Quake 3 or Quake Live in 2021 ?!

[Miltonr87]

I recently bought Quake Live to relive the golden times when, in 2010, this game was successful for being a kind of resmatered of Quake. Today, 10 years later, I see that few people play it and I felt inclined to buy the classic Quake 3 Arena... So, is it worth to buy Quake 3 in 2021? Or the Q3A is dead like Quake Live? Are there multiple servers and players?

Please, this is just a simple question from a veteran guy. I am not comparing which of the Quake games is better (because it doesn't make any sense to me)... I just want to know if there are people engaged. Quake 3 was not made to play single player campaigns, so I don't want to spend money to have a classic getting "dusty" in my store

[redgrey]

Look for yourself: https://www.quakeservers.net/quake3/servers

Don't get numbers fool you, since many of those servers are populated with bots, so doublecheck that players have different ping.

The playerbase is rather small and split between various modifications like CPMA or Defrag across the whole globe. So if Quake Live numbers are low for you, then vanilla Quake 3 is not really worth it.

[Miltonr87]

Thanx mate, I didn't remember the existence of this site. It helps a lot!

[cRaZy eYes]

Quake Live has the most active player base. There's still several 8v8 servers on some nights and the map pack variety is there which is something QC is lacking. If you really have fun Quake 3 will allow you to explore every map and mod not ported to Quake Live and there were many Q3 maps you don't see any more which is a shame. Adapting to new maps was part of skill building not just running the same thing over and over. But that's just how I see it.

LvL used to be the go to for map packs back in the day and just about everyone who played made maps at one point.

https://lvlworld.com/

[spawnqc]

Q3, or QC

[Chumby Moghaddamzadeh]

66.55.137.186 join

[Miltonr87]

To be honest, recently I got a way to install Quake 3 with my old CDs, so I didn't have to purchase this version from Steam. In my battles searches, several servers appeared - just like in the past, but I don't know if the "service" is the same offered by Steam. Probably yes, but, either way, QL really does have an interesting player base (unfortunately many players are stuck in CA modes), but the most important thing is to keep the oldschool Quake active!
In the last days I have had more fun with QL than Q3.

As for QC, the few times I had the opportunity to play it, I didn't find interesting or maybe I'm too old to like the way of modern FPS behaves...

[UmbralPenumbra]

I'd be up to play Q3. I'm mediocre though so I'd prefer to play with someone of similar skill level