"For the past few years id has been accused of being a "technology company" rather than a game developer. With each new release, they come closer to meeting that definition...."

Comments?

Stop the flaming? ID software is NO DIFFERENT than many other software companies out there; they will release just enough fluff and functionality to satisfy customer demand. There will always be something to whine and complain about. The bottom line is Quake3 is still the definitive standard for high-end fps gaming. If sales had hurt Q3A's debut, ID would have quickly added additional 'fluff' to try and counteract that. But sales were stellar.

I am so sick and tired of Quake haters comparing Q3 to UT, and HalfLife. If I make this comparison through a narrow view-only focusing on issues where UT and halflife may be better than Q3, then obviously from that perspective I would flame Quake and view Team Arena and Q3 as a waste of money.
Look at the games in their entirety rather than a few gameplay modes/features. quakeIII is not just a game, its an application that sets new standards not only in the gaming arena, but productivity apps as well. No OTHER FPS GAME ON THE PLANET COMPARES TO THE TECHNICAL EXCELLENCE THAT QUAKE EMBODIES. There is no other fps game with the technical scability of Quake3. Why do you think they are considered a 'technology company'? Because of what Quake3 is. Why don't we blast Sierra, and epic for their lackluster graphics engines? Top end video cards (such as the GTS, GTS ULtra, and radeon) aren't even exploited to their maximum potential in games like UT, and Counterstrike. Why not blast Epic and Sierra for that? Why don't we blast Epic, and Sierra for their continued exploitation of yesterdays hardware and technology? voodoo is dead. It is not fair to flame ID Software for the same tactics that have been demonstrated by their so called competition.
Don't get me wrong, I do agree that Counterstrike and UT have more gameplay fluff than Quake3. but in the long run, that's not very important to me.
When you look at the products from a well rounded perspective, your money's worth is with Quake3.

So the point of this whole flame is "Kill the double standard and have high expectations for all games and not just Quake3"

"No OTHER FPS GAME ON THE PLANET COMPARES TO THE TECHNICAL EXCELLENCE THAT QUAKE EMBODIES. There is no other fps game with the technical scability of Quake3. Why do you think they are considered a 'technology company'? Because of what Quake3 is. Why don't we blast Sierra, and epic for their lackluster graphics engines? Top end video cards (such as the GTS, GTS ULtra, and radeon) aren't even exploited to their maximum potential in games like UT, and Counterstrike. Why not blast Epic and Sierra for that?"

Probably because the gameplay is superior in CounterStrike and UT. I realize that for that tiny minority of hardcore FPS fans, Q3 is the top end, but there's a much larger pool of FPS players for whom a game like UT with superior bots, alternative fire modes, more game styles, and more maps is superior.

"Don't get me wrong, I do agree that Counterstrike and UT have more gameplay fluff than Quake3. but in the long run, that's not very important to me.

"When you look at the products from a well rounded perspective, your money's worth is with Quake3."

See, I disagree with this. Right now CounterStrike is far and away the most popular online shooter, and if you want to play offline against bots, how can you beat UT?

Quake 3 was disappointing out of the box compared to Unreal Tournament, and now Team Arena is disappointing for the reasons we touched on in our review.

Thanks for stopping by though! We appreciate your comments.

Anyway... there's a lot of good points in the messages above, but I am still stuck with the fact that iD charges $30 for what is merely a mod.
Technical and all, but that really sucks!

You can blame the mod makers out there for not coming up with the idea first. id has the time, money, and resources to knock something like Team Arena out a lot faster than most mod makers/mod teams. You might as well slam Microsoft for making Microsoft Plus...but everyone buys it, because they know it's a quality addon.

Notice I didn't say Team Arena is good ;)

"quakeIII is not just a game, its an application that sets new standards not only in the gaming arena, but productivity apps as well. "

I don't know about you guys but I pretty much stopped reading after this sentence.

The Q3 Arena add-on is decent. We can argue about whether or not it should have been free all day. But the point is moot; id has already lost the race to be the premiere platform for online play. They are third behind #2 Epic, and both companies are far, far behind Valve.

All hail the new king. Valve. Just expect that lead to widen once TF2 is released sometime this year (yes, it will happen).

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

"The Q3 Arena add-on is decent. We can argue about whether or not it should have been free all day. But the point is moot; id has already lost the race to be the premiere platform for online play. They are third behind #2 Epic, and both companies are far, far behind Valve."

id of course has the right to charge for anything they do. No argument there. But by doing so, they're not really being as competitive in the marketplace as the other guys. And yeah, everyone's fallen behind Valve, and that's because of the gameplay. Valve, by providing the engine (and now grabbing the dev teams) for Team Fortress and CounterStrike is the clear leader.

"All hail the new king. Valve. Just expect that lead to widen once TF2 is released sometime this year (yes, it will happen)."

I predict a big year for Valve. Not only will we see TF2 finally, they'll most likely announce and start showing Half-Life 2 (they have to be working on that) and I'm guessing at least one more game.

Of course, Doom 3 or whatever it's going to be called will be big also. I'm guessing it's a 2002 game. Maybe Return to Wolfenstein will be big too. And finally, Tribes 2 should be cool. Despite the 50,000 screenshots posted on the web, I'm still excited about this one.

One of the problems that I've seen with this expansion pack, is it's lack of harmony with Q3...technology company they may be turning into, but for the majority of gamers out there who aren't hardcore...they aren't going to expect the kind of problems right out of the box that many buyers are currently experiencing. I shouldn't have to know all that much about the underpinning of the game to get it to work properly; and when I have to perform two (!) complete uninstalls and re-installs just to get it to run semi-normally (let's not even get into abysmal framrates here); you really get the feeling that you've been taken for a ride...Id should take a cue from their competitors...wanna release and expansion pack and charge 30 dollars for it? I hope it runs well out of the box with few problems that can be easily solved...a P3 700 and a V5 shouldn't have near the problems I've had with TA...incomplete work just makes Id look bad. (My 2 sense BTW)

I'd say the $30 for this game is crap when awesome and *full* games come out for $40. It's an expansion that's not as great as expansion packs for other games let alone Q2CTF2 (which was *free*). After playing it I feel it shouldn't be more than $20, if not, free. I would rather have bought Counter-Strike even though I already have Half-Life.

Q3:TA isn't a bad mod, it has a lot of nice features that makes it look professional, but it's incomplete.

Maybe Activision shouldn't have spent all the money to package it and get it in stores and in turn have it a purchase=>download on the Internet for less?

heres how it is now:top 5 games by players
Half Life 30700
Unreal Tournament 3819
Quake 3: Arena 3420
Starsiege TRIBES 1796

"Q3 is the top end, but there's a much larger pool of FPS players for whom a game like UT with superior bots, alternative fire modes, more game styles, and more maps is superior

now i wont argue that CS is way in front(dig a little deepeer and u see that CS has like 29000 players or so)but wheres this much larger pool of ut players????

now id admit ive only played CS or even HL multiplayer a handfull of times, i just cant stand how slow it is honestly. i know its fun to pretend im some vip or terrorist or such but i grew out of that a long time ago with paper rpg's

and when i want multiplayer game that gives me a challenge beyond that of hitting a modem user more times that he hits me cause its coded in that way(FUCK YOU VALVE)i might play HL/CS...nah its still too damn slow!!!!

as for ut i wont even bother wasting my time...
cause there is no reason to (oohh assault WOW)

but it allows me to reach my point

YOU WOULDNT BE BITCHING IF YOU WERE PLAYING THE GAME YOU PREFER

and im going to quake now cause i dont wanna whine i wanna play and thats what quake does in spades GAMEPLAY not useless firing modes, or hundreds of useless guns or anything these so called players like to use as excuses as why their obsolescent _ID_ licensed engined title is better than current _ID_ technology.

Where do you get your figures from guys?

Well.. it doesn't really matter... they varie extremely much, and I know that about two months ago, QII was at the top in Sweden!

UT and Q3A has always been around 50/50, and thats why every discussion like this ends up in a ehm.. lame "Q3 vs. UT" c(s)hit chat.

I would pay $30 just to verify the OUTSTANDING technology job the guys at id do, and actually almost see the mod as a "bonus" to that.

Dammit, i've been playing the Q-series for several years, and Unreal too.

But there is no doubt, what so ever, that id sets industry standards that benefits the whole gaming scene. Without them, we wouldn't even have OpenGL the way it is today. There is a reason why good old John C. sits on the company boards of nVidia, Microsoft, 3D(former)Fx etc...

Don't you think it has to sting just a little to know that, after years of being unquestioned king of online gaming, now you're only a distant third?

I think John C. has to be a little irked about that. Quite a fall from the days of QuakeWorld, Quake, and Quake 2 ruling the online gaming world with an iron fist.

I'm still very excited about Return to Wolfenstein though! That looks a heck of a lot more exciting than any of the Q3 mods I've seen.

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

id doesnt have to play the "free content" game because they dont have to. Epic releases bonus packs because they want to increase their user base. id already has their user base, and they most likely always will. I'm willing to bet that most of those 30k HL players purchased Q3. Most of the UT players probably purchased Q3 as well. Epic is engaging in a PR game, its not because they love their fans or they're socialists, its because they want a community around their games. Why should id give anything away for free? They already have what Epic wants. Dont even get me started on Valve, they release a new "boxed" version of HL every couple of months, and guess what...they charge money for it. Having CS go retail is their way of cashing in on newbies who dont necessarily know that a) its a mod, and b) its a FREE mod. If Valve really wanted to give the community free stuff, they'd let someone like PC Gamer put CS on a cd. Its always about money. Do you think Epic is going to give their next game away? Or Valve?

One other thing. No company owes you anything for free. WTF is this shit? Its a mission pack...id has always charged for a mission pack. Its extra, its new content, if you want to play it you pay money for it. Was Zaero free? Was it basically a mod? Aren't all mission packs basically mods? When you clicked on the EULA theres nothing in it that says that when you purchase this product, we'll give you free addons up the ass. Do you go to a record store, buy a cd, then come back every time the artist releases a new cd and demand that it should be free because it wasnt on the first cd you bought? What the hell is wrong with you people. I dont even play Q3 or TA but this shit is ridiculous.

One MORE thing. UT is nothing more than an Unreal mod. Epic was actually going to release it as a patch to fix Unreal's poor multiplayer. Guess what? They charged you for a mod.

Where's the review? I can see adding a side note
about the pricetag, but babbling about it and
calling it a review? pfft!

QuarterToThree::Our personal soapbox.

bah! I'll prolly never read anything here again.

wumpus how could carmack care??? the checks in the bank, and he and his team are the ones responsible(and us as well DONT BITCH)for creating this community not to mention all the royalties from valve and epic, and everyone else from licensing q1,q2 and now q3 tech. So what has he lost????? my dear fool he only gains.

I'm glad Mark and Tom decided to do something on Team: Arena -- FPS spats bring 68% more idiots than spats about other gaming genres. Nothing beats the "I [heart] Quake and Everything Else Sucks" peeps vs. the "I [heart] UT and Everything Else Sucks" peeps. It's like a new kind of Street Fighter 2 Turbo Alpha Deluxe Edition, only playing with "Stargate" controls.

My opinion, which you should all fall over yourselves, slobbering and mewling in recognition of my m46 l33tx0r d3b4t0Rz 5k1llz:

* If you're a UT player, Epic has spoiled you. Believe it or not, most other companies -- id (the All-Mighty, the All-Compassionate) included -- actually CHARGE for additional material. This includes expansion packs that are, to put it in the highest technical terms, fucking lame. Monolith and Blood 2, anyone? It happens.

And that's about it. I was going to spend a bunch of time shooting down the 10E^24 specious arguments and just plain hypocritical biased crap I read in the stuff above, but I actually get *paid* to do that -- somewhere else. So I won't.

Happy Menarch!

--scharmers

--P.S. UT, Q3, and HL suck -- CYCLONES, now there was a shooter

UT was a mod, I think that's a good point. When UT came out I refused to buy it too, because I felt the same way I do about Q3:TA. MORE OF THE SAME. Of course, some people love the old, so they go back for more. Personally I think Q3:TA has a much richer and stylistic environment. The artists at id kick ass.

Gabe runs Valve a little like MS runs (I think they rubbed off on him) and his company has a knack for making money and absorbing good ideas ;P You can't blame them... they hired the dev teams and made have a great combination of dudes workin' for them. The constant repackaging is really boring now. I think the CS retail was an OK idea though. They didn't charge that much money for it, and I have several friends with slow modems who have said, "I'd rather pay the $20 for the CD than spend 18 hours downloading." Makes sense to me.

And good ol' Carmack... It's obvious the man's a thinking machine. Consider that the Half-Life engine was once based off the Quake1/2 engines!!!! And it's still runnin smooth today (albeit with some tweaks from Valve.) I think Carmack and id enjoy less pressure than other game companies. They can do what they WANT to do with their games. I personally don't think Carmack cares about sales as much as he cares about coding. Their next game is DOOM3 and the focus is on single player content. The patterns from Quake down to Quake 3 (and now single player doom) show what looks to be a very interesting learning curve, and a shifting of focus within the company.

But I still wouldn't pay $30.

-Quantum Tantra

"id doesnt have to play the "free content" game because they dont have to. Epic releases bonus packs because they want to increase their user base. id already has their user base, and they most likely always will. I'm willing to bet that most of those 30k HL players purchased Q3. Most of the UT players probably purchased Q3 as well. Epic is engaging in a PR game, its not because they love their fans or they're socialists, its because they want a community around their games."

I'm pretty sure UT has outsold Q3, so Epic's won the community battle in a lot of ways.

Hardcore FPS fans will purchase all the Epic and id shooters. The larger pool of gamers are the ones who are more casual about the shooters. They may buy one a year and mostly play it offline. You're not going to see them reflected in Gamespy server numbers.

Of course id can charge whatever they want for anything they put out. That's a given. Don't expect reviewers to ignore the value vs. price issue when they discuss a game, though. In this case, Team Arena's value is a bit hard to justify the cost when compared to other FPS offerings.

"QuarterToThree::Our personal soapbox.

bah! I'll prolly never read anything here again."

Heh -- hey, that's fair. You should know that every review is a soapbox, of course.

The reviews we do here are designed to be short. We do longer "first impressions" pieces we call "Early Hours." Check some of those out.

"Don't you think it has to sting just a little to know that, after years of being unquestioned king of online gaming, now you're only a distant third?

"I think John C. has to be a little irked about that. Quite a fall from the days of QuakeWorld, Quake, and Quake 2 ruling the online gaming world with an iron fist."

I agree, which is why Q3:TA's lameness surprised me. This should have been a kickass expansion. Instead it's just a quick cash grab. I'm disappointed in id.

Is'nt TA3 a standalone game as well?

Amen, is all I can say. This is the best review of Team Arena I've read thus far. Preach on!

Current players according to GameSPy.com stats

Half Life 35996
Unreal Tournament 5168
Quake 3: Arena 4336
Starsiege TRIBES 2693
Quake II 1396

http://www.gamespy.com/stats/index.shtm

I'm going to get the new UT bonus pack. Forget Team Arena. Even $17.99 is too much!

I BID... ONE DOLLAR!

Actually I do think TA is kinda kick-ass, in that it makes Quake 3 Arena what it should have been in the first place-- good for teamplay and good for mod development.

The problem is that it's too little, too late, for too much money. We should be playing the "killer" mods by now if there was any hope at all for the Q3 engine. But we're not.

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

p.s. scharmers, your a fag!!

"I'm going to get the new UT bonus pack. Forget Team Arena. Even $17.99 is too much!"

It's probably worth having in the long run, but I'd wait until a few good mods for it come out.

It's just really surprising that id didn't try to pack more value into it. I guess "when it's ready" is now "in time for Christmas."

Oh, and Wumpus, you can add these numbers to your list. From MSN Gaming's Zone:

2425 Rogue Spear
1365 Rainbow Six

It's pretty clear that team-based shooters have far surpassed in popularity the DM and CTF games. When you add up the CounterStrike players, Tribes, and the 3800 Rainbow/Rogue Spear players, it's no contest.

Dear Wumpus,

RE: "your [sic] a fag!!"

You have no idea, Mr. Atwood. Absolutely no idea.

--scharmers
--who still gets paid for this stuff

Mark:

CTF is still very strong, though. The majority of people who play UT play CTF, the rest DM, and very little DOM, AS, or RA.

--scharmers

Holy crap. That 60 second review had about 60 milliseconds of thought.
"After Unreal Tournament, Epic releases Bonus Packs. After Half Life, Valve releases Team Fortress. After Quake III, id releases Team Arena � and has the audacity to slap a $30 price tag on it. "

The bonus packs were LEVELS, not code. It's like apples and oranges.
So valve should also give their "counterstike" edition of half-life away for free? Look at your local game store, I do believe there is a price tag on it. And Opposing force should be free? How about every game company be REQUIRED to release free stuff? Sound unreasonable? No shit it is, but I'm just taking your logic to the next extreme.

I really don't see the logic in trashing id for charging money for their product. If you don't think it's worth it, DON'T BUY IT. Simple! You can even play the demo to decide if you like it first. They only get their $30 if you give it to them first, right? I gave them mine and it was worth every penny and then some. I've got the most bang for the buck from id products over the years, so I don't mind paying for anything they make.

"Just a mod". Ya okay, whatever. Not even going to dignify that one with a response.

This review is complete bullshit... Sure it has a few new models, maps, and sounds... But ID Software has released a game that's finally addictive, mostly because I can't get away from those terrain maps. I almost guarantee that ID's next game will have this technology implented and used very much. And you mock 'the decency of charging $30 for'? What is it these days, people just expect things to come by freely? Think of it this way, if you're a cheap bastard who makes minimum wage and you spend a whole day working 10 hours to get the $30 to pay for it, then fine you have a right to be angry. My point is, that Team Arena is AWESOME. It's purpose has definitely been made to 'enhance' the best Deathmatch game of all time to one of the top ranking Team games of all time. This article should be retracted, the reviewer needs to lighten up a bit, Team Arena in my opinion was worth every penny.

Lots of you guys are missing the difference between Sierra/Epic and id. I promise to pick up a copy of Team Arena if id treats it the same way Sierra treats CS: release it as a free download, and only charge for the retail version. I've got a cable modem, bring it on!

As to why people want free content, that is because the competition, who have created superior games (just look at the number of online players - obviously some things are more fun than others) all have released tons of free content, and so have changed the expectation of the market. We want free stuff because everyone else does it, and that makes id look really cheap & money-grubbing when they don't. You have short memories if you don't remember the huge flames blasted at Sierra for charging $40 for Opposing Force.

"The bonus packs were LEVELS, not code. It's like apples and oranges.

So valve should also give their "counterstike" edition of half-life away for free? Look at your local game store, I do believe there is a price tag on it. And Opposing force should be free? How about every game company be REQUIRED to release free stuff? Sound unreasonable? No shit it is, but I'm just taking your logic to the next extreme."

Hey, thanks for stopping by. No, I don't think game companies should give everything away for free, but id looks bad packaging up what is essentially mod work and selling it for an MSRP of $30. I thought Opposing Force was overpriced and said so in a CNET column I write. CounterStrike is a bit different. If you have Half-Life, you don't need the retail version of CS. Otherwise, you need *something* to play it, just like you need Q3 to play Q3 mods.

I posted this on Stomped's boards.

But my beef doesn't begin and end with the price. I just don't think you get very much in the add-on to boot. I don't really care for the new models, I don't like the colors in some of the levels (too garish), I don't like the decision to not design the new maps for specific game types, and I want assault maps.

I expected more new engineering from id, and I didn't really get it. Even at $15 I'd consider this to be a pretty lackluster release. If it was lined up with all the other free mods as a free download, I doubt it would even be my first pick.

I think what's going on here is that players who love Q3 like this expansion, while players who play other games are lukewarm about it. Is there enough here to make a CounterStrike fan switch? Is there enough here to make a UT fan switch? I don't think so, and that's what's disappointing about id and this expansion. This was a chance for them to step up and offer something that could rival a mod like CounterStrike or offer some of the gameplay UT came with, and id just decided to shrug and say, "Here are some new maps, a few new game types, and a few new weapons and models."

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts. It's always interesting to hear opposing viewpoints.

Of which this isn't one. Q3:TA just isn't worth the money. Period. There seems to be the impression that we want 'something for nothing'. Untrue. But for $30, I expect something signifcant, and Team Arena just doesn't offer me anything that valuable. It takes a game that I wasn't terribly impressed with, and adds options to it that should have been in the previous release. Other than the Quake faithful, I don't think this is going to prove as popular with most gamers.

For the record, both Valve's releases and UT's bonus packs have more than just maps in them. Multiple small technology upgrades have come with each one. Half-life released TFC as part of the standard patch. Are they obligated to do this, gratis? Of course not. But the majority of online players are still playing the multiplayer portion of a game that's over two years old. That should tell you something.

Oh, and when did game content become 'fluff'? Wasn't that the whole point to begin with?

This review is a joke right!?! Must be!! No one is forcing you to buy it!! And the fact that you are giving praise to Epic for UT is what diminishes the credibility of this review!! Remember one thing dude!! UT is what Unreal should have been in the first place but how some people forget about the troubles we had with Unreal as it didnt play online worth a crap!! Please do us a favour and do honest reviews about the product!! So I guess its not ok to charge for new content that cant be downloaded for free on the net but if Sierra and Epic repackage the same stuff over and over again and give it some retarded name like "Millenium version" or "the version that actually works" that is ok then I guess!! And remember one small importand thing, "ID is a tech company", yes this is true to a certain extent but your favourite games you play online such as Counterstrike are also based on what engine!! And please dont say the Half Life engine!!!!! So from now on if your gonna compare different companies and the way they do stuff then please mention all the facts not just the ones you care to say!! This might give a shred of credibility to your otherwise ridiculous review! And for the record I have no allegiance to anyone game, I play all of them online!!! The TA mission pack is a welcome addition to my favourite hobby and to myself its worth the money!!

Ok, let me guess, this "60 seconds review" thing goes like this: The reviewer plays the game (in this case TA) for 60 seconds, then sets his pet monkey to type the review?

That's what it looks like, at least.

"Ok, let me guess, this "60 seconds review" thing goes like this: The reviewer plays the game (in this case TA) for 60 seconds, then sets his pet monkey to type the review?"

Actually, we have our pet monkeys play the game and then have our pet ferrets type the review. In this case they obviously made a mistake. The review should have read:

"ID GAMEZ ROCK! TEAM ARENA KICKS UT'S ASS! AND COUNTERSTRIKE'S TOO! EPIC AND VALVE ARE SOOO STOOOOPID! ID IS SO KEWL! ID SHOULD HAVE CHARGED ONE HUNNERT DOLLARS FOR THIS! IT WOULD HAVE BEEN WORTH IT!"

Stupid ferrets. Sorry about that. Next time we'll have the pet weasels write the review.

what really kills me is the fact that you have no choice but to remove all previous mods,bots and skins or make q3 dual version boot if you wanna keep your old stuff yet the demo runs on 1.17
plus pay the 30.00 bucks for it yet nowhere on the retail box will say to upgrade q3 or remove
any mods before playing thats pathetic lucky we
only bought one copy to test before the rest of
our group got it id if you care thats 9 less copies

"what really kills me is the fact that you have no choice but to remove all previous mods,bots and skins or make q3 dual version boot if you wanna keep your old stuff yet the demo runs on 1.17 plus pay the 30.00 bucks"

Yet another reason why it's going to splinter the Q3 community. Commercial expansions never sell through as well as the original game, and when the software versions become incompatible, then you get the "haves" who can no longer play with the "didn't want its".

Everquest has about 300,000 active subscribers, but the Kunark expansion only sold through to about 160,000 of them. That's a pretty robust expansion that adds a whole new continent, improved graphics, and a new playable race. If something like that could only get a little more than 50% of the fanatical player population to upgrade, what chance does Q3:TA have?

That's inaccurate. User-made mods merely need to be recompiled to work on the freely downloadable Quake3 version 1.25.

Bear in mind that both TA and Q3 run on the same exe. The only thing you won't get for $30 is access to the TA-specific content.

Besides, 1.25 is supposedly a much better platform for mods.

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

All these computers and the games are really stupid, I think we should quite shoting people all the time and start using the delete button to "make examples" for other people (just like on Age Of Empires) I think we need to sit down and think instead of just crapping on our games and actually make something useful. I think we need to make a more modern version of Nightmare 3-D. We could create a whole new gaming platform.
thank you for listining to my bitching

I am glad that you dumb losers read what I put on here (you can't have a life, you read all of these review and you madedown this far) who actually cares about all these games and who actually doesn't have any thing better to do than complain about a game? Just do what I do and if it gives you a hard time--just burn it and forget about the whole thing (wow) but if your more technical, you can log on your little zippy computers and type to all the other depressed fools out there that would probably marry there own computers over a woman, me personaly I don't prefer that and I think it is wrong just like this whole comment page is and every one needs to be here any ways. If you have problems with your life (people please don't get angry at the game) call this number
1-800-get a bitch

I personally like touching myself when I read these reviews, they are such a turn on. You really know how to turn a girl on, now I can pick up a sexy game to touch my self to and I can get a date while im at it.

Way to go I am going to tell my girlfreinds about all you hunks out there

TEAM ARENA, it's GREAT it's FUNNY and with a lot of NEW ITEM and GAMEPLAY! :)

Who not understand this easy concept, are only a big big STUPID!!

Fabio, are you absolutely SURE you aren't really a writer for Old Man Murray in disguise?

Occasionally I feel like I may be in a feverish, waking dream where everything is a parody of itself. The last few messages in this thread are doing nothing to convince me otherwise. And where's Rod Serling when I need him?

wumpus

Team Arena sucks so bad that i'm never going to play it.

So I copied q3a to another dir, i had to reinstall it to get ta going. Then i went to the trouble of putting this on my machine (some 1.5 extra gigs (q3 & ta)).

This product reeks!

The maps are complicated and boring. The player models look like my little nephew sketched them with ms paint (they must have been taken from Steed's working folder because he is much better than that). The game modes are boring. The voice commands are useless and irritating.

I hope Id learns from this mistake.

Bottom line: Doom will have to kick major ass or I won't buy it.

THIS SITE SUX.
The great games, like QuakeIIIArena and Alice are being let down by some wanker editors of this site.
PEOPLE!!! dont buy such Crap as UT.
I cant stand this nonsence!!! I feel, like i'm locked in a plastic container. so much hype in this asshole game. Unreal Tournament chicken madness.
HL only weeps cos of Counter Strike, awesome action mod; but The rest is shit.

"Unreal Tournament chicken madness."

This, btw, is one of my favorite mods.

-Tom

I find it interesting that the negative Q3A review is the only one that attracts the 1337 h4x0rs and their phenomenal debating skills.

I think I'm getting old, because I cannot figure out what "weeps" means in this context.

Yeah, I think Tom and I will revive the Warcraft 2 vs. Command and Conquer flamewars to drive up hits.

Ehm.. soz, i missed "is": "UT is chicken madness"
...Mod?!
HL Weeps: means cry, "talks about itself". (that 1 used to be a great S/P game).

Hey ext, thanks for the translation. Remember, when the spirit of Quake fills you and you speak in tongues, not all of us will understand you. :)

Outside of some "feel" issues with Q3 and UT, I don't really see how anyone playing the two can compare them. The controls in Q3 do feel a bit tighter to me, but it seems to me like you have to really be a hardcore, 8 hours a day player to have that make much of a difference.

So why do you like Q3 so much better than UT? I don't think Q3 is terrible; it's just not quite up to UT in what you get out of the box.

Hey, Mark
Well, Unreal's developers, Epic's attitude is clear to me: We make games because we like to make money.
Well, id's folks attitude is: We make money cos we like to make nice games... Look at QuakeIII, the model animations, richness of textures, originality of design.
All the Unreal's attitude is such slick and groovy pathetic attitude.
Engine is crap. well the look of it is. It feels like UT is game for lamers.
Weapons are child toys. look at the blaster (oh, c'mon, what a piece of crap!!!)
Well if u havent played Quake1 (dm), than the game might favor to you, otherwise u have some other reason not to enjoy QIIIA: some demigod kicked your ass.
I dont play 8 hours a day, not even that much a week (only sometimes, and even a bit more), thus it didnt stop me from kicking someone's ass, amost all bots on Nightmare, except Xaero m8.
If you have some time to spare on a game of

Mark, I can't help but get the feeling that you are pissed at id for some reason. IMHO UT and Q3 are both great games. Forget about out of the box. Look what Q3 is as a whole. The fact is that many people find Q3A (and TA) fanfrickintastic fun. TA may be a bit pricey (and it is perfectly fair to mention that in the review--i paid 20 bucks) but I can't for the life of me understand how you can think UT is so great and Q3 so lousy. I just don't get it. Maybe it is the bouncepads? Maybe you have a voodoo3? No good with the Railgun? Maybe you just don't like the art or "style". Fair enough. But the tone of your article suggests that id doesn't make fun games and that the "lost" some kind of "war". Looking Glass lost. id appears to be doing fine. They are a very small dev house that is still making excellent cutting edge games. When all the little guys have been brought to heel by the MS's of the world you will have a greater appreciation for what id is doing. IMHO.

I played UT. I loved UT. It was fun to play against the bots, working my way through the tournament. It was easy to use mutators. It was easy to select options to make the levels play differently -- never had to use a command line once, as I recall. I loved the Assault maps. I loved the variety of CTF maps.

Then I played Q3A. It was just boring playing against the bots. The levels didn't have as much variety. There were no Assault maps. There were just a few CTF maps. The models were nicer, but the game was so fast-paced I couldn't even appreciate them. To change options I had to use command line stuff. It just seemed like half the game that UT was.

But none of that mattered to me when I played Q3:TA. I just thought it was disappointing as an add-on. It was id's chance to step up and they didn't.

No accounting for taste :-) Yep, no assault in Q3A or TA. Bots in UT better for offline teamplay. I thought UT was as fast paced as Q3 in many ways. UT had a better interface. I agree with you about TA being a disappointment but for different reasons. I was blown away by Q3. I think TA is great but I definitely wasn't blown away.

Hey, I'm glad we can disagree without resorting to "u suk! My [insert favorite game] rules!"

I think what surprised me the most about TA was that UT clearly had more stuff out of the box than Q3 and for the first time Epic really had pulled even with id. So with id no longer being the clear market leader, I expected them to respond with a stronger expansion. Instead it seemed like a quick grab for some bucks. I dunno -- it may have been in their contract with Activision to do an expansion and it may have been something they weren't really enthused about doing.

Just look at the care Blizzard takes with their expansions. Brood Wars really added a lot of quality to the game with new units and great new single-player campaigns and cinematics. The Diablo II expansion also looks like it will add significantly. That's the kind of effort I expect from major developers.

I gotta give Epic alot of credit since everything i know about computers (i build, fix, tinker with my own) i owe to Unreal. It was the first "shooter" i ever played and was hooked, bought a Voodoo2, upgraded my computer and never looked back (the fact that you could fight against "bots" boggled my mind at the time). Actually the only reason I got into Q3 was that I had decided to go Linux. I was trying to get the glx drivers working for accelerated 3d on my Matrox G400. The Linux demo was a great troubleshooter/benchmark. I got so into Q3DM17 on the demo I installed windows again for better performance. I've never played anything else by id so I guess I haven't seen the "downfall". Still, while I love Epic and their free stuff I can't hate id for charging for theirs. I've got so much value out of Q3 and some cool mods (alliance is way cool and is weapons factory) 20 bucks for TA doesn't seem so bad. Neverthless I get sick of Q3 quite often because I'm just not good enough. Then I play Grand Prix Legends to remind myself what sucking really is.

"No good with the Railgun?"

This goes back to my previous criticism of Q3. As I have said before, I like a game where all of the weapons have the potential to quickly kill one's adversary. I think it levels the playing field & makes the game more accessible to rookies (since they can get luck shots that kill even the most 1337) and makes the game more intense for the experienced player (since even the lamest HPB newbie can kill them if they make a mistake).

Q3, on the other hand, has only one weapon that is a hitscan kill (rail), and one other that is a kill on a single hit (RL). These weapons are both difficult to use, which means you have to practice with them if you want to be good. If you have not done so, you are just a target. Also, you need to memorize the location of good armor and weapons in the levels in order to get to them first. This being shot up constantly and being unable to reach the equipment needed to be competitive makes the game seriously un-fun for the casual gamers and newbies, so they generally learn to stay away.

Now, I must go Psych 101 on this issue. Computer games can provide a false sense of mastery, and that feels good. You might be a "nobody" in real life, but you can excel at a game to gain a sense of mastery and accomplishment. I call it a false sense, because you have not mastered anything that will actually change your life. If you are really good at Q3, and most people you play against are not, it provides that sense of mastery over something or someone else. If you then go play UT, or CS, and some newbie gets in a shot, or you have a bad streak of luck, it takes away the sense of mastery. Thus, if a player is used to dominating, and obtaining some form of gratification from that, they won't like the games where they cannot dominate. To me anyway, this explains some of the unquestioning dedication of the 1337 to Q3.

"Computer games can provide a false sense of mastery, and that feels good"
.. Oh yeah, babyl that is cool. I love railgun too...
1337?
what should that mean!?

On the off chance you aren't pulling my leg:

1337 = leet = 'lite = elite.

"On the off chance you aren't pulling my leg:

1337 = leet = 'lite = elite."

I have to confess that I never really knew what that meant. I'm pretty far gone. I see "haxor" all the time too, and I assume that means "hacker"?

Why is "porn" spelled "pr0n" all the time?

Tom, am I alienating our youthful audience by admitting to not knowing this stuff? :)

...public approach in creation of new terms can be quite interesting,

(hehe, well, have to be a bit more intuitive occasionaly:)

Yes, haxor is hacker. Suxor is sucker. Misspellings like pr0n were originally intended to beat filters.

The definitive reference: The Jargon File (from the New Hacker Dictionary)

thanks id for making team arena... it was worth every penny.

Personally I find it astounding that when the subject of QIII comes up this board attracts a gaggle of hooligans who can't spell or punctuate.

You may be able to out-frag me, but I can hit you between the eyes with a semi-colon from 30 meters.

Translated for quakers: J00 = Ph4660tz