I have to admit this game is growing on me quite a lot. The first 10 hours or so I played it was back and forth with a lot of hate and frustration but now I'm quite a bit more competent. Having a few classes unlocked really helps as some classes really excel on certain maps and suck on others. I mostly play TDM since CTF has a bigger learning curve and I still really just need to improve my basics like moving and aiming. Specialization is very strong in this game and you need to learn to play to your strengths. In general the weapons are a lot less deadly and limited than any Quake but the movement on the faster classes is impressive.

I feel quite positive about this game right now almost like how I felt about QL when it went open beta. They announced 400,000 players were playing it which again sounds a lot like QL. I'm fearful they will fuck it up just like id however. First off they lack a lot of basic shit still like demos, first person POV, custom/private servers and the balance seems to be in a constant state of flux. Hopefully demos end server side MVD, not client side. They can't even seem to quite decide what they are balancing for (CTF? 7v7? 8v8? TDM? Arena? Pubs? PUGS? E-Sports? Everything?). Hopefully they don't split rulesets for pubs and competition. Right now there is a small community of competitive players who are "whitelisted" but it's impossible to join this "whitelist" to play with them. There aren't many maps despite it being a 4gb install. Servers experience lag rendering the game unplayable at times and the netcode is a little weird especially for hitscan weapons (no antilag?). The release date is April 12 but I see the game lacking a lot of stuff still at that point which should be standard for any competitive FPS.

The competitive scene in NA seems absolutely tiny and very underground. There are maybe ~10 teams right now made up mostly of veterans of previous tribes. Hopefully it grows quite a bit or it'll be a pretty boring scene. Also the lack of central servers and some teams being primarily east or west doesn't bode well for matches. It does seem to have NASL support and they are doing some good VODs but due to large team sizes (7s or 8s) I can't see it being a successful lan game ever since travel costs will severely limit any lan tournaments.

I remain cautiously optimistic but the next few months should show if it'll be a success or not. HiRez has a lot of work to do and there seems to be mixed predictions on if they can pull it off or not. Right now it has numbers going for it but if development lags or support is lacking for what is needed it could easily falter and lose momentum.

http://firetruce.com/ is the best NA site so far I've found