Quake Live Premium Subscription Planned

I simply don't understand. You re-release an inferior version of a ten year old game and people don't want to play it? Well I never saw that coming!!!!!

I didn't understand the thinking behind this from the start. I was very excited when it was announced but then I found it was just Quake 3 and completely lost interest since I'd already played Quake 3 to death. It seemed obvious to me that QuakeLive would never attract a large player base and therefore would not many advertisers so would inevitably fail. I was hoping that when it did fail they'd work on a new deathmatch game but it seems they intend to keep flogging QuakeLive until there's only one player left. If people won't play the game for free why does Id think they'd be prepared to pay for it?

Odd, when I played it, I don't remember seeing many ads at all. On the idea of charging for the game I'd say that if they did they're going to need to upgrade the graphics or something. I'm not paying a monthly fee for a Quake 3 engine based game.

Can anyone recommend sites good with guides for quake 3 ? Bunnyhopping, strafejumping, respawn times of weapons & pickups, movement, etc. I have no idea how stuff works in quake.

Guys, the article above is very well written and accurate, however I think a lot of you are interpreting it the wrong way.

Carmack did indeed say that the in-game advertising isn't cutting it and they had premium subscriptions planned.

However he also said Quake Live is going to probably be around for a few more years at least before they're going to call it a failure.

Also he mentioned that once they have the Mac and Linux ports released and a few more things under their belt they're going to make a big push advertising it and so forth so that they can increase the player base.

Consider this - there's a company called Ventrillo here at QuakeCon which puts out a TeamSpeak-like product. Like TeamSpeak, it's free. And they do something similar to what Quake Live where people can pay for private servers.

The CEO of Ventrillo drives a Corvette, and they gave a second one away at QuakeCon last year. They're giving away a Mustang this year.

Anyway, I don't think this means Quake Live is doomed - as people have shown they're willing to pay for private servers and other services in significant numbers

i hope the servers don't actually change game settings - just server settings. private servers changing lots of gameplay settings like they do in quake 3 is one of the worst things that could happen. quake live is different from q3 and populated because everyone playing the same game instead of each server having a different mod running.

they need more player volume, and then people might actually care to advertise

i think the problem is that the reachable audience is very small. lot's of people play FPS, but those people (for some reason i will never understand) prefer to run around waiting for hats to drop in team fortress 2 or like to pay 20 dollars for battlefield heroes costumes.

i guess the reason news sites are busy talking about costumes is because that's what the players care about. kind of sad, but oh well. quake actually has players now so it's cool. quake 3 in 2009 doesn't really have that many populated servers.

Even if this thing was to actually explode, killing two good hardware techs and a so-so janitor, I'm sure it'll be worth it to Id. Just imagine what Quake 5's multi is going to be like.

Not going to make it I'm afraid :(

Cant see enough people paying for it to keep it going.

Unfortunate news, I think the reason it didn't work out is 1) they spent a lot of time on getting it working and 2) Q3 was released a long time ago and the hardcore quakers either stick with that or have moved on.

I think I read that the revenue generated for advertising and equivalent to $1 for each account or something like that. Last I checked they had around 800,000 accounts. Still that's only 800,000 dollars for something probably costs a couple million to produced.

I've been playing the beta on and off, and I am very impressed with the core game...the controls, response time and everything is totally top notch. By far the biggest problem is my favorite game mode, clan arena, needs more maps, especially BIG ONES, REALLY FREAKIN BAD! but I'm sure this will be taken care of eventually.

and blood would be nice too. blood is for decoration. makes maps seem lived and died in.

I say we all log on right now and start clicking ads like mad.

I'd love to see them release the higher resolution texture/content stuff as a pack for the original Q3 for modders to have some fun with...but I realize that probably wouldn't mesh with trying to make QLive a bigger success. Maybe have cross compatibility between Q3 original and QLive so people can play on these servers (don't know if thats even doable...just tossing ideas around).

i like quake live, fun to hop in and play a few rounds... quake is hardcore stuff

port ra3. problem solved

COD4 > Q3. nuff said. its not the 90s nomo.

Does anyone know where there are good quality vids of QuakeCon?

From the get go they said it was an ongoing experience.

I'm not sure why some people are reading so much into it.

They also announced it will be coming to Mac and Linux soon as well. All they need now is mod support for old Q3 games and that would be the greatest thing ever.

I dunno why people sound disappointed about this. This was the plan from the beginning. They are never going to charge you to play the game, they only charge you for owning your own server. The server feature is supposed to be pretty elite, you can use the web interface to move your server to any city they support on the fly. They were talking about a feature where you can schedule a match and the server will invite all of the players to the game at match time. That's dope! Totally worth it for clans to own one at $5 a month. And we'll finally be able to turn off the Noob settings in Clan Arena. This is PURE WIN!!!

You make it seem as though this is supposed to be a surprising development that nobody knows about. We've known for many months now that ID has planned a low premium subscription for those who want to be able to start their own private servers.

What exactly is the news, and why would anyone be disappointed by this. You'll be able to start your own server, from anywhere, at a neutral location of your choice.

I'm disappointed to read this, not that I play this really. I tried it just to see how they laid it out, but I can't go back to q3. But the Carmack mentioned a while ago that depending on the success of this, they were considering doing ET next.

ET could really benefit from this model if they did advanced match making, not just on someone's kill/death ratio, but on how many times they do/prevent/assist an objective. It would be trickier stat wise, but could make for awesome games.

I guess that's probably not going to happen now.

Premium account = Gibs & gore?

You bet I am going to pay a suscription fee to get owned by nerds with a rail gun

The in-game advertising stuff has not been big business

Good. Best news I've heard this year.