Quake Live Beta opened yesterday and, in an effort to give everyone a chance to play, id Software established a massive queue. So, if you can wait out the other 11 thousand people trying to get in, you'll get to give the new service a go. I guess that's about as fair a way to handle the beta of a free game as I can think of.

Though if we toss fair out the window and chaingun it's body on the way down, we get the perfect solution to having to wait around for days on end. Let people fight their way in. Of course, letting people frag their way into the beta would pretty much defeat the need to have a game in the first place. But hey, it's still a good idea if you ask me.

To fulfill my information obligations here...
Quake Live will be a free service managed by id and financed by in-game advertising. Players will be matched based on skill level in over 40 arenas and 5 game modes.

Definately gonna try that out, eventhough I suck at FPS on the consoles...

Now THAT is a great freaking idea =)

Spaghetti flavored lollipops? Yeah. I should register the idea before someone snatches it up and makes a million billion dollars.

You could even branch out, I have always said that there needs to be a meat flavored gum.

I love that Id made this game. There have been other browser based FPS's...but Quake? I don't even like online shooters, and I'm excited to try it.

I was in the closed beta a few weeks back, it's really a lot of fun. It functions flawlessly on my two boxes and all the pings were low. I went into a railgun instagib match and I was instantly 10 years younger. I hope it takes off, it's a good way to make a classic game accessible to new audiences.

Thx for the link woody, im joining right away...
Im glad you informed us about long queue, or the first page sign "play in minutes" would make lots of people "frag" thirsty...

edit: Position in queue: 28095... now that was a shock, lol

yay im only 33800th in the queue.
thats alot of frags

I was playing in beta for around a few weeks now and this is probably the first time I've seen a queue (besides when they were testing the queue system).

I saw around ~27k last night and was pretty amazed. My hardcore Quake friend actually waited in the queue and played his practice game for skill matching. I'm sure he played more games afterward as well.