Could we start promoting QW more? Perhaps not try to get everyone to play QuakeWorld competitively, but promote it for LAN parties, small and big.

It takes no less than 5 minutes to setup a client AND a server with nQuake + nQuakesv. It has never been this stupidly simple.

How do we reach out to the kidz?

I'm quite sure kids care about graphics and what their peers think is a cool game at any given time. Companies pay some 100 million in marketing just to get these kids playing Cod or Battlefield so it's really far fetched to go for them. Older players are probably extremely hesitant to start playing a game that's not in their comfort zone if there's the option to play a more familiar game. And those players that might be interested in the game will likely be intimidated by the high level of skill and lack of newbies, and especially when there's practically no reward to be gained if you manage to reach a high level in skill yourself. It's a lost cause either way.

The graphics argument is negated by the fact that a game like Minecraft has 9999999999999999 players and i don't think it spent many cents on marketing either.

Minecraft is the definition of casual gaming, and I think mipa's right about qw being a lost cause.

Minecraft is also something totally different in terms of gameplay, which can be used to attract players. Quakeworld would be just another random old fps in the eyes of someone who doesn't know better. Perhaps you could promote the game with something like "the hardest game there is, no casuals invited" and you'd get a few people to try, but most likely the majority of people will simply not care.

I guess i can agree that the unique gameplay aspect of Minecraft is a great unique selling point for it.

I realise that QuakeWorld won't get a huge player base just because we promote it more. However, i think with some fairly simple measures the share of players would probably be possible to improve by a great deal considering that the active player base is so small by now (at least the competitive one). One has to realise that currently there is no incentive for new players to start playing whatsoever other than perhaps rumors and word of mouth; we do zero promotion for the game! Personally i think something like one day tournaments for new players on Sundays would be a great and fairly simple way to get new players interested, and it should be advertised on general gaming forums.

Another one would be the ladder project that Willgurht was working on, but who knows if it will ever see the light/catch on.

I think what would help a lot would be an ignition tournament for beginners promoted on esreality and maybe sk-gaming an similar sites followed by a 4on4 tournament with a rookie division. When Itsinen did this for EQL6 there were 6 or so new teams right away.

AFAIK, many or most of the players in rookie teams had already some part in the qw community. They just didn't have 4on4 experience. So they weren't completely new players in that sense.

Also I think that the current level of activity in the scene plays some part in how attractive the game is. There were 50 clans in EQL 6 while there are only 17 in EQL 17. I'm no psychologist but I think it's natural for people to be intrigued about something that many people already like while ignoring stuff that nobody pays any attention to. And also you need to remember that even if there would be a rookie division, the skill gap is shit nowadays. The winners of the rookie div would probably be nowhere near the skill level of the shittiest normal team in the tournament. They can no longer join the lowest division next season and have fun with similiarly skilled players because they simply do not exist. They'd be in for a rape fest followed by some lovely, cheerful and extremely belittling comments from certain people.

I'd like to see more players playing the game but I just can't see it happening. It's been talked over and over again during the years and I think it's time to realise that people are not going to get interested suddenly.

I remember we already talked about a nice landing page for Quakeworld. Someone made reference to World of Tanks ( which I don't like that much anyway ), maybe that would be a start.
Quakeworld.nu is a nice site for us players, but it doesn't speak to someone who doesn't know about the game, it doesn't show nice screenshots, and videos, and players interviews... I'd be willing to give a hand on something like that, even if I'm still thinking that fast fps are a lost cause.

How about another QHLAN???

lol mipa, so you dont think its good to cheer for the ones who keep trying season after season?

http://www.mmofront.com/

They show all up coming/released free to play titles. Why not contact them? I'm sure they get high traffic

Or run a Facebook campaign targeting worldwide young gamers. get people to donate 10$ to the cause. I would, not that I even play anymore. You'll get so many clicks and downloads from it.

If you put a package together for these people, make it easy to start a map (not by typing map dm3 into console) and auto fill it with bots at an easy skill, it will surely gain their interest. People saying it can't be done....it really can be done if you're clever about it. Facebook campaigns can target millions of people and you can make them ultra targeted to the sort of people you want.

If you got a few hundred dollars together, you would seriously get a shit load of new people playing. For how long, who knows .

Infact, if anyone wants to do something like this, I'll donate $50 to the cause. You must have a bit of experience in Facebook ads, I don't have much time to do it myself but willing to donate to the greatest game ever made!

I like what chewz is thinking: donations.
It sure is just a one piece in the puzzle, but i KNOW it's an easy way to get money. Especially in co-action with a smart facebook campaign. With money things get easier. Spending is easy. But what is harder to buy is commitment/engagement. People taking initiative, seeing things through, making it happen, planning it, making a site for it, creating a facebook-event for it, and so on and so forth. We used to have that. I can't see them anymore.

I miss the likes of Johnny_cz, Zalon amongst others.
I think we need someone tired enough of this dying situation, to actually take it into his/her own hands and just DO IT. It's up for grabs.

Atleast we still have a good 4on4 league running.

its all well and good but i think the main problem that turns newbies off is the current players. in mixes, newbies just are not wanted, get whined at for being new and generally get owned so hard they quit and never come back.

+ the rare times they are accepted into a mix, it takes an hour to get a game started because everybody constantly moans about teams (why people still use rpickup and not captains is completely beyond me)

i have struggled to get back into things because of the above issues

For noobs:
I suggest noobs start another mix, at next free port, and call it out, so that they may be left alone. Work from there, and try to find even teams.

For normal mixes:
How are we (the known players) able to - via captains mode - be able to make considerate picks, when we don't know individual skills on the new/not-known players? That's why we rpickup. And sometimes finetune.

Let's have a player database where you login to play. Tracking your skill. Easy to make up even teams. Let's!

well, they know the skills well enough to argue about rpickup for an hour so surely they must know them well enough to use captains.

I see what you did there.

Ask skuizh about some database and stuff like that, he has no life and already did a nice work on the qwenya site, I'm sure he would be happy to help ! I will too, once my life has stopped sucking.

ezQuake 3.0 is being worked on too

However more people really need to step up and take some responsibility. It's not rocket science to run a one day tournament for instance. If you don't want to do it yourself, just grab someone else to help out and just _do it_