Quake Live Beta Ends, Optional Subscription Plans Added

An anonymous reader sends news that the beta tag has come off of id's Quake Live, and they've added two subscription plans to monetize the game. The announcement asserts early and often that the game's current "Standard" play options will remain free-to-play. The lower subscription tier gets extra maps, a new Freeze Tag game mode, and clan creation abilities, among other things, for $2 per month. The higher plan, which is twice as expensive, grants players those benefits plus the capability to create their own private servers.

Linux broken

[Anonymous Coward]

It broke the linux game, seemingly for everyone who is using the free-version, because when the ad finishes, the game crashes. No comment from id yet, 3 days later... http://www.quakelive.com/forum/showthread.php?57-Firefox-closes-when-joining-a-game-(Linux) [quakelive.com]

Pay for freeze tag?!

[mustPushCart]

Quake 3 and ID software thrived on mods and modifications to their engine and changing the source code. I was never that great at quake 3 but I would love to play freeze tag. For those who don't know, freeze tag is a team mod of quake 3 where everyone has only a modified railgun. Shooting an opponent freezes him so he cant participate in the round, you can unfreeze teammates by standing next to them for 2 seconds causing them to respawn immediately. Freezing the entire team earns your team one point and causes everyone to respawn. It was a superb game mode that i enjoyed a lot more than the regular game.

So silly. Just remake Quake 3 already!

[MunchMunch]

Problems with Quake Live compared to Quake 3 Arena:

1. No ability to mod or create/use new maps.
2. No ability to host your own servers or use unofficial servers.
3. Common free user mods now require a subscription.
4. The subscription is between 2 and 5 times what Quake 3 Arena costs, but for that price you only get 1 years' worth of gameplay instead of a lifetime's worth.

Quake 3 Arena is an awesome game that, in terms of sheer gameplay, still has no equal. If Id just re-made Quake 3 Arena with updated graphics, but the same gameplay, same customizability, same map-making and mod-ability, it would be a smash hit. The only reason people stopped playing it is because at some point it crossed the psychological boundary between "new" and "old." Tournaments stopped using it, and it faded into obscurity. But when no game has topped the visceral, breakneck pace, strategy and balance of the game, Id has a surefire hit on their hands just simply making the game look new and re-releasing it. Why they wasted all this time trying to monetize the old version is beyond me.

I'm fine with the free version, and I think the free version is a great idea. But when they start to charge for anything, it's incomprehensible why they're wasting their time trying to re-sell a dated game at a higher cost and lower value than the original.

Re:All this

[7-Vodka]

The keel skins and much more are directly configurable through a click or two in quakelive. Hard to argue it's cheating. It reduces the strain of playing.

Re:Linux broken

[7-Vodka]

While it took a couple of tries, it has worked fine for me since day 2 of release on debian. Maybe you should try again?

Re:All this

[loraksus]

Don't forget, the $10 bargain bin game is less buggy.
I played this last week, what a disappointing, pointless clusterfuck.

Re:All this

[Vectormatic]

I was very impressed with the Linux version of the game. Installed and ran flawlessly in ubuntu 10.04 x86_64. Didn't even have to edit a config file :)

i will have to check this thing out just for this very reason

Re:So silly. Just remake Quake 3 already!

[sgtrock]

You do know that the original TF was written for Quake, right? IMO, it's still the best class and objective based gameplay ever written. TFC was merely a rewrite for the Half-Life engine. The only other mod that ever came close was Weapons Factory (written for the Q2 engine), and that borrowed a lot of concepts from TF.

I've said this before and I'll probably say something like it many times more: The sheer diversity and creativity demonstrated by the modding community for Quake and Q2 was mind boggling. I agree; a big part of what limited widespread adoption of Q3A and Q4 was the deterioration of the modding tools that id software made available. Too many modders found porting their projects from Q2 to Q3A's engine too difficult. Those that stayed interested ended up moving over to Half-Life and Unreal engines instead.

Re:how is quake live better again?

[Threni]

>> censored language chat in game
> Come on, do these things honestly bother you that much?

Also, wrong. There's no censorship in game.

Re:FRAUD

[h7]

How would you like all the services you deal with billed annually, but then misrepresented as a monthly cost? It's NOT a monthly cost unless you have the option to pay monthly. The fact that you guys don't understand that this is a marketing gimmick is amazing. Just cause it's in the fine print, doesn't mean it's not a questionable practice. They know that no one will pay $24 for this 10 (?) year old piece of shit, so they advertise a monthly rate but then surprise them with an annual rate. They're sleazeballs