I was really hoping for Quake 3 at Quakecon this year. I really was.

It's a shame it's not there, but I don't think it's any better that Quake Live is there.

From a business and marketing perspective, yes, ID needs to advertise and push the game as much as possible. I grant them that. It's the ONLY decision they could do. Quake 4 has low amount of people playing, hard to find in stores, Quake 3 has a bit more, but impossible to find the game, and well, that's it. Sure, Steam exists, but a lot of users can't purchase online.

So I covered the business perspective. ID pretty much HAD to do it. Unfortunately, from a players perspective, we're just a tad worried right now.

Okay, I lied about being a tad worried, a lot of us are just extremely frustrated with this decision. It's nothing against Quakecon or the Quakecon staff, this decision was 100% out of their hands.

Quake Live duel and CTF. So, shall I list the problems? And see if you agree with me? Other suggestions would be great =)

Both modes are suffering a lot in terms of competitive play right now.

For CTF, it's lacking a lot of good maps. There really isn't a lot there. Also, weapons. I see things like Chainguns and proximity mines. Mines alone change the game a LOT, and what's probably going to happen is have those disabled in servers. Plus, powerups too (Excluding quad + HASTE).

Duel suffers the same problem with maps. We have T4, DM6, DM9, and the new map (Furious Heights?) Tested it out a bit, seems okay).

I think we either need new OLD maps, as in, updated ones with proper item locations, or just completely new maps. I saw someone made Monsoon for Q3. It's a little buggy with VQ3 movement, but I think that's the step we need to keep a game like this fresh.

Anyway, yes, maps are a big issue right now for both modes.

For the game it's self, I actually have a lot of problems with it in terms of competitive play. I'll just list them with a brief description.

No Dedicated Servers: So all players who want to practice on LAN, can't. So, players practicing in the Hlton can't run and setup their own servers to practice on.

Proximity Mine + other new weapons: Hopefully can be disabled at Quakecon. Honestly, I can't imagine Q3 CTF with those ridiculous weapons on.

Lack of console commands/cvars: There is a LOT missing. Some of the biggest problems I have is being unable to remove the LG-hit animation (The giant ball of LG that appears when you hit a player), picmip not affecting item shots (I use a picmip 5 textures, with picmip 5 LG, giant big thing), crosshair color, removing crosshair pulse, unable to call timeout, many more. Some of these might have been added in new release, but you get the point.

Bugs: It's getting better, a lot of users have frame rate issues. I have it myself, but I can change video card drivers, browser, etc. I'm sure they'll be running 125fps on the PC's there anyways. But for home use and practicing, it's hard to play when you can only get 50fps, and the menu cursor won't move (Two problems I'm having at the moment).

Private Game: Don't have an invite? Might be screwed. The system might have changed a bit, but it took 30+ days for my invite to go through. If that's still the case, you'll get your invite sent to you on your flight to Dallas.

It's a BETA: Could it be finalized before Qcon? Who knows, but as it stands now, it's still a beta. It kind of explains its self.

It's nothing against Quake Live really. I think the idea is great, and the game is decent. The only problem I have right now (And a lot of people agree with me) is that the game isn't ready for full-blown competition yet. There's still a lot of worked to be done with it. I think if they waited until next year, it would have been a lot better. I know Quake Live will be very good in the future, I don't doubt that, but at its state right now, it's just not ready for competition use.