Quake Live Open Beta Begins Feb. 24th 60
The Quake Live team has announced that the beta will open to the public on Tuesday, February 24th. On Monday, they will take the servers down, wipe all stats and prune inactive accounts, then re-open on the public site. Personal settings and current account info will be maintained for active accounts. They also said, "We're going to post some additional information in the Developer Notes about the opening of the game, what it means to leave the 'beta' tag on the site during this time, and discuss some features and functionality that we're planning for the next couple of months that we know you'll be interested in." GameSetWatch ran a story recently by a columnist who tried out the closed beta, and we discussed John Carmack's thoughts on the game a few months back.
Re:I played the closed beta... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Definitely signing up for this one (Score:4, Informative)
I wonder if it's cross platform?
Right now it's Windows-only. A Mac version is planned/on-the-way.
No love for Linux - hopefully it's just not yet. No luck with WINE yet, either.
When it's eventually 'released' it's supposed to be free isn't it? Paid for by ads?
Yes, it will be free; ad-based. The ads themselves aren't up yet but the locations were they will be are visible. They are well placed throughout and for the most part they don't really get in the way. In the rare cases that they are in the way, they are transparent - I've shot people through them.
The biggest question though is, is it going to cut in to my Desktop Tower Defence time?!!!
It's cut into my go (the board game) and Smash Bros time, and it's still in beta with a relatively low number of people playing. Expect a decrease in productivity when it is officially out :D
Re:Still win32-only? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I played the closed beta... (Score:3, Informative)
Some corrections from someone who joined the beta on Jan. 20th:
I tried the closed beta, too. Signup was a PITA (had to create 3 different logins, and then login to each of those to play).
It's two logins: one for the id beta center, and one for the actual site. You can "stay logged in" at the actual site, thereby making it only one login when you pop in to play (the id beta center one). However, the "remember me" checkbox for the Quake Live site has broken recently (at least for me) and you have to log in twice once more. A bit annoying, yes, but it takes only a few seconds more.
And then I couldn't play against other players.
Doesn't happen anymore... you must have been playing at a time that I presume they only had bots running. You should really come back and check it out, things have improved a lot.
It would force me to go through the "training" mode (this is how you move, this is how you jump, etc) which took about 5 minutes, then after that I could play a 1-on-1 match against a bot.
Training mode takes 10 minutes now. There's three basic parts.
1) Crash shows you basic stuff. "This is a jump pad." "This is ammo." "This is a health pickup." This can be skipped.
2) Crash asks you to complete a simple four stage, linear course. The course determines your skill level at a really basic level via three obstacles.
a) Jump onto this little ledge and then jump onto the next.
b) Rocket jump to a high ledge.
c) Use Rocket jumps and/or strafe jumping to travel across a hallway with a timed door. This part was kinda hard for me: I'm a decent rocket jumper, but I'm better with maneuvering than I am with sheer speed.
2) (cont.) This part is also essentially skippable: you can walk through a portal at any time and go right into the 10 minute match against Crash. The difficulty is determined by how far along you got in the obstacle course. id is assuming that if you can rocket jump high and rocket jump fast, then you're probably a good DM'r.
3) Practice match against Crash. This is to determine skill balancing. From what it seems, the skill balancing is adjusted in realtime - for instance, I was creaming her at the beginning (10-1 in a 15 frag match), but Crash eventually beat me 15-13. It seems that the bot got progressively more difficult as it measured my skill. I don't think you can skip this part, but it's honestly necessary for skill-matching to work.
So basically, after download and the 10 minute skill-matching determination match, you're good to go.
After the match was done, it would force me to go through the training mode again. After going through that rigamarole a few times I gave up on it. Not sure if this was a bug or if that's all it was supposed to let me do. If they actually let me play against other people this time around, I might give it a try.
My friend, I definitely think that you played Quake Live at its early stages. It is *much* better now and much more fun.