[blt]

There was a spirited debate about Quake III Arena versus Unreal Tournament. Both were praised, but UT had more creativity in game modes (Assault, Domination) and weapons, better bot AI, and more polished sound/art assets. Reading the Gamespot reviews (below) is fun.

Each had standout maps that made you want to own both, such as Q3A's Longest Yard and UT's Facing Worlds. I ended up playing more hours of UT because I had slow internet and its bots were better.

Point being: Q3A was great, but in 1999 it became clear that id Software had lost their head start over other FPS developers. They were still elite, but in the early-mid 90s they were alone at the top.

https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/quake-iii-arena-review/1900...

https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/unreal-tournament-review/19...

[modeless]

Both The Longest Yard and Facing Worlds can now be played instantly on the web:

https://thelongestyard.link/q3a-demo/ (instant, even works on phones)

https://dos.zone/mp/?lobby=ut (scroll down and click Create on CTF-FACE)

They even have multiplayer support.

I hope someone ports UT2K4 someday so I can play ONS-Torlan.

[colkassad]

I was deep into the worlds of Quake 3 and UT99 back then. I made maps for Weapons Factory Arena, a popular spin on Team Fortress but much faster and frenetic (more like Overwatch). I also created all the weapons and some maps for the port of Weapons Factory to Unreal Tournament, which did well but was no where near as popular as the original. UT was by far the easier game to mod but there was something about the physics in Quake 3 that just lent itself better to that type of mod.

As for id drama, there was plenty after Quake 3. I remember a .plan update from John where he talked about people leaving and people getting fired...I think one of them was John Steed (rest in peace), one of the player modelers who was very active in the modeling community and well liked. Felt like a disaster at the time. I just think there was a lot of conflicting personalities at the company and it was doomed to fail (no pun intended).