goes, who cares? last time q3 had a scene most servers I played on was hosted at different universities anyway, I really miss swedish servers though, hope it works out eventually.

they only got 1 mapper atm, so how many tdm maps will he be able to get done in lets say 6 months?

at best maybe 2? since he probably also works on maps for other gametypes, and then how can we be sure that those 2 are any good? After all out of hundreds of tdm maps that were made for q3, only a handful are actually playable.

:E

They won't make any TDM maps.

dm11/12 could be reworked to be good TDM maps but I doubt id can be bothered to even try and make TDM work.

I hope we can finally throw dm6/dm7 out of TDM too, they're just far too small to be taken seriously.

Says in one announcement or another that they will start accepting community made stuff and the good stuff will be included, my guess is that this will primarily be maps since they probably will want to make their own mods?

tl;dr

all I got was "waahhhhh wahhhh"

;)

and crying about it helps a lot