Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Quake Live Open Beta On Tuesday

By Jim Rossignol on February 20th, 2009 at 4:50 pm.


It looks like all those folks who didn’t get into the closed beta will finally be able to taste the latest version of the finest deathmatch game of them all time. Via ESReality: “We’re opening QUAKE LIVE to the general public as an open beta the evening of Tuesday, February 24th.” The teaser splash page at the Quake Live site confirms it.

I shall see you there. (Thanks to Alex for the tip.)

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52 Comments »

  1. Pags says:

    I look forward to shooting rockets into RPS’ faces.

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  2. cullnean says:

    wooo get to this how good you really were jim, and rustyness will not be an excuse!

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  3. sana says:

    Nothing compared to UT99 etc.

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  4. cullnean says:

    @sana

    lies!

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  5. Senethro says:

    Classic deathmatch with modern configuration and networking.

    Its better.

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  6. Pantsman says:

    “It looks like all those folks who didn’t get into the closed beta will finally be able to taste the latest version of the finest deathmatch game of them all time.”

    Holy crap, UT Classic Live is coming?!

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  7. Turin Turambar says:

    But Q3 > UT! Learn your facts, folks!

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  8. Pantsman says:

    Also, lol @ “finest of them all time.”

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  9. Senethro says:

    TurinTurambar: Is that you Mr. Calabim man? If yes, then what an amazingly small internet it is.

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  10. PHeMoX says:

    “But Q3 > UT! Learn your facts, folks!”

    Heck no, UT wins easily. More and better levels, awesome balance, smarter bots, heck it’s faster paced even and InstaGib matches make it insane fun.

    Q3 on the other hand was boring before it got out and never got better. Team Arena was okey, but it was a disappointing move trying to clone UT.

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  11. Senethro says:

    Try playing UT now and tell me there isn’t something distinctly unpleasant about the mousing. Something like a 2/60th second input lag. Its just there at the very edge of perceptibility. Once you see it, you can’t not see it. That kind of thing is why modern games are better than old games.

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  12. ascagnel says:

    @turin turambar, @pantsman, @cullnean, @sana:

    OH NOES the UT vs Q3 wars are returning!

    I’m more into UT than Q3, but they both have their strong points. UT is so different from match to match, and the weapons are pretty kickass. Q3 is a different kind of awesome, with more skill-based speed play.

    But I suck at Q3 anyway.

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  13. RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:

    Been playing the beta for a while, stopped playing after three ‘rage quits’, although that didn’t have much to do with the game itself. The people on the servers I joined were just too fast and accurate for me(only weapon I could get back at them with was the gauntlet). It has been a while since I played Quake III arena, but I’d say they did a very good job at remaking it in a web format.

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  14. Pags says:

    Admittedly, UT99 has the best map ever (Facing Worlds, obviously) but QT3 had chunkier gibs and better rockets.

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  15. yns88 says:

    Oh, what a load of bull. I just got my closed beta invite yesterday (I signed up for it 4-5 months ago), and I still can’t even play it because my windows install is corrupted and it refuses to work in Linux.

    Guess I’ll see you in the open beta.

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  16. PHeMoX says:

    @Senethro; “Try playing UT now and tell me there isn’t something distinctly unpleasant about the mousing. Something like a 2/60th second input lag. Its just there at the very edge of perceptibility.”

    Try changing the mouse sensitivity. There’s no input lag on my PC. Not with UT and not with Quake 3 Arena.

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  17. PHeMoX says:

    I forgot:
    “That kind of thing is why modern games are better than old games.”

    I strongly disagree with that. Sure there are countless amounts of games that are looking much better these days, but the majority actually play like a motherrfuckerr. ^^

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  18. Smeghammer says:

    I’m excited to see the influx of new blood. The closed beta has been essentially populated by people who never stopped playing q3. While that was a good thing to get the weapon and map balance in order, it wasn’t very fun to be consistantly stomped in duels. The new netcode, balance changes, and the shiny new web interface should breathe some new life into the old game.

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  19. ascagnel says:

    @Senethero:
    I can feel a mouse lag in UT3, but not UT99/GOTY or UT2k3/4.

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  20. sbs says:

    Breaking news: Quake Live failing to revive Deathmatch, but succeeds in reviving stupid comment war which died down around 2001.

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  21. Tei says:

    @lilblackdemon: nice to meet you again. So you are on this quake thing? do it support mods ?

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  22. BooleanBob says:

    You’re all wrong. The finest 1999 deathmatch shooter was obviously – incontrovertibly – Nerf Arena.

    I have a longstanding ultimatum that PCGUK publishes a written apology in full for incorrectly asserting that Unreal Tournament and Quake III were, repsectively, empirically eight and ten percent better than this monument – this landmark – this monumental landmark of online multiplayer murder simulation competitive hand/eye-coordinate fun.

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  23. Radiant says:

    Is there any chance of mods appearing in Qlive?

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  24. Smeghammer says:

    @Radiant

    Not in its current incarnation. There’s plans for private servers in the future, so mods may be possible. But as it stands now, Id won’t implement any third party content.

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  25. Mman says:

    “Try playing UT now and tell me there isn’t something distinctly unpleasant about the mousing. Something like a 2/60th second input lag. Its just there at the very edge of perceptibility. Once you see it, you can’t not see it. That kind of thing is why modern games are better than old games.”

    It could just as easily be your computer; I had something like that when I played Quake 2 recently and put it down to the game (and it was incredibly annoying), then I tried it on another computer and the input was perfect.

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  26. Anarki says:

    Q3 ROX UT SUX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    woah sorry, thought I was 15 again for a moment there :)

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  27. RabidZombie says:

    “Try playing UT now and tell me there isn’t something distinctly unpleasant about the mousing. Something like a 2/60th second input lag. Its just there at the very edge of perceptibility. Once you see it, you can’t not see it. That kind of thing is why modern games are better than old games.”

    Nope. Play it to this day (not very often, mind) and it’s still one the greatest games ever.

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  28. Markoff Chaney says:

    Great resurrection of such a classic game. It plays wonderfully and having more to test load should be good.

    I loved both UT and Q3. I was an equal opportunity fragger. =D

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  29. Pantsman says:

    Just a disclaimer: while I have a great deal of experience with UT, my experience with Quake 3 is limited to having played the demo once back when it came out. So take my claims of UT superiority with a grain of salt. ;)

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  30. sana says:

    Pags:
    Once you get over the looks and feel CTF-Face is a pretty abysmal experience.

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  31. Pags says:

    Man, all I know is that was the only map I ever really liked playing and have yet to find a map in any other game I enjoy playing more. Though I suppose, seeing as I was 9 years old at the time, the fact that it was a pretty simple map appealed to me.

    Still, subjective experience and all that.

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  32. sana says:

    I know how you feel, I too was enthralled at first. But once I realized that all the enjoyment came from the environment and achieving ultra kills by sniping bots, love was over.

    But offline it’s indefinitely better than with actual people. People! Ugh!

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  33. Erlam says:

    “More and better levels, awesome balance, smarter bots, heck it’s faster paced even and InstaGib matches make it insane fun…”

    hahahha, my record with the sniper rifle in 2k3 was 85 kills in a row without moving the crosshair at all, and binding ‘ctrl’ to shoot.

    I did it to demonstrate pathing, and the problems therein when I was in school.

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  34. Biz says:

    ut is fun for different reasons, but quake is more competitive / more “hardcore” and has more lasting value. and lol @ whoever said quake trying to clone ut… other way around

    anyways, open beta should be good for people who haven’t played quake for the past 5 or 10 years like most of the guys active in the beta. i don’t know what the exactly the nda prohibits, but let’s just say a huge percentage of accounts left before 1 hour of playtime.

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  35. Oak says:

    The screenshots I’ve seen were full of bright and pleasing colors. That’s the biggest draw for me.

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  36. Radiant says:

    Hopefully they add mod support; vanilla q3 tdm/dm was pretty poor.

    In regards to mouse feel being off there’s tons of reasons.
    Different ways older games interface with the mouse, [directinput handling vs win32 handling], changes to mouse technology laser vs ball / mouse acel vs no acceleration.

    If you are getting input lag then stop playing with a wireless mouse.
    Same goes for a wireless keyboard.

    Seriously when it comes to multiplayer shooters the best thing you can do is go old tech.
    CRT monitors and low resolutions [640x480] with wired mouse and keyboard.
    I was a bit too into into shooters back in the day.

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  37. sbs says:

    Biz: As I understood it, he meant team arena with the “trying to clone ut”-thing(which is still bullshit, because ta was obviously mostly expanding on rune ctf from q2, as far as I can tell). q3 came out two months after ut, so i don’t think anyone would suggest that.

    As for target demographic, there is no reason yet to make a switch for any of the players who are currently still playing q3 mods, as the games featureset is far from competition-ready.

    I think the biggest concern is that especially tdm and ctf hugely suffer from poor maps, as of course most of the refined, competition-proven ones are not id Softwares property, let’s hope they find some way to contact some of the mappers and get permission to include them in quake live.

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  38. teo says:

    Ugh, you can’t seriously claim that UT99 plays better than Q3
    I mean, I’ve played the shit out of both games and UT99 is nice but its gameplay isn’t nearly as smooth as Q3′s

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  39. Helm says:

    Best fun I had with UT99 back in the day was in Fractal duels. We learned to use the bottom teleporter trap to our advantage –if you fall into it with rotation momentum you can get it to teleport you up but not gib you, and from there you can get the health and rockets below you in the middle ring. This is much faster than going to take the facing elevators up (which also were perfect places to get 5 timed rockets in the face the moment you got up if you were playing against anyone good). The only problem with that map was that anyone worth their salt were counting the seconds before the armor belt spawned again, so the middle fight got a bit predictable.

    oh yes, let’s fight like it’s 1999. UT was much better than Q mainly due to the better guns. You could shoot around corners with the flak!! :D

    Ah, memories.

    I don’t think I’ll try QLive because I’m not good enough for it and I bet there are people there that never stopped playing the original that are humbling everybody.

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  40. Arathain says:

    Good lord… so quick to mock the console wars, yet you only have to make a thread about Q3 and the old rivalries come flooding back, more pointless now than they were then.

    I’m rather looking forward to playing this. It’ll be a nice treat for the week. I’m loving this ‘free’ business.

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  41. Senethro says:

    Just to make it clear people, there are skill tiers in this Quake Live. You can’t play below your tier! After playing for a week or two hopefully all the good players will be in tiers 1-3 and unable to give you grief.

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  42. Darth Benedict says:

    It’s so nice to have clan arena and instagib as default gametypes. Still needs freezetag, however.

    Also, Quake is way better than UT. It’s easier for a player who is behind to break map control, making duels and TDM games a lot more dynamic.

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  43. Ziv says:

    dammit, i got into the closed beta a week ago and played only twice and even that wasn’t online because i had tons of tests……….
    now I don’t have the exclusivity… :(

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  44. Kurgol says:

    If anyone want’s closed beta keys I have a few to dish out…

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  45. Butler` says:

    UT is the better game obv., that’s why all the major LANs, eSport competitions and gaming websites support it etc.

    /tease

    Been playing QL a while in closed and it’s shaping up damn nicely; epecially the backend browser stuff.

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  46. Moogsi says:

    Regarding custom content: every other thread on the QL forums seems to be ‘where is ztn3dm1?!?!?’ or ‘will the threewave maps be in QL?’.

    The devs keep saying they are thinking of ways to get custom content in, but obviously the biggest problem with all those user-made Q3 maps is that they don’t have billboards in them.

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  47. gbarules2999 says:

    You guys have fun; I’ll still be playing OpenArena.

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  48. AbyssUK says:

    PanQUAKE day ?

    /leaves

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  49. Dan Forever says:

    Anyone else notice the ominous countdown on the splash page?

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  50. francisco barciella says:

    160 ping for me in brazil =( Unplayable until a South American server comes up.

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  51. codger says:

    You guys do know that Quake (which was originally called Doom) is the base game engine for UT right?
    UT is just a mod for the Quake engine.

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  52. Bobsy says:

    Wow, that’s wrong on pretty much every level, codger. But thanks for playing anyway.

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