Red’s Corner is a weekly column by Paul "ReDeYe" Chaloner released every Thursday exclusively at Cadred.

Paul's last three columns can be read by clicking the following links:

This column is the sole opinion of the author and does not represent the opinion of Heaven Media Ltd or the opinion of any affiliates.

Deck the halls with gibs from rail guns, QueueLive no longer makes me wait an eternity to play it. Thank the lord for small mercy as I was about to go on a real life killing spree in Texas, with a tin opener. Seriously though, am I the only one who was really pissed at being number 32,821 in line to play a game? That it took several hours of waiting only to be then told you had to login again because the session had timed out? This was worse than trying to install Half Life 2 with Steam when it first came out (45 minutes to play a game I had purchased from a shop seemed unreasonable at the time).

Only 31,767 people ahead of me, result!

Due to the incredible amount of people who signed up for QuakeLive when it launched its open beta some 10 days ago, iD were overwhelmed by demand and as such introduced a queuing system. This is essentially meant that you would login to the site (it’s a free browser game, for anyone who’s had a holiday on Mars recently) and then you would be forced to wait before you could play, mainly due to a lack of servers and spots on them. All well and good, but sorry I`m British and I don’t do queue’s. It was hugely annoying that a game I had helped beta test to get this far was now denying me entry. This wasn’t like I was trying to gain access to the White House via a subterranean entrance that doesn’t really exist (I hate 24 when it has dumb story lines like this) and it shouldn’t have been difficult.

Adding further salt to the wound, I had to re-register and my nickname, which I’ve used for almost a year during the closed testing, was already taken by the time the site actually let me sign up again. Sigh.

But its free I hear you cry and yes ok it’s free, but does that really mean we have to accept bad service? I have to put up with “Ryanair” service occasionally when I fly and I have to PAY for that privilege and I can assure you it doesn’t stop me complaining, even though I know I am going to have bad service because it was “cheap”. But its unfair comparing iD to Ryanair, after all, iD aren’t charging me to go to the toilet, although I hear rumours they may be adding in-toilet ads next…

With all of that said, the game is very good, in fact, it’s better than very good, at its height, its great and I haven’t been able to say that about a competitive game in some time. It feels refined and it bloody well should do, it’s been beta tested by most of the hardcore quake players from the last 10 years for many, many months. If it fails to take off, it may well be the last time iD comes knocking on the competitive players doors for feedback on their games. That said, last time they asked for our help, they ended up making a much better version of Quake 4 than Raven produced out of the box, so we have good history on our side. Going off on a slight tangent, I am however, dreading the new Wolfenstein (a series close to my heart having played Wolf3D almost 16 years ago now) as it too is being made by Raven. God help us.

Quake 4 was saved far too late of course although by its demise, it was actually a very good game, certainly after the 1.3 update it became a “good” eSport game at last. The main trouble was, most of the “scene” had gone back to Quake 3 or moved on to something else and the casual player, well, if he was foolish enough to pick the game up out of a bargain bin, he would be unlikely to get on a server or be able to play the game online full stop. Thus, without any community whatsoever, any changes iD made (and they made huge amounts) were superfluous to saving the game.

Getting back to QuakeLive, iD now has a chance to produce something that is not only a great game for the competitive scene but to appeal to the masses too, just like it did almost 10 years ago with Quake 3. Mad when you think about the fact that QuakeLive, at its most basic low level form is just Quake 3 in a browser.

Which brings me full circle. Which part of “free game”, “made by iD” and a “new Quake game” did iD seriously think WOULDN’T be popular exactly? John Carmack himself has been telling us via the press that he expects “millions” of Quake Live players, so why was the launch of the open beta so badly handled? Surely we can’t be the only people to have figured out that a free Quake game from iD would be ridiculously popular, even at open beta stage. Perhaps it’s good that iD underestimated its own games potential popularity and will allow them to take it all in and learn from the early mistakes.

Certainly, whilst frustrating at the time, the queues are now gone and whilst still a fresh wound in my memory, mean they have fixed the early problems they had with lack of ability to serve everyone that wanted to play the game. 10 days to fix this seems a long time, but let’s be realistic for a moment, this is a still a BETA. That’s why they need to learn from this and not do the same thing upon full release. If they underestimate the sign ups on full release, it could well kill the game off faster than it starts. Whilst it was frustrating waiting hours on end, only to be kicked out due to a browser error or some other random issue and then have to start the queuing process all over again, it won’t have turned all that many of us away forever. Do the same thing on full release day and I wouldn’t be so sure that fickle and impatient gamers will bother coming back, much like they didn’t with Quake 4, even after it was fixed.

You may also be wondering what the heck this all has to do with you Mr/Mrs CSS/COD4/TF2 player at Cadred. Well, it struck me that a large part of our audience of those three games is out there, right now on a QuakeLive server, happily bouncing around and railing the crap out of every player on the server (I used rail as it seems the only weapon counter strike players are initially any good with, learn2move ffs). I think its great I really do, but lads, where the hell have you been for 10 years. This isn’t really a new game; it’s a game you could have played on any number of the last 3,650 days. So why now? Well, the “free” bit helps I guess but whatever the reasons, you guys really seem to be enjoying it and that’s good for the future of the game and for everyone playing it that wants it to be the next big eSport title.

I personally can’t wait for leagues and cups to start kicking off, because if there is one thing I love shout casting more than anything else its some good old fashioned Capture the Flag in Quake. I’m more than a bit partial to some high level 1v1 too and for these reasons alone I am looking forward more to the full release than I was for this open beta.

Whilst I want the game to be popular, because I enjoy all facets of it from playing, commentating and watching as a spectator, I really don’t want to queue to get in again, ever. Imagine I was about to commentate a live final and booted my machine up only to find 28,122 people in front of me waiting to get in. “Sorry lads, the live video stream for the final of Quakecon for $50k has been cancelled due to the caster not being able to get in to the game for the next hour and a half”. Luckily, this isn’t going to happen, but at times last week I would have happily paid $10 to have a pass that bypassed the queue. Hell I would have sold my children to get in earlier.

I realise this is a bit of a ramble, so for those who have the attention span of a gnat, here is the summary: QuakeLive = great. Queues = not great.