Rezzed, The PC and Indie Games Show. Brighton, 6th-7th July 2012

Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Quake Live Beta Up And Queuing

By Jim Rossignol on February 25th, 2009 at 11:01 am.


Actually the queues have subsided to just a couple of minutes now, but last night they were swollen with tens of thousands of people trying to log on to the new service. Apart from being over-subscribed and the verification emails taking a while to turn up, the browser-launched Quake 3 is looking good. The front end system, with its rankings and insta-matching systems, appears remarkably solid and easy to navigate. Why not go and have a look? It’s completely free, after all.

I’m going to try and get enough time with it to post some deeper and more coherent impressions later in the week, but it does given me the fear that I’ll be dragged back into my decade-old Quake addiction. That game is just too slick.

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67 Comments »

  1. 25/02/2009 at 11:24 Feet says:

    I’m at work and I’m 6252 in the queue…

    “You will automatically move on to the site when it’s your turn. Technology is so cool.”

    No doubt, man.

  2. 25/02/2009 at 11:25 Simon says:

    Can we have Unreal Tournament Live now please Epic?

  3. 25/02/2009 at 11:26 Dizet Sma says:

    Position in Queue – 7346 :o(

  4. 25/02/2009 at 11:28 abigbat says:

    Gosh I can remember reading about your Q3 addiction :) Currently placed at number 7021 in the queue. Fantastic.

  5. 25/02/2009 at 11:36 Schmung says:

    Wonder if this will work from behind my works proxy..

    Edit : feck. Requires XP anyway. Bang go my hopes of whiling away my lunchbreak.

  6. 25/02/2009 at 11:39 ChaosSmurf says:

    School’s got it blocked so no lulz for me

  7. 25/02/2009 at 12:06 Simon says:

    From my time on the closed beta, I must say the game is an absolutely flawless port to browser. I must see if it works at school

  8. 25/02/2009 at 12:16 Owen says:

    Wow. I had no idea it would be this polished (front end) for something free. Very impressive. Re-addiction here we come.

  9. 25/02/2009 at 12:25 ChaosSmurf says:

    out of interest, why has it taken them this long to do it? I mean, I realise building previously cutting edge tech into a browser isn’t the easiest of things, but isn’t it literally the same game? I can’t really understand where all the development time has gone.

  10. 25/02/2009 at 12:27 lumpi says:

    What is that queue crap? You could think that in the year 2009 you can just download that thing and go for it…

    Now I registered, logged in, installed… and get sent right back to a queue as I login on the main site? WTF?

  11. 25/02/2009 at 12:33 Andy says:

    I’ve tried the Quake Live Beta when it was in Beta test and I don’t understand the appeal at all. What’s the point of queueing when you can get Quake 3 virtually for free.

    Yes it runs in a browser, but you need to download and install a plugin, so it can’t work on lockdowned office PCs. You might as well just use the much faster portable, moddable open source Quake 3 with some mods for your online multiplayer fix instead of some Q3 clone with adverts which will completely slow down your multitab browser.

  12. 25/02/2009 at 12:44 Anarki says:

    but you need to download and install a plugin, so it can’t work on lockdowned office PCs

    This is indeed my problem. Been enjoying it at home, but as someone who sits in an office doing nothing all day this would have been a life saver. Unfortunately I can’t install anything on this PC so the need for a plugin breaks it. I wonder if it would be possible for them to run it completely from a web page like any other flash game? Fortunately I can play mirrors edge 2d so its not all bad :)

  13. 25/02/2009 at 12:44 Backflipper says:

    the game’s great, nerfed a bit in places but still great.

    the website looks like it was designed by a child.

  14. 25/02/2009 at 12:58 Radiant says:

    Let me get this straight.
    You are complaining that you can’t play quake at work,

  15. 25/02/2009 at 12:59 Radiant says:

    During a recession.

  16. 25/02/2009 at 13:01 Owen says:

    Ouch. Got through the 6000 odd queue only to be told I needed to install a browser update. After that I’m 8000+ in the queue.

    A way of installing the browser update without queueing would be nice. Although there’s a limit to how frustrated I can get with something FREE.

  17. 25/02/2009 at 13:01 teo says:

    needs servers in sweden

  18. 25/02/2009 at 13:02 videogangs says:

    Yes it runs in a browser, but you need to download and install a plugin, so it can’t work on lockdowned office PCs.

    Ah, the joys of being a SysAdmin ;-)

  19. 25/02/2009 at 13:07 Owen says:

    >> Ah, the joys of being a SysAdmin ;-)
    Ah the joys of working from home this week. ;D

    (although that’s because my car’s fooked, but hey.)

  20. 25/02/2009 at 13:11 Pags says:

    Ah the joys of being unemployed ;D

    Wait fuck.

  21. 25/02/2009 at 13:16 Radiant says:

    So we have to queue everytime we want to play?

  22. 25/02/2009 at 13:25 Tei says:

    @ChaosSmurf: Servers, marketing, more servers, international contracts, debugging, test, more servers, more marketing, a better design of the website, a enhanced interface ,testing, more testing, more design, more contacts… I suppose there are a helluva of work behind this thing. And I suppose Id is a small company.

  23. 25/02/2009 at 13:34 Robin says:

    @Schmung: What OS are you running? For Mac/Linux I guess you’re currently out of luck, but if it’s Win2k then putting dbghelp.dll (google it) in your firefox directory should do the trick.

  24. 25/02/2009 at 13:55 In-Digg-Nation says:

    Simon: “Can we have Unreal Tournament Live now please Epic?”

    Epic: “Certainly! X-box Live or PSHome?”

  25. 25/02/2009 at 13:59 sfury says:

    Damn I’m afraid my Quake3 habit will kick in too. I played QuakeLive just once, right after I got an invite for the close beta – the *just a test* avalanched in 3-4 hours session where I forgot about the breakfast I had just made, and I’ve been basicly avoiding it ever since out of fear… :)

  26. 25/02/2009 at 14:00 lumpi says:

    @In-Digg-Nation: Thanks for giving me shivers…

  27. 25/02/2009 at 14:01 lobsterjohnson says:

    Played all night in California-time. No que – no problem.

  28. 25/02/2009 at 14:05 lumpi says:

    I thought that it’s just a badly designed website where the “start” button is hidden behind 20 tabs… but it seems to indeed queue 11000 people in front of you EVERY F#&%ING TIME YOU LOG IN!

    Sorry, but this is redonculous. Even for a beta.

  29. 25/02/2009 at 14:08 Turin Turambar says:

    Well, it’s just the launch day. The launch day of a free product with legendary status, so of course the serves are choked. Try the game in three or four days when the calm comes back.

  30. 25/02/2009 at 14:10 Anonymous says:

    For what it’s worth, World of Warcraft also had server queues when it was first opened to the public.

    The only gaffe that I can see is that the ‘is plugin downloaded, if not then give them download’ logic is PAST the queue, so you essentially have to wait in a queue TWICE to play the first time.

    Still, I can tell you from having played in the private beta that this game really really owns. Definitely worth the wait.

  31. 25/02/2009 at 14:17 Ids says:

    woot know at 11303 i hope i get in before i got to go to class

  32. 25/02/2009 at 14:21 lumpi says:

    Well, I was in for a few minutes and it’s… geez, it’s Quake 3 alright. Clean, polished, gimmick-free Q3. It’s OK.

    I just don’t get what it is that bombs their servers so much, you have to wait 15 minutes to join a server. Basically, it’s a simple website + servers running FPS matches. Why is there a queue for that? Servers full – can’t join, I get that. But why is there a queue before even going to the match screen. Playing offline against bots or anything.

    Didn’t it finish downloading? Maybe it didn’t finish downloading parts of the game and I’m still in the download queue. Still, it’s strange they have to do it like this. They could have let people d/l it externally, or provide a torrent or something. Anything would have been less annoying.

    First impression: 5 queues only for install + 10 minutes of play.

  33. 25/02/2009 at 14:26 Cooper says:

    Here’s seeing if I can a) install it and b) if it can get through the office proxy…

  34. 25/02/2009 at 14:36 Seniath says:

    Got a beta invite a while back and gave it a brief try at home. Damn faithful port indeed, but it doesn’t work at work and as much as I love Q3A, I have other games to play at home :(.

  35. 25/02/2009 at 14:37 lumpi says:

    And after 15 minutes of queue… “Database error”…

    I previously admired this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jETv3NURwLc

    But now I hate him. Go back and enjoy the wonders of 56k modems and answering machines while the modern world is raging at QLive queues.

  36. 25/02/2009 at 14:40 Radiant says:

    The queuing stopped after I downloaded the plug-in [it didn't stick me back into a queue after I installed it either].

    It works great!
    The skill setting course was fun [can you jump? can you rocket jump? can you strafe jump? EXPERT!]

    Just had a bash vs the tutorial bot and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

  37. 25/02/2009 at 14:42 Radiant says:

    ALSO!
    We need to talk about left 4 head the porn version of left 4 dead.

  38. 25/02/2009 at 15:00 jsutcliffe says:

    I got into the closed beta about a month back, and was really impressed. I don’t much care for deathmatch (because I suck against anyone but bots), and mostly wanted to see how well they could make a fancy 3D game run in a browser. Answer: Very.

    Now, hopefully those clever chaps at Valve are taking notes and thinking about TFC:Live, DoD:Live, or CS:Live.

  39. 25/02/2009 at 15:01 Dizet Sma says:

    Hmm, waited through the 7k queue, downloaded the plug-in, sent off the confirm e-mail. Go away. Come back, log in and…

    Position in queue: 21738.

    WTF?

  40. 25/02/2009 at 15:04 Radiant says:

    Apparently the queue stopped counting down whilst they upgraded hence the backlog.

  41. 25/02/2009 at 15:05 clive dunn says:

    People like nothing better than a queue (apparently)
    Or is that just Englishers?

  42. 25/02/2009 at 15:10 eyemessiah says:

    Position in queue: 22016

    (And that’s before I download the plugin.)

    I don’t love queues that much.

  43. 25/02/2009 at 15:16 Andytizer says:

    There’s no real reason to ‘upgrade’ to Quake Live Beta when there are no significant features that set it apart from Quake 3. Both require large downloads of data (neither are ‘cloud’ games that can be played from any internet enabled PC), both are preferably played in the client window rather than a browser window, one is modable, one has adverts.

    I know which one is better already – the one with gigantic mod support and no browser front end.

    The internet would be in an uproar if the only way you could play a game of Counter-Strike is by opening up Internet Explorer to find a server. How this is a ‘feature’ for Quake Live beta is amazingly silly.

  44. 25/02/2009 at 15:19 Tei says:

    On the interview, Carmack describe this as a quasi-MMO, a business model with legs (advertising) with lots of features in the web interface, and the game, that at his core, is the good old Q3.
    I suppose the queues are a artifact of the first day, and once stuff stabilize, the grid will run smoothly.

  45. 25/02/2009 at 15:38 ascagnel says:

    @Andytizer:
    The point is to bring new players into Quake. I remember hearing some rumblings that there would eventually be a connection into Quake 3 Arena servers, so the “core” gamers with Q3A would get their desktop clients, while the not-so-into-it casual types would get served a more Kongregate-style experience.

    Also, sometimes I don’t want to install Steam + Q3A (yay id Pack).

  46. 25/02/2009 at 15:42 Charlie says:

    I hope your right. I’m not even going to bother playing it seeing as I’m 21 thousand and something in the queue, so sod it. Not quite sure I understand the appeal. It’s a game im pretty sure most people are bored of anyway and its an unmoddable version. Q3A is free now so just download that and some mods.

    If they did let QLive be moddable then I could see it becoming huge but just as bog standard game that was a little dated when it came out, I’m not so sure.

  47. 25/02/2009 at 15:53 Michael says:

    Damn [be politer than that -RPS] ruin all the fun… but id should have known better and gotten more servers to solve the workload problems. As a closed beta tester, I got an “award” (like achivements) that acknowledged my part in helping QL, but I get paid back in line waiting in position 13357? I HATE YOU.

  48. 25/02/2009 at 16:19 Radiant says:

    Annnnd it’s down.

  49. 25/02/2009 at 16:24 Sucram says:

    ‘Our CDN (Content Delivery Network) is having a problem, we are forced to push the site offline until this is resolved.’

    Ah well, I’d just finished the training match to be told that I (still) had to complete the training match when it went down.

  50. 25/02/2009 at 16:28 Turin Turambar says:

    “There’s no real reason to ‘upgrade’ to Quake Live Beta when there are no significant features that set it apart from Quake 3. Both require large downloads of data (neither are ‘cloud’ games that can be played from any internet enabled PC), both are preferably played in the client window rather than a browser window, one is modable, one has adverts.
    I know which one is better already – the one with gigantic mod support and no browser front end.”

    I also know the one who is better: the one with auto-skill system to play only with people of my level. I would be utterly destroyed in a normal Q3 server. And i don’t want to “practice more”, i just want to play.

  51. 25/02/2009 at 16:30 Pags says:

    but id should have known better and gotten more servers to solve the workload problems.

    There’s only so much you can do when you’re giving away an extraordinarily popular game away for free.

  52. 25/02/2009 at 16:34 Radiant says:

    What’s the set up?
    Do they have lots of servers located in major countries/states?
    Who runs these?

  53. 25/02/2009 at 16:51 Tei says:

    I suppose is a spike. On day #1 you get 200.000 players, or something like that, maybe much more, and after that, things go normal to 2000 ~ 6000 players. Buying hardware for 200.000 players that after 6 days willl server only 2000 is a waste. Hence, a queue (to make these that can play, have good ping).

  54. 25/02/2009 at 16:57 Man Raised By Puffins says:

    @ Radiant:

    The computers that support the QuakeLive network are located at different data centers around the world. For past games, such as Quake III Arena, most, if not all, of the backend infrastructure was located physically on the id Software network. These backend services were fairly low bandwidth applications such as the master server, which reports the list of available game servers. Marty disclosed that what little services were running on the id network during the QuakeLive closed beta consumed at least half of their total bandwidth.

    More here.

  55. 25/02/2009 at 17:16 Anonymous says:

    For those of you who want something to do while waiting in line, try this (Firefox + Greasemonkey required):

    http://www.quakelive.com/forum/showthread.php?p=68768

  56. 25/02/2009 at 17:35 Ben says:

    Back up now, 25000 places to go :(

  57. 25/02/2009 at 17:59 Nero says:

    Man I love queues. Only around 25000 to go. Go go go!

  58. 25/02/2009 at 18:08 ascagnel says:

    …and it’s down again. :(

  59. 25/02/2009 at 18:17 Tei says:

    It seems that are getting 500 subscription every minute from europe. :-)

  60. 25/02/2009 at 18:22 Larington says:

    Umm, I’ll come back in the morning, think there may be a lot of americanos trying to get in. Not saying its a bad thing necessarily, but its bad for the queue length 30k +!?

  61. 25/02/2009 at 18:23 Tertiee says:

    I remember trying out my invite a few weeks ago late at night and worried that this would be a bust seeing only 3 people online.

  62. 25/02/2009 at 19:15 mist says:

    Meh, I got my beta invitation 2 weeks ago, had never played Q3 before but had some Warsow experience so it was at the same time the “woa this is new and cool etc”-feeling, and the “heh, at least I don’t COMPLETELY suck”-feeling, so I was quite enjoying it, playing 1-2 hours a day..

    ..and now I can’t play anymore since there are 40000 people in the queue in front of me :(

    Oh well, I’m sure it will calm down a bit. Maybe I should just go play with the Scout update.

  63. 25/02/2009 at 19:48 metavariable says:

    Position in queue: 56972

    Liked this better when it was still in beta :P

  64. 25/02/2009 at 19:52 Ben says:

    omg got to the top of a 25000 queue to dl 1 thing and then get in a 60000 queue :/

  65. 25/02/2009 at 19:53 Noc says:

    It still IS in beta. It’s just in Open Beta. Which lets them find out things like the fact that their servers aren’t capable of handling fifty-thousand people’s worth of extra capacity.

  66. 26/02/2009 at 00:14 itsallcrap says:

    For Mac/Linux I guess you’re currently out of luck

    Wait, this isn’t cross-platform? It’s a browser game that’s OS-specific?!

    Load up Q3 again, anyone?

  67. 21/03/2009 at 02:35 Doomtrain says:

    What are U guys goin on about? Qued? i never had to wait for that shit. Just loaded up any updates and jumped on a server :S easy as that.

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