20 Years of Quake 3 Arena

Today, 20 years ago, on 2nd December 1999, id Software released Quake 3 Arena, setting the bar higher than ever for first-person shooters. It was a shooter designed purely for multiplayer matches with very intense gameplay, at a time when games without a single player hardly existed and the connection to the Internet was still primarily done with 56k modems. But bots with different skill levels made it possible to play without the Internet. Most of the games took place at LAN parties anyway.

The graphics engine was revolutionary at that time and completely dispensed with a software renderer that had been taken for granted until then. Powerful 3D hardware acceleration was not yet a standard in every computer in 1999, but now it was a prerequisite for playing Quake 3 at all. The id-Tech3 engine, as it is called today, delivered shaders, light maps, volumetric fog and curves surfaces at that time and could for the first time display curved or, depending on the level of detail, “round corners” in an impressive way.

Due to the high requirements, Quake 3 Arena became the benchmark reference for 3D graphics cards in many game magazines. It quickly found its way into eSport and a large international community emerged, also due to the good mod support. Already in January 2000 the game was listed on the index in Germany, where it still is today. However, this did not stop the German community and many maps, models and mods were created. So it happened with ENTE’s PadMaps and of course the PadMod for Quake 3 Arena. And if you consider, that ENTE would have created his first map for Unreal Tournament (1999) by a hair, then today World of Padman would not exist as an independent game, because unlike UT, the source code of Quake 3 Arena went open source in August 2005, about 1 year after the release of PadMod. You can find out more about this topic on our WoP Story page on the next Sunday in Advent.

And to see what was going on in the [PAD]Community during Quake 3 times, take a look at the following videos! Happy Birthday Quake 3 Arena!