Was amazed to see that Quake2 appears to be more popular than QW.

Perhaps QW has a more organized scene but interestingly from looking at quakeservers.net, quake 2 always has plenty of busy servers and way more players online at any particular time.

Quake 3 has even more again but quake 4 looking like a complete flop with it being a new game.

I wonder how much smaller the QW scene has gotten in the past 2 years ?

Is there signs that things are waning a bit ?
There was lots of talks before on this board before qw.nu hacking about how to bring new players back to qw but very little talk now.

I remember a few years ago people talking about that they reckoned we would be still playing quake in 2010 but others slating that as crazy talk.
Well its now 2007 and looking good for 2010 but how long will it last ?

Quake2 is more popular because:

1. people think Quake is some uber old game with shitty graphics and gameplay
2. Quake2 is newer and as the PC era evolved, more people grew up with that game, instead of Quake.
3. people like the military design from Quake2 better
4. Quake2 is easier to setup and play (it only needs one map: q2dm1, ffs)
5. Quake2 is easier to play at first (strafe jumping is easier than in Quake3).

but people play Quake2 more casual.. they're not that organized and have few sites and leagues
ex: nobody plays Quake in my country, but Quake2 has a lot of action from nostalgics and casual players.. we can even play 4vs4 for hours.. kinda sad

There will probably always be someone playing Quakeworld, although i am a bit concerned about the current state of the community. Sure there are alot of players in the 1on1 and 2on2 tournaments, but on the 4on4 side of things (which imo always has been THE gamemode in QW) things are lacking. I think it would be easier to bring in new players if we had a better site than this one. Sure, the forum is nice but the main site isn't (a fucking cat in the logo, where are you Gaz?). From my experience Q2 has always been more popular when looking at different stats thingies though, so i don't think that's a good measurement, but rather look at past tournaments and compare them to newer ones; are there as many games played as back then? As many teams and players registered? The answer is, sadly, no.

I'm 100% positive that there will still be someone playing in 2010, despite my rather negative view.

EDIT
And what we need are NEWBIE TOURNAMENTS!

and a FREE unified setup in which the player can do almost everything from inside the game without editing cfg files and command lines.. and that is in the works

And a better mappool!

oh yeah!
i'm sick of the dm4 spamfest..

i like dm2 CS games 1.000.000 times better

quake2 is zzzz... and to all the 'quake is old' haters. i have one word to say to them. ezquake.

Yeah agree with your comments lads. There will always be a few people playing but once a slide starts, it can be hard to stop, you could end up with no leagues quite quickly over time and then just random people playing on some servers. A lot of the old skool players will I reckon start to move on in their lives in the next few years and start settling down and getting married. QW will go out the window for them.

Right now there is still a cummunity and a structure: so before a slide starts some efforts could be made to bring back some life to the game. Not as hard as one would think. As the quote goes....

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now”

I'm not sure if the enthuasism is there any more to improve things. There has been many discussion here before about this with some very good suggestions. Very often though the discussion loses focus from the basic simple task of trying to rejuvenate the game with some new players.

Apart from playing ffa every now and then i have become a traitor to the game we all love as well. The one and only reason: i am getting old! Of course you are never too old to play Quake or any other games but the older you grow the more things get important in life and you just do not have the time you used to have as a pupil/student/single anymore.
And why there are only so few newbies? That is easy to explain. Two reasons mainly. First of all it is a pain in the ass to set up Quake properly. Even though knowing lots about the game and even having written a whole encyclopdia (well almost) about the topic i cursed myself for deleting my Quake folder when i reinstalled it and tried to write a decent cfg. Quake should be playable out of the box like all modern games.
Second reason is that Quake is so incredibly hard and frustrating. Other players have years of experience and there are hardly any other newbies to play with. It is just not fun getting raped by virtually everybody and only very few have the perserverance to stick with Quake anyway.

A newbie league would be fun to organize. Think i have posted ideas about that before? Only problem is to keep away the "oi,newbies! = free frags!" faking lamers.

Yeah Appolyon I hear you. I have played this game for years but only in recent months started playing TDM.
The learning curve is huge which is what makes QW so challenging and worthwhile at the end of the day.
However even in say a DIV6 league we get players who seem to delude themselves in to thinking they are really only low div standard. When its quite clear to everyone else they are streets ahead and should be in DIV3/4/5.
So in the morning If we set up a newb league. There would be loads of players registering to play and genuinely thinking they are only div6. And alot of players that come back after a few years break often think that they are only div 6 as they havnt played in years. It quickly turns the league into a farce with the genuine Div6 teams not finishing the remaining games.

I am the same :-)
The reason I would like to see a plan put in place to ensure its future is that as old as I get I will always like to be able to log on in a few years time and just play, knowng there will be players there and servers still running.

As much as life takes over for me. I always like to log on for a short while and just play. Its an addiction :-)

How about a completely-new-to-the-game-tournament then? Could post news about it on "neutral" sites where players from the UT and Quake series hangs out, aswell as warsow and other general gaming sites. Dunno, just an idea.

That is a good (and obvious) idea Ake. When i thought about such a league before i had the idea that every team gets a tutor or coach. Someone who has experience in QW 4on4 and can teach them basic teamplay stuff and help to set up clients etc. Of course he would not be allowed to play. Real newbies and people coming back from a long break could go into different divisions or something.
Oh and what about a nice promotion video? Like it says "wanna be oldschool and play the best game ever?" (you see some mad skills) "but you are sick of being gibbed" (you see all sorts of gibs, blood and gore) "the qw academy will teach you how to be sexy" (you see a bunch of people following their tutor on dm3)

thats such a good idea
having diff divs for beginners

"new to the game"
"return of the oldies"

Yeah it think that would be good. But it would need the support of the QW community.
It would be a lifeline. Also a revamped website like before www.quakeworldisdead.com.
That was catchy and clever. It had everything in one simple plain site. Enough info without too much.

Also on the site as you were saying a promo of just how skillful the game is. I.e you need to convince a new player that this ten year old game has something that no one other game has. The promo would need to sell the game. The qw.nu site front page could be revamped a little to give more of a sense of community and importance.

Also since qw can be packaged up so small and can run on any crappy pc, it would be perfect to aim at college's right across Europe. Most of these colleges have a games society. A mail and link to the website could be sent to each society and explaining how the Game has some high profile leagues and the game will run on any pc.
You will definitely bring in some players.

Also the number of times I have been on a server and a player comes on and are shocked that the game is still being played. They thoughtit had stopped bneing played years ago and if they had known they would have come back. So I think we need to advertise it more on other websites which get big hits.

Finally does anyway ever wonder what the secret is with Sweden, and Finland especially is? Why so many people playing qw there ? Coz if you could figure out that then apply it to other countries ???

Sorry for rambling, maybe im a bit bored :-)

I have always laughed at the fact that the whole POLISH Q2 scene is bigger than the world's QW community, I'd like to know the answer why

Sort them all out gozsane. Convert them and show the the error of their ways

I had been a member of the Polish Q2 community for 5 years, although I cannot really persuade anybody to try QW out, after just one hour most of them decide that it's too fast and gives them a headache, some of them experienced 'traffic illness', I mean, the thing some people get when driving cars etc, it's just way too fast for the turtles from Q2 to handle

haha I can relate to that

You would have to be able to kick people who perform too good. We all know some idiots will sign up and own everybody.

Someone should make it possible to setup cfg in game. Just rip off the q3 cpma or something menu and its fine.

Btw a new map pool could be critical. Many would hate it though including me. I wouldnt care if all other maps than dm3 and aero would magically disappear over the night!!!!

Yes I agree. There is no point in just playing 3 maps. Most fps games have a lot more maps. I suggest the admins/coaches/volunteers of this imaginary league play 3 mixes on each potential map and decide which maps to include.

Just looking at cs (the biggest following). It has de_inferno, de_dust2, de_train, de_nuke, de_cpl_mill, de_cbble as serious tournament maps. However all players know their way around de_dust, de_prodigy, cs_italy, de_aztec, cs_office and probably a lot more maps which I havent mentioned. Im just writing from a 4 year old memory.

I suggest a 9-map map pool ATLEAST. Its not hard to learn new maps. Its hard to learn how to play them flawlessly but to know where everything is (which is quite enough for div8) you need 1 hour per map at most.

shouldnt be a 4on4 tourney!
if you want beginners, get them into dmm4/endif/dm2/4/6/aero/ztn/skulls !!
mostly 1on1 but get them to try ffa aswell...
you cant put a beginner into 4on4 right away

so 1on1 tourney for beginners is essential

but lets wait for ezQuake to get released first.

QW is popular in swe/fin because it was big here when it was released.

the other countrys hadnt good int. connections back then and most of them got connections when Q2 started to get big or mostly Q3

its a shame europe hasn't been playing two awesome maps:

slip.bsp by inertia (incredibly fun, very similar to aero!) for 1on1/2on2 play
and 4 hourses (forgot what it's called .bsp) but seriously an amazing 1on1 map, very fast paced like dm4

i suggest people try those out if they want new quality maps =)

agreed: slip.bsp is quite nice

Do you have any idea how hard it is to get people play new maps? It's actually quite impossible (at least in finland).

Whatever the game mode is, players start whining immediately when some new custom map is suggested. The worst are probably most of the mid-class players that have played for 10 years and lack in everything except for the map knowledge of TB3, because they know they will not be able to put any fight due to their not so good aim or movement/tactical positioning according to the situation. You know, cmt4 can't be played because it can be dominated with shaft (instead of whining learn how to shaft or fight against lg-opponent??) and cmt3 is otherwise full of shit without any other apparent reason than that "I can't play it so it has to be shit". I'm not saying cmt's are good but some of them have potential.

In my opinion new players are those who are willing to play any map. By new I mean people who have played 2 years or less. They actually like playing more maps than just dm2/dm4/dm6 on duel/quad or e1m2/dm2/dm3 on team games probably because it adds some difference AND of course due to lower skill level requirement (which is good, it's not fun to rape against anybody, rather it sucks pretty bad).

I'm one of the few that actually search for playable 1on1/2on2 maps (I don't play 4on4 so it doesn't interest me so much) and I've found some pretty promising like skull on duel (tricks!) and dm4ish on 2on2 and few other not so big maps. Of course not all maps are good, but about 5% of all new maps are pretty playable.


oh and hint for the dmm4 map makers. Stop making povdmm4/amphi copies. Instead make something with different levels like noentry.bsp and hammer.bsp or even gemdm1.bsp that actually requires some tracking instead of just strafing at the big arena floor.

QW is basically dead for the moment in North America. It could make a comeback but I highly doubt it will. NA quickly went from ~8 TDM clans to zero in a few months. Lots of reasons for this but I feel the main one is there are basically zero newbies in the community. QW is horrible game for newbies and not much you can do to change that. The most popular QW gameplay doesn't offer much in the way of fun for less skilled players.

ZDaemon( ZDaemon.org ) which has basically replaced my QW playing recently. It is much more newbie friendly and it shows when you see many young teens playing. It has a custom server browser which is a 3rd party application which has built in chat, map/file auto downloading(done before you enter servers), buddy list support, forum links, etc. Plus Doom 2 on the whole is just more newbie friendly as modes like co-op(Doom co-op owns QW co-op) and CTF are popular.

The EU community seems to have a lot of staying power when it comes to playing in tournaments but it doesn't seem as if people play that much anymore compared to how many players are in tourneys. I think the EU QW community should try a draft league to mix up teams and division players. I think if we could have got that going in NA it would have been a great boon to our community but no one was ever willing to go nuts and make it happen. It still might have not helped but I always thought it was a great idea.

The strength of the EU QW community has always surprised me when I compare it to how much smaller/dead NA QW is. It'll be interesting to see how the EU QW community dies(if it does).

Nice discussion!
I hope and think QW is going to grow... The clients are getting better and better, ezquake last release was super nice !
I have a guy from my little hometown in sweden that have started to play QW, he's like 14 years or something. When i have got one to play, it isn't hard to get more I am playing some dmm and aerowalk with him. I think i can get players for a clan, and i am planing to play some newb 4on4 matches..
If just some people could get some new players, and try to teach em the game. Then it just grows ^10. ;P A newb div would be great )
I think QW have the potentials to get big! if just some new players could find it...
Someone was talking about getting alot of QW players to Dreamhack and start a tournament there.. It is a nice idea ;D why not? We could get the game at big screens and like 7000 people spectating

Btw about that qw.nu logo, i could make a nice nice one if the qw.nu crew wants to..

-_-r

Not the worst idea, but never gonna work. A handful of people set up a tournament called "pick me up!" that tried exactly that. Lots of people signed up, however 0 games were played because half of the people that signed up had no interest in playing any of their games. (like in every tournament). wankers.

pg you are right, currently quake is extremely hard for newbies to set up. I promise you with the next ezquake release it will change SIGNIFICANTLY

We are working very hard and have lots of great stuff. All we need for the next release is people to spread the word about quake, get friends involved, and have them join clans (the more exposure they get to other people the better their chances of staying)