I remember the gamespy stats charts having Quake 3 around 3k players which was indeed huge in it's day but absolute chump change now. Quake 3 was always eclipsed by Half Life on the stats though because of CS. Once CS came out it was just a downward trend for all Quake games.

It's honestly insane how big gaming is now compared to then, so it's hard to call something really popular when the numbers were so small, but in comparison to other games it was quite big yes.

I have the time but it doesn't help you through never ending why

Brian Molko, Battle for the sun

the idea i want to express and communicate it may disappear in a couple of seconds. Your question of how popular lost its importance just within a minute

yes, it was glorious

The first big competition I went to was in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2000. There were 512 entrants for Quake 3. It was big.

That said, a year later, the entrants were down to 24, and it was counter-strike that was huge. Still, it had it's time in the Sun.

your lg is nothing on lan

"your lg is nothink on the lan" -cooller

Fixed

https://www.esreality.com/post/731732/best-cooller-quote/

1 or 2 played it

Before QC ever came out, Quake was very much more alive in it's hey day. there were more active players back then.

True, QC splitted the community and failed to deliver, the duel format was bad, the meta champions adds even more depth, the netcode was bad. I was hyped and played for some time, but it still feels so floaty compared to Quakelive, which is a solid game.

Yes, Quake was definitely popular in its peak era. Compared with today?s huge player numbers it may seem small, but back then it had a strong competitive scene, LAN events, and a dedicated community.

It was a "large" community from 1996 until about 2001. I've put large in quotations because at the time PC gaming was still quite niche and internet infrastructure was still being setup but Quake had a good chunk of those players. Even then, it had competition from other PC franches like StarCraft, WarCraft, and EverQuest. Back then games like CS were groundbreaking and once it got some traction, it simply steamrolled Quake. During this era we also so massive franchises like Halo and WoW. It was over by that point, a lot of Quake players had already transitioned to other games. If you look at the early rtcw and cod tournaments, they were filled with former Quake players.