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First ... just to get this out of the way, there probably won't be much "news" here until Quake Expo is over. Check out http://www.quakeexpo.com to see all of the cool stuff being released.
Anyways ....
Recently I have been thinking about how much things have changed in 4 years.
Some of the things from the old days:
Terrible Admins. No need to name names. We all remember who they were. They kicked and banned players because they could, couldn't shoot you with a rocket launcher if you were standing still so from their perspective anyone who could get a frag must be cheating, abusive and got on power trips.
Cheating. A lot of it was going on. All sorts of fishy players, many of whom somehow mysteriously couldn't connect to cheat-free servers and somehow couldn't seem to press the F12 key to take a screenshot.
Weird Cheating Accusations. You would hear the dumbest cheating accusations ever. One time a player thought it was "strange" that another player had 26 ping (back when that was very uncommon) and that it had to be some sort of cheat. Sometimes players came up with hypothetical cheat accusations of types of cheating that weren't even technologically possible. The overclocking-style exploit in Counterstrike was the frequent conspiracy theory, something that couldn't affect Quake at all being purely server-side movement. Occasionally you would hear accusations that a certain player could move "faster" than other players in a maxspeed sort of way.
No Camping Servers. Probably the most unevenly enforced rule ever. The invention of weird tools by admin to deal with it ("blinking" someone, aka teleporting the camper). Although the thought was nice and ideal, the cure was worse than the disease and it was so nice to see the final "no camping" server go kicking and screaming and have to concede the rule due to losing its player base. Twice as funny because you know some of the ones that were running that server very much didn't want to do it because it was a great excuse to harass players.
The guy whose ego depended on him being admin. Man, the sob stories of people losing admin at a server were annoying. Like all of their self-esteem depended on it or something. They'd cry about it for months. Was some really unbelievable stuff. "It's just a game". The times I got asked to be admin, I didn't usually even want it because I just wanted to play and didn't want to have to police the server and listen to complaints.
Clean Players Getting Accused of Cheating. With the old environment, there was basically no defense against a cheating accusation. This was annoying as hell. No matter how you tried to prove you weren't cheating (screenshot, demo, explain your config, whatever) there was always some reason for why your proof wasn't sufficient. I remember Crazicracker being frequently accused of cheating by players, I secretly recorded a couple of demos of him and he was obviously not cheating (but man, he had the sounds down pat and so did I after watching the demos of him a few times
).
Everyone trying to find another game to play. The above were a lot of good reasons to quit Quake. But add to the mix that the game was getting old and was kind of "uncool" to tell your friends you played the original Quake -- with Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament being out and popular, a lot of players tried to find some other game they liked more than Quake. I know I tried that a few times, just because I didn't want to be playing a dying game.
Strange how things change. Everything above seems so distant and so unlike now but it was once all very true.
Anyways ....
Recently I have been thinking about how much things have changed in 4 years.
Some of the things from the old days:
Terrible Admins. No need to name names. We all remember who they were. They kicked and banned players because they could, couldn't shoot you with a rocket launcher if you were standing still so from their perspective anyone who could get a frag must be cheating, abusive and got on power trips.
Cheating. A lot of it was going on. All sorts of fishy players, many of whom somehow mysteriously couldn't connect to cheat-free servers and somehow couldn't seem to press the F12 key to take a screenshot.
Weird Cheating Accusations. You would hear the dumbest cheating accusations ever. One time a player thought it was "strange" that another player had 26 ping (back when that was very uncommon) and that it had to be some sort of cheat. Sometimes players came up with hypothetical cheat accusations of types of cheating that weren't even technologically possible. The overclocking-style exploit in Counterstrike was the frequent conspiracy theory, something that couldn't affect Quake at all being purely server-side movement. Occasionally you would hear accusations that a certain player could move "faster" than other players in a maxspeed sort of way.
No Camping Servers. Probably the most unevenly enforced rule ever. The invention of weird tools by admin to deal with it ("blinking" someone, aka teleporting the camper). Although the thought was nice and ideal, the cure was worse than the disease and it was so nice to see the final "no camping" server go kicking and screaming and have to concede the rule due to losing its player base. Twice as funny because you know some of the ones that were running that server very much didn't want to do it because it was a great excuse to harass players.
The guy whose ego depended on him being admin. Man, the sob stories of people losing admin at a server were annoying. Like all of their self-esteem depended on it or something. They'd cry about it for months. Was some really unbelievable stuff. "It's just a game". The times I got asked to be admin, I didn't usually even want it because I just wanted to play and didn't want to have to police the server and listen to complaints.
Clean Players Getting Accused of Cheating. With the old environment, there was basically no defense against a cheating accusation. This was annoying as hell. No matter how you tried to prove you weren't cheating (screenshot, demo, explain your config, whatever) there was always some reason for why your proof wasn't sufficient. I remember Crazicracker being frequently accused of cheating by players, I secretly recorded a couple of demos of him and he was obviously not cheating (but man, he had the sounds down pat and so did I after watching the demos of him a few times
).Everyone trying to find another game to play. The above were a lot of good reasons to quit Quake. But add to the mix that the game was getting old and was kind of "uncool" to tell your friends you played the original Quake -- with Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament being out and popular, a lot of players tried to find some other game they liked more than Quake. I know I tried that a few times, just because I didn't want to be playing a dying game.
Strange how things change. Everything above seems so distant and so unlike now but it was once all very true.
you should have been here a few years ago like Baker said. It was so bad that I was banned from a couple server, forums just for either speaking my mind (on a public forum.. hmm..), Being accused of cheating at Quake(Which I wasn't that time, & actually TESTing a bot in Quake(I told everyone I was usng a bot and everyone didnt mind but the admin caught wind of me testing the stooge bot.) 
I love it when people try to take their insecurities out on me, it just shows their true colours.... COLOURS!!!??? Damnit Canadian>>>LOOK THERES A STAR HERE *<<<Sniper, see what you made me do!? Next I'm gunna be learning C+, running up mountains & killing nooblets at MGO just because I know I can actually win those fights!! 
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