It would be interesting to hear how new players found QuakeWorld (did a friend tell them about it or was it in some other way?), what your first steps were, what guides were followed etc.

When browsing this site, the wiki, the web and the rookie forum in particular it seems there are a few different topics/pages which aims to introduce new players. However, these may be outdated and not of much use anymore. I'm eager to find out if that's the case or if there are other improvements that can be made. How hard can it be to make the ultimate QW guide?

Very good topic!!!

It is in fact essential for anyone of us who want to promote QW that we can get some info about this. So rookies, tell us everything, so we can make it better

I started in 2000 with some Q3A with friends, we played it of and on in the next years noob-style with default configs, bots etc. I always felt that something was missing. I even played some Q1 single player in between.

I discovered that there existed something called strafe-jumping in 2006. That was the missing element. From then on I played it more seriously, followed competitions in q3 and q4 on gtv/q4tv.

Digging up some Quake history uncovered qw and nq which I then got set up. I started q1 with netquake first, then qw. I like them both.

QL turned out to be a huge disappointment for me, in q3 there wasn't anything going on any more since 2009 so I started to play q1 more and more.
Don't get me wrong, qw is not a second choice just because q3 is dead. I play some q3 from time to time but overall I don't look back too much.

What makes me stick to qw beside the gameplay is the completeness of its environment. There are tournaments to follow, there is easy accessible qtv (I am not a stream fan myself although I appreciate the work others put into it), server side demos, a community which is awesome (well, most of the time), this side, good clients, good linux/*BSD support (netquake for example has no good linux multiplayer clients atm), lots of customisation that can be done etc. Technically qw is miles ahead of other quakes. Only thing I miss is ctf and a new demo archive since challenge-tv seems to be gone for good.

However I may not be the average quaker, I enjoy pulling down the console and typing weird commands, fiddling with command lines and editing config files.

I think in that part (making qw accessible for the average gamer/computer user) there is still stuff to be done to make qw more attractive to the masses. nquake is a very good start.

Interesting that you mention the environment as one of the appealing factors of the game. It feels whenever a remake of the game is discussed, many people blindly praises this, hoping it would attract new players but they forget that there is a massive amount of hours put in by volunteer developers to get the game where it is today. Not even QL has QTV yet for example (or maybe it does now, but it definitely didn't in the beginning).

Bump!

It all started with counter-strike I was playing at that time. A friend of mine showed me a video of strafejumping trick which got me interested in how does it work and how to do it myself. Eventually I learned what's it all about and was able to perform basic tricks but it got me curios about that qw game some articles were referring to while describing history of how goldsrc engine came about. So that's how I found it somewhere around summer-autmn 2010. Got owned hard on xs4all ffa, thought to myself 'wtf was that' and put it away for a month or so, but eventually curiosity got the best of me again and I started playing more often and eventually stick with it. Completely abandoned cs since then. So there is that, not really a valuable piece of information for attracting new general audience players (which, I'm sorry to say, not sure that is really possible), but the way it was for me.

This is a perfect example of a rookie not getting the best out of the game experience. If we had ffa servers for rookies (ffa servers with ratings/rankings) you sure would have gotten a better/different start with qw.

I played q3 osp and then cpm mostly against bots because i didn't have internet, until 2005 when i went to the university.
I played cpm duel/ca from 2007 to 2009, then stopped because it was becoming shittier and shittier.
I came back in the beginning of 2012 because i was missing quake, that's when a friend introduced me to qw. I struggled for almost two weeks with the moves but after a while started to really like it.
What was cool and made me stick to the game is that, small and stupid as it is, the french community is fun enough to always get people to play 1on1/2on2.
Then I got raped in ignition and Thunderdome so I practiced a bit more to be able to kick some butts too.
Afterwards, Rikoll and then Ganon picked me for Salvation ( mostly because i sucked their balls ), so I began playing some tdm too.
Now i guess I'm better than Milton and Rikoll together, because they don't even dare signing up for qwenya !

Ssshh, you were not supposed to disclose that to the general public!

Like most of the others I played Q3 for a while, mostly with bots and on LAN partys. While most of my friends stayed with Counter Strike and other boring FPS games I started looking around for other games to play. I found QuakeWorld and was tought it looked cool. So I downloaded it and tried it out.
A few mounth after that I had almost given up, almost never won a match and I tought it only was the super good player that played the game.
But then Ake_Vader announced Ignition a tourney for QW Rookies and I liked the idea and signed up. The Tourney was a blast and I enjoyed it alot.

After that I just stayed and there have been more torneys like Thunderdome witch is also good for rookies, QW can be frustrating but you get a nice feel when you finally win yourself. So now we have the #kelts.qw channel on IRC and wanna get more rookies and new player to 4on4. Because if we can get more new people then I think we can make the players stay and continue playing.

I'm found QW(basically Quakeworld.pl) in 2008/9 back then I have downloaded their game client and played couple of FFA matches but I quickly uninstalled because I used to play completely different game for long time. Since that I've been looking on QW.nu website by time to time to download client and play. I also used to follow ESR for hardware forums.
After few years I found warsow and i decided to play it a bit then me and my warsow dueling mate Cremator wanted to play some Q2 and QW with couple of warsow friends that's how I tried this game a little more serious. We played a few 2v2 games and couple of duels and I naturally uninstalled the game...

...Months later...

Warsow was annoying to play, no duel players, no TDM players only this effin bomb pickup 24/7 it made me to install ezQuake, configure it and play some good duels. Now the fun part why I doesn't play it anymore... there is big one, I'm just simply bored of playing one or two same maps over and over again.(I don't know how you can even look on DM2 after 666 years of playing it) Sure it's improving your skill but that's pretty boring for newcomer and less "dedicated" or I would say "addicted" players. Still not too many duel players are here, you go on the server and someone want to play some retarded POV or ENDIF (Seriously these gametypes are piece of boring shit).

There are plenty of reasons why this game is not played by more people. Firstly setting it up is too difficult for many people unless they really really want to play it (like me I spent 3 days learning and tweaking my cfg I did it from the scratch with researching for every cvar (Thanks to big describtion and QWpedia made by you guys)). Many people will even have troubles with installing this game with ezQuake or nQuake - looking for pak0 is just annoying. Next thing is that this game should be configured by default for newcomers and controls should be as similiar as possible to modern games. I would not even aim into QL, Q3, CPM, Xonotic, WSW players because if they don't want to play this game now they never will. For them this game may be ridiculously unbalanced due to very strong RL, LG, GL. Cremator was not happy with TDM and weapon strenght in this game and it made him stop playing it IMO.

Well, I'm sorry for so chaotic post but I've been chatting with my friends while I was typing that.
Peace.

I installed ezQuake about 5 days ago now and found it very easy to set up (all the right settings where basically there with no tweaking) and i didnt even have to find pak0 which was wierd...

I always new about quake world- played it a few years ago and just thought it was unbalanced as hell and just a bad version of q3.

After playing it this time i was amazed with the feel of the movement, physics, rocket launcher and lg. I have also come to appreciate the armor system.

I dont think i will be able to go back to QL now i have fallen in love with this

on top of the game its self another thing that makes me want to stay is the community- everyone i have played with/talked to is extreamly nice and mature and ready to help a noob out!

a few things are still bugging me about the game though... why is the nailgun, supernail gun and super shotgun so weak? and why havent they been fixed as this is an open source project right? also maps like dm4 are a little broken (if the super shotgun was better that area would be ok) but why hasnt it been fixed so the nailgun is replaced with a weapon that can actually do damage?

Thanks

The client is open source, but it does not tweak the core of the game ( weapon damages or gameplay ).
The super shotgun is pretty efficient with the quad and even if i agree that nailguns suxx I think makingthem more powerful would break the maps.
Also dm4 is not really broken, it just has a different gameplay than the other maps ( and less fun i guess ) !

If/when you start playing 4on4 you will notice that also the lower tier weapons have a use, perhaps with the exception of the nailgun. You will have quite an advantage over other enemies when youre both fighting over rl but he only has sg while you have ssg or sng.

The Q4 release caught my eye and exposed me to the Quake community, from there I read esreality occasionally and on that site I saw the release thread for dag def extreme 3. I've played a little bit of warsow and quake live, but never got into those games in part because of the small communities I think. Now I've become increasingly dissatisfied with other games and am looking to qw for some fun, even if I can only challenge my friend in a duel.

Previously I'd been impressed by Mechwarrior 4: Mercs, where there was a strong community, custom content and somewhat robust configuration options. Far Cry exposed me to mapping, and I only played the Painkiller singleplayer but there was some interesting news and articles to read about the game. QW has all of these things.

I played a lot of Q2 and Q3 as a kid/teenager, quitting around '03 or so. I usually play QL for a few weeks every year and late 2014 I picked it up again. I found ddk's Youtube channel, watched his QW content, and realized that QW is a more interesting game. I've always been aware of QW, but it's thanks to ddk that I actually got interested enough to install it. That was just a week ago or so and I've already played at least 10 4on4 games thanks to the people in #div99. I cannot emphasize enough how important it was that I could go somewhere and people would let me play with them, no questions asked. If those guys didn't exist, it's likely that I would have just played some FFA and then been too embarrassed to join a random 4on4 game, or maybe joined one game and then felt too stupid to continue. Does this mean that I'm now a hardcore QW player who will be here forever? Maybe, maybe not. I'm absolutely fascinated by the game, but it's also frustrating and not so fun at times. Only time will tell I guess.


.

Battlefield 3 -> Counter-Strike: Source -> Global Offensive -> Quakelive -> CPM -> QW

This is my professional playing career.

Minecraft -> Half-Life (top 5 in usa) -> counter-strike -> Halo 1 -> Quake2 -> Starcraft -> Quakeworld ( I was convinced with the lightning weapons in Starcraft to transist )

Hey

Basically I was on The Internet in July 2011 and came across this movie "Dag Def Extreme" which made me incredibly angry.

I saw these guys hopping around and shooting things etc and I knew I could do a better job at it, so I got on QW and started becoming a pro in order to beat them, but then found out that everyone was already gone by the time I got here.

I became even angrier. So I trained on ztricks and zjumps and with bots and with newbies BLooD_DoG(D_P) 6.gnd animalboy etc, just honing my skills, preparing for the return of some true enemies to conquer.

I am top5 usa

Summary:
1. Saw DDE movie
2. Go like "WHO THE ($#^& DO THESE GUYS THINK THEY ARE"
3. Clicked around angrily and found download link for QW
4. I'm top5

CREAM

Got intrested in Quake around FATAL1TY, watched quad damage tournament, realized Quake World is just a better Quake3a and now I am starting to learn duel

top 5 in usa in half-life is like saying you were top 5 at eating bunch of pizza underwater while watching porn

I'll give you the short version, since the long version I wrote may actually make a nice blog post somewhere in the future.

I first learned of Quake at my aunts house when I was little. Many years later a video on YouTube reminded me of that cool game from the past. I played around and learned of QuakeWorld. My friends did not like it because they were casual pussies. I played along with their mobas and military fps for years. Then I said fuck these shitgames, I'll go play the games I actually like. I started playing QuakeWorld and Fighting Games.

Actively procrastinating as we speak, so I might as well write my small quake biography down here.

A friend of mine introduced me to multiplayer quake, NetQuake CTF specifically, at his uncle's place who had an ISDN line. We took turns when playing public NQ CTF matches and had great fun with the grappling hook and messing around on the xs4all servers. This was somewhere around 1997/1998, but things really started to take off for me when we got our own internet connection at home, using a splendid 56k6 dialup modem I could now connect to the servers on a more regular basis. Albeit with ping never dropping below 120/130, I had great fun with a couple of friends and was actively playing clan wars. The thing was, although I wasn't really able to fight competitively with those connection speeds against guys with ISDN connections and later ADSL and cable, CTF had impulse 22 going on strong, so I was able to come along quite well and hooked through the maps like a mad man. My clan mates with low ping took care of the opponents, while I would be the one whizzing through the map with the enemy flag and secure captures.

Then puberty hit, as well as my parents consecutively confronting me with huge telephone bills that I had to pay for myself, and started playing less and less from 2002 onward. Also, the Dutch NQ CTF scene was at its end as a lot of players were transitioning to Q3 and Counter Strike.

So far I didn't really venture too much into QuakeWorld, which at the time was regarded a place for arrogant players from an NQ perspective. Looking back at it, the level of skill was substantially higher on QW servers, and I probably just got scolded at for playing bad. Nonetheless, when this QW CTF revival became apparent around 2004/2005, I couldn't resist the urge to take part in it. Played for a couple of years, with some old friends from the NQ CTF scene, and had a blast again. Just recently, I actually came across a couple of demos on youtube in which I took part! Great fun to look back at those, and I feel real bad for not having kept all the demos from that time. Unfortunately this wouldn't last forever and the CTF scene died for the last time in 2006. I kept on playing some plain duels and 2on2s, but apart from dmm4 maps I wasn't really able to come along with other players. Mostly because I had been focussing on hooking through maps and securing captures, not paying too much attention to aim and item/map control.

I've been playing every now and then since then, but when I came across Thunderdome 7 a couple of weeks ago, I started to pick up QW again, this time somewhat more seriously than previous non-CTF attempts. I'm still struggling with map control and item timing, but I'm getting there and look forward to winning div4!

Nice writeup and i Think I might Have A Few Demos Since I Was ALso Playing Against KOI And Vvv And DQM around Those Years. (NOt Sure Why Mobile Keyboard Is Uppercasing Everything)

Ah yes, I remember you playing as well during that revival. Care to share those demos?

Here are a couple I found from NQR 2005: http://upload.foppa.dk/files/nqrctf1_2005.zip

Cheers,
BD

[Edit] That reminds me, the Euro teams loved e2m2 for CTF but we had never played it. Was painful Also IIRC you guys played with dropquad on, which was horrible for many reasons

Born in 94, started by q3a when it came out, switched to cod4 when it came out, wondered a bit everywhere and started to think about gamedesign, watched the qcon16 grand finals of quakelive and quakeworld, thought that quakeworld was the best esport game in history.

I came here for some advices and a friendly community, since a raw start means getting uberrekt everywhere everytime :p.

Hi and welcome Zvarri!
Come jump onboard the Discord server, more action there than here. Any specific advice you were looking for?

Hi,

here's Maciek, from Poland, I started playing q1 in 1998 and played it religiously for 4 years of my high school. Mostly LAN NetQuake, we had quite strong community in the school (at least I used to think that), but no reliable internet connection stopped me from participating in online games in qw heyday. Later I forgot about quake, though I had a short episode with CPMA (everybody wanted to play q3, nobody wanted to play qw with me, so CPMA seemed to be fair half way solution ). Last year when GOG released Q1 I bought it again (out of nostalgia), downloaded ezquake, and played some matches against forgbots every now and then. I also started lurking this forum, watching demos, and realized I hadn't been as good as I thought in 2000 Then, I stopped playing again because real life and so on.
Then, I accidentaly got Quake Champions beta key. I tried it. I thought: "Damn, I missed Quake, it's so good. but, hey, CPMA is much better. And quakeworld is much better than CPMA!". So I found a courage to join some FFA matches with you (as ChunLi), I was being destroyed every time but always had a great fun. With every game I felt better and better but I'm aware this train is long gone and I'll never catch up with your skill (and even with mine own from the turn-of-millenia) . Not enough time and talent But certainly I'm going to drop in sometimes to get my ass kicked. Maybe I'll try a duel even or some TDM. I like the community, it's mature and nice so maybe nobody will yell at me and offend my mother for my low shaft accuracy
It's a great thing that qw is still alive!

nice to meet you all!

ps: for the record, I've also tried coming back to CPMA. It's a good game. But qw has something special. Many things, but to me mostly rocket fights. No other game offers this feeling. CPMA does it better than vq3 but still it's like shooting nerf guns with my son