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QUAKE LIVE LAUNCHED TODAY - game changer

First, I have to give a shout-out to Dean Takahashi, writer at Venture Beat, who pointed me to Quake Live in his latest article today. Dean, IMHO, offers the latest and most comprehensive online game industry coverage, and I follow his and Andrew Chen’s posts religiously. Andrew is arguably the most fact knowledgeable entrepreneur, VC, and angel investor. Jeremy Lieu is another to follow for his good insight, although his entries span more than game topics if that is your only interest.

Now let’s get down to my experience playing on Quake Live. I have already tried the beta, and the live site is a huge improvement.

After you sign up, you’re put in a queue of other users waiting to play the game, mostly to balance server load. My position in the game playing queue was # 46,457, and 20 minutes later, it was only # 41,757. It’s safe to say that at this rate, I’d get to play sometime tomorrow morning. Unless of course current players realized that I am god’s gift to first person shooters, and made room by leaving. (Doubt it.)

Then something strange happened. Either I cut the line through some fluke, or more likely, the queue is a fictional tool used to deter players from trying to play when they’re already at capacity. They might be trying to impress someone with the high number of fake/realistic players, who’s not really into gaming enough to wait to play. Who knows, but I was sent to another web page to download and install their required browser plug-in, which must be updated from the beta version I already installed.

The installation took no time at all, and after logging back in, I tried to play a game. I was told that I had to first have my skill level assessed through a placement match. It’s basically training mode, where you jump through some hoops and go head-to-head in a deathmatch with a bot that adjusts her skill level to your performance. I think they do this by increasing her skill level each time you are up 1 or 2 kills, so you’re constantly going up and then returning to a draw score. While waiting for the game to begin, you can select one from a bunch of character styles.

Bored and out of my day’s allotment of “playtime” after reaching a draw of around 4 kills, I quit the placement match and tried joining a game, to no avail. I was greeted with the following message, “you must complete the 10 minute placement match.”

At first, this annoyed me. I mean, it’s not my first time playing. I’m the self-entitled god of Quake, or “the Harbinger of Death” as my fallen opponents gurgle at me from their death throes. Actually, my alias is “ragMF1″ in most shoot’em ups, if you ever want to find and play against me.

I’m not going to break down the Quake-playing basics. You’ve played before, and they’re all there. What I will tell you is that they’ve done an incredible job, well-documented everything, and are paving the way for the future of multiplayer gaming.

Last and precautionary, you should make sure you have the minimum system requirements well met, because game play is demanding on my laptop, and I can tell that my graphics card is heating up my machine, slowly and noticeably after 5 minutes of play.

What are the system requirements?

As the computer works harder to cope with it, there is not game lag from my internet connection, but game lag caused by holding down forward, shoot, and a host of other commands that just get backed up somewhere in my machine’s ether-world. Enough backup so that I lose control of my character’s movement and he keeps walking forward. Interestingly, the mouse aim and shoot function stays flawless, so although I’m doomed to walk toward a wall I can still aim and shoot accurately. My machine is a Dell Latitude D620 for your benchmark.

Well, enough from me, go play!

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