i enjoyed playing with bots there

i played it with people when it came out. but it needed many players for the very big maps, that was a problem. later i remember there was this tradition, 3 years in a row, to play this huge custom map (base terra?) on a server with bad ping at christmas holidays. later id did with quakelive TA christmas maps something similar.

for the history part, the missionpack came out to late, players alreadys had their favorite mod. gameplay wise it was not a sensation. i liked this gamemode where to destroy a pillar. the wide arenas of TA looked cool. first time the extended id tech 3 was shown that could display non-indoor large wide areas.

kineterra I think it was called

FUCKING <3 KINTERRA D:

I used to love the Overload mode. Hope they bring it back with QL. Hated player models. They're animation was just weird and seemed more UT like than Quake.

It was somethin.. you know, they didn't wanto sell you something you already bought a couple of years ago:D Doesn't work like that anymore.

Although theres wide rumor that only nabs play ta maps on ql, if you have skill and tactics for those maps you can have good games there aswell, but most ctfers that play at a decent level despise and loath ta maps, so you'll be playing with guys that just found the forward button, and check out textures etc.

maybe they go there because they want fun and not all the seriousness of classic ctf. thats okay for me, because the competitive ctflers dont play TA at all.

My first quake exposure was Quake Team Arena Demo which I played the shit out of for ages...it was SO FUN back then

Harvester and 1FCTF are quite fun, heck 1FCTF was even in ThreeWave. Either of them could have been competitive imo if you took out the runes, etc. and I wonder why some people classify them as "no-skill". CPMA could've at least included their own versions with slightly modified settings and they would've been popular. Is it because they reward caps too easily due to the one-way nature?

To me, TA is a reminder that while Id deserves credit for creating the solid core gameplay of Q3 and pionering the genre in the first place, when it comes to anything beyond that (re: delivering a complete package), they've made little effort and bungled much of the efforts they have made.

TA was made to compensate for the fact that Q3 shipped with very little in the way of team gametypes and maps, compared to UT. It was too little, too late. They were asking gamers to pay for content which should have been included from the beginning, while Epic offered even more addon content to their already-complete package in the form of free downloads.

I liked some of the new stuff in TA, but it ran like molasses on my rig at the time. To me one of the more interesting additions in TA was the nailgun, but in TA it was essentially implemented as a poorman's shotgun, combining the slow projectile speed of the plasmagun with the shotgun's poor accuracy. It wasn't until they added the ricochet and additional damage ~7 years later in QL that the weapon really came into its own.

It didn't help that little effort was made to improve Q3's bots in TA, particularly given that the game was bound to have a smaller player base than regular Q3. UT's bots were good enough that I could actually have fun playing CTF or DOM with bots for a few hours when I couldn't get a decent ping online. In TA and Q3, the bots were so bad in team games that if I couldn't get a decent ping online, I would always rather go back to playing regular Q3 FFA botmatches than bother with TA.

In the end, Id never really completed Q3 - the fans did. The game didn't include things like mutators or map rotations in the GUI, so they made mods and scripts. The game only included a few playable maps, so they made more. There were no team modes besides TDM and CTF, so they made stuff like RA and TF. The CPMA team managed to trump Id's bots by lightyears developing improved bots as a mere side feature. Even skill-based movement - the very thing which sets Quake apart from other shooters - was a happy accident; a glitch discovered and exploited by fans. With players having picked up id's slack in so many places with Q1-3, it's no wonder they're surprised when half-assed rehash releases like Q4 and QL aren't as lucrative as they'd hoped. Q3 was the exception, not the rule, and players are no longer willing to finish parts of the game the developers didn't bother with.

well written post ++++++++++++++++++++++++++

most things you said are true.

the important thing with TA was the engine for huge maps. its was not uncommon in the past that an addon delivered only the same as the maingame.

i dont expect good bots and mods from id. like all know, id delivered the base game and the community did the rest. in the past the quake community did it very well with all quake 1-3. + doom & rtwc/et community.

problem right now is the studios want full controll of a game, force the gameplay, cod567 and bf3. no mods, some games have no dedi servers, no spec or no demo function. so if id will go that way like most studios now do, i see a problem. the community cant fix anymore missing features or increase the fun of gameplay (brink). our hands are bound.

we are in this situation right now with quakelive, actually QL needs help from the community and fan devers (modes, maps, creativity) but the little dev team thinks or they forced themselves to think that they can do it alone.

Since I'm renting a dedicated server (at a very high price), I thought I would put on some TA servers so people could get back into playing it again. But I was wasting my time, because here in Australia it's either QuakeLive or CPMA, nothing but.

No this isn't a rant, I'm just saying that I ended up taking the servers down due to the Q3A Server Bug that has been getting around, where I had to go completely dead for a while.

When posting in Australian Quake IRC Channels, I got useless comments back, such as "vq3, are you f** kidding me?". so you can see the situation I'm in this side of the planet (:

quake is dead, not just in australia, but everywhere. dont waste your time / money on a dead game

@dutra - Quake 3 Arena isn't dead. Although I may even say it is myself, I don't mean it in the way that it's "dead". That's a little confusing, so let me just say what I really mean.

People have Quake 3 Arena installed in order to play CPMA and Rocket Arena 3, which is big over here in Australia. That the interest of normal Q3 is not there, Unless it is VQ3 via CPMA mod, even that they hate over here too, the VQ3 CPMA servers are always empty.

I rent with my own money, a dedicated server from the city of Melbourne on the South-East coast, so I feel that I can advertise my service on Australian QUAKE IRC Channels, that when I do, I get nothing but immature people being sarcastic and 'downing' me as-it-were, making me look as if I don't know what I'm talking about infront of 50-60 people.

Although that doesn't bother me, but I thought I would just express that a little. The fact they have Q3A installed, means they are interested in the game, just not how John Carmak designed it to be. Thanks to the people that made CPMA (yes, my turn for a little sarcastic message).

@bmes_ - Yes, There were TA servers running for about a week, but I removed them as I was getting heavily attacked with the Q3A 'getstatus' bug, the bug was and still is pretty big for server-hosters. I won't go into it, but in short, alot of bandwidth was consumed for the purpose of harming someone elses server.

man, i'd have joined those servers if i wasn't in the USA.

Hi everyone .. i saw this thread and i think is the best thread about Team Arena (TA) from entire forum.

I like TA very much, i consider the best for me because that all "TA powerups" like kamikaze and many others, is veruy interesting and you can't be bored when you play on TA maps. Normal Q3 is boring for me, no TA powerups and missing CTF maps and etc.

You can play TA here : /connect q3.hubsinfo.net
and they have a website too http://quake3.hubsinfo.net/
Hope to see you there .. ;) GL & HF

it was new when it was new, that is A WHOLE LOT MORE THAN WHAT I CAN SAY ABOUT TODAYS TITLES

haha. I get it.

I love TeamArena, infact, more so than Arena, I don't play much of it though as it's hard to find players for the standard Arena, let-alone team games in TA...

Assassins Roost all the way!!