Since a lot of the talk about QL is up in the air, and many are claiming "IT'S IN BETA" or "YOU'RE JUST SPECULATING", I have compiled a set of graphs which show unbiased information on just how well Quake Live has been received by the masses, and how it stacks up to both released and unreleased games. This shows nothing about current players or community activity, and it's not 100% accurate - but it's evenly inaccurate across the board.

Comparison of quakelive.com/idsoftware.com/esreality.com unique visitors

Comparison of quakelive.com/idsoftware.com/battlefield-heroes.com unique visitors

Comparison of search volume for "Quake 4", "Quake Live", "Starcraft 2", and "Battlefield Heroes"

Or, if you prefer, stacked against searches for Counter Strike

Comparison of idsoftware.com/counter-strike.net/battlefield-heroes.com unique visitors

Comparison of id IP site unique visitors

Once more, but with counter-strike.net as well

Comparison of search volume for all quake titles

I had to avoid using things like "Diablo 3", "World Of Warcraft", or blizzard.com, as they crushed the other graph lines with industrial might. Due to the announcement times of QL/battlefield, and the nature of the intended information from the graphs, you may wish to look at 2007 instead of 2008, or all years. Also note that the Quake Live beta is played through idsoftware.com, not quakelive.com, and that any information regarding visitors to idsoftware.com is likely influenced by beta testers. Search results were displayed using the most popular formation of a term ("quake 3" instead of "quake3"), and combining results from the other forms of the terms (like so) was difficult to fit as each graph can only do about 5 terms. With those omitted results, the scales are tipped heavily against id.

If you're waiting on getting into some other game, or just wondering if QL is worth waiting for, perhaps this can give you at least some idea of how QL is going to do.