Things I've noticed during this year.

1. More new players than new old players (read oldschool/retired)
2. Less active regulated 4on4 and more mixes
3. The Viper Squad smashing mixteams into bits
4. Increased quantity of linux related questions on forum/irc
And on a sidenote nQuake now has over 40.000 downloads since it's inception.

For me it's a good year but could have been much better of course, let's see how 2009 pans out and good luck for you still playing -_-

c u @ qhlan!