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ZeRo4 Wins; Quake: The Movie Released
okotauri writes: "ZeRo4 took home his second consecutive Quakecon championship today, beating the rest of the world's top Quake 3 players in the process, and cementing his reputation as the best Q3 dueller in the world today. more info: Quakecon scoreboard." And Escape from the Bastille was also released at the Con - better have high-speed access if you want to download it.
http://www.gamespy.com/stats/
If people aren't very excited by this tournament, it's largely because Quake 3's day is done.
Online its popularity is dwarfed by Counter Strike, which, for better or worse, has replaced Quake as the game of choice of the vast majority of online players. (A fact not lost on developers, who are falling over themselves to bring out CS-like games.)
Of course, no one knows how many people are even playing Q3, thanks to the servers failing to distinguish between bots and humans. In fact, looking at the numbers, it's entirely possible that there are more humans playing Quake 2. Q3 tournaments are in sharp decline, too; Quakecon was an exception, with Q3 even having been dropped (in lieu of CS) in the most widely followed "pro gaming" tourneys.
Q3 never really managed to make the impact that its predecessors did. The leading theory, which you can find on almost any gaming message board: id makes good engines, but has become progressively worse at making a fun game. There's something to that, but there's also Q3 itself to blame -- an arcade-y version of deathmatch without the depth of the original.