Video Game / Quake III: Arena

Welcome to Quake III: Arena.

"Untold centuries ago the Vadrigar, the mysterious Arena Masters, constructed the Arena Eternal for their own infernal amusement. Virtually nothing is known of these beings except that they savor the carnage and clamor of battle. As such, they have stocked the arena with the greatest warriors of all time. And you have just joined their ranks."

From the manual.

Quake III: Arena is the third entry in the Quake series. It was developed by id Software and released for PC in 1999.

The plot of the game is simple: Several warriors from all the corners of the galaxy duke it out to entertain the Vadrigar and win the honour of being the most badass warrior of all time. ¨¨Massive Multiplayer Crossover Characters from several of Id's previous games]], such as Doom and the two previous Quake games, are present on it.

This game was designed almost exclusively with multiplayer mode in mind. Id had recognized the fact that the deathmatches were easily the most popular thing about Quake so far and created this entry as a virtual arena for competitive online matches. The single-player mode contained only a very basic story and was based around a series of tiers, with the player making their way to the final match against the Champion. In fact, the term "Arena Shooter" used to describe this type of games has been coined after this game.

The game has an Expansion Pack in the form of Quake III: Team Arena, made by ID, which was focused on team games. Here you must choose a team and duke it out with the other clans. New features include the ability to give roles to your teammates, voice messages, being able to select a face in addition to a skin, three new weapons in the Nailgun, the Chaingun and the Prox Launcher, six new items in the game's version of the Runes from Threewave CTF (here they're Ammo Regen, Doubler, Guard and Scout) as well as two new "holdable" items: the Kamikaze and the Invulnerability Force Field. It also adds three new gamemodes, all of them team-based.

Like most PC games, III also has console versions. The first release was for the Sega Dreamcast in 2000, ported by Raster Software and published by Sega, and featured 4-player online crossplay versus Dreamcast and PC gamers. The second is called Quake III: Revolution, and was released for the PlayStation 2 in 2001, created by Bullfrog Productions and published by Electronic Arts; this version features several elements (maps and characters) adapted from Team Arena, along with a more mission-based single-player mode, and split-screen multiplayer for up to 4 players (sadly, it lacks mouse support and online play due to the PS2's network adapter not being released outside of Japan until 2004). Revolution features several gamemodes alongside the traditional gamemodes from III.

In 2010, ID released a free web browser version of Quake III: Arena called Quake Live, which also added many new maps (especially third-party ones) and some extra game modes. This version was later released on Steam in 2014 and made as a paid game in 2015. Plenty of new modes have been added since its announcement.

Finally, there's a Xbox Live Arcade version called Quake Arena Arcade, a joint effort by Id and Pi Studios released on December 15, 2010. This game contains some new maps and characters.

All of this excludes the countless ports and forks that have spawned ever since Id released the source code in 2005, which allowed Q3A to be played in virtually every device in existence (though not yet to Doom levels), as well as spawning many clones and derivative games such as Alien Arena, OpenArena and World Of Padman, as well as former game mods turned standalone games such as Q3Rally and Urban Terror.

Available gametypes

Introduced in Quake III Arena

• Free For All: What other games call Deathmatch. Everyone for themselves, the one with the highest amount of frags once the timer expires or the one who reaches the frag limit wins. Introduced in III, available in all installments.
• Team Deathmatch: The team-based variation of Deathmatch. It also contains subtly different weapon/item rules than Deathmatch. Two teams of players are pitted against each other, the team with the highest amount of frags wins. Introduced in III, available in all installments.
• Tournament: Also called "1-on-1". Two players enter the arena. The rest remain spectators. The two players present in the arena battle against each other. The winner stays, the loser goes back to spectating and is replaced by one of the spectators.
• Capture the Flag: The classic gamemode, played on symmetrical maps. Two teams, each spawning in their base and a flag inside of it. The objective is to steal the enemy's flag and bring it to their team's base. After touching their flag with the enemy's, the team scores a capture. The team with the highest amount of captures wins. Introduced in III, available in all installments.

Introduced in Quake III: Team Arena

• One Flag CTF: Regular Capture the Flag but with a twist: there's a neutral flag in the middle of the map. Both teams battle to bring this neutral flag to the enemy base and capture it. The team with the most captures wins. Introduced in Team Arena. Available also on Quake Live.
• Harvester: Each team's base has a skull receptacle. The middle of the map contains a skull generator. Every time a player from a team frags an enemy, a skull with the color of the fragged player's team appears on this generator. The player's team can collect these skulls and deliver them to the enemy receptacle. Touching the enemy team's skull receptacle while carrying skulls grants points respective to the scorer's amount of skulls (i.e. capturing 3 skulls grants the team 3 points). The team with the highest amount of points at the end of the match wins. Available also on Quake Live.
• Overload: Each base has an Obelisk, which is a metallic, skull-shaped monolith. Each team must infiltrate into the enemy's base and destroy this monolith. Doing so scores a point for that team. The team with the highest amount of points win.

Introduced in Quake III: Revolution

• Single-Weapon Deathmatch: Follows the regular rules of Deathmatch, but replaces all the weapons and items in the map with a specific weapon.
• Single-Weapon Team Deathmatch: Follows the regular rules of Team Deathmatch, but replaces all the weapons and items in the map with a specific weapon.
  • One Flag CTF (Revolution variant): Introduced in Quake III Revolution, unlike Team Arena, this version of the gamemode is played on Deathmatch maps, and a team must retrieve a flag, and the other team must prevent its capture. If the team manages to reach the score limit, they win.
• Possession: In this gamemode, there's a flag somewhere on the map, and players must fight to hold it until they reach the holding limit.
• Team Possession: The team-based version of Possession. The holding times are added across the entire team. The team who held the flag the longest once the timer expires wins.
• Elimination: There are several arenas on the map, and Deathmatches are played on all of them. The winner stays, and the loser goes to another arena.

Introduced in Quake Live

• Deathmatch: Two new variants were introduced here:
  • Instagib DM: In this variant, players start only with an enhanced Railgun and a Gauntlet, and all pickups are removed from the map. This enhanced Railgun deals One Hit Kills.
  • Quad Hog DM: In this variant, there's a Quad Damage spawning somewhere in the map. The player who obtains the Quad becomes the Hogger, and all players must chase them. This Quad lasts a minute, unlike its regular variant.
• Duel: A variant of Tournament, where both players choose the map, and a 10-minute match is played. If the match ends tied, a 120-second overtime takes place.
• Race: In this mode, all pickups are removed from the map, all players share the same spawning point, and carry an infinite-ammo Plasma Gun, Rocket Launcher and Gauntlet. The objective is to pass through all the checkpoints and reach the end of the map. Enemies can be slowed but not killed.
• Clan Arena: Team-based, round-based gamemode. All pickups are removed, and all players start with a full arsenal, full health and full armor. Then both teams go to war, with fragged players becoming spectators. The team whose members are the last standing scores a point. After 10 rounds, the winner is decided.
  • Vampiric CA: Variant with Vampiric Draining in play. Instead of spawning with armor, all players start with 300 HP. This health doesn't decay, and 75% of all damage dealt is turned into health for the dealer.
• Capture the Flag: Contains two new variants:
  • Arena CTF: Much like its Quake IV variant, it's regular CTF with Runes and a Grappling Hook, akin to the older versions of Threewave CTF.
  • Instagib CTF: Instagib variant of CTF.
• Freezetag: An independent variant of Clan Arena where players are frozen instead of fragged. Teammates can thaw their frozen teammates by standing near them. The void frags them, still.
  • Freezetag Instagib: Instagib variant of Freezetag.
• Domination: Team-based gametype. There are control points scattered across the maps, and both teams fight to take control of them. There are no pickups, and players pick one of six weapons available and spawn stocked with 100 health and 100 armor.
• Attack & Defense: Team-based, round-based gamemode where both teams alternate the roles of attacker and defender in CTF-based maps.
• Red Rover: Team-based, round-based gamemode. Once a player is fragged, they're forced to switch teams. The round ends when all players are on the same side.
  • Infected Red Rover: FFA variant of the above. Once a player is fragged, they respawn as "infected", wearing only the Gauntlet.

Followed chronologically by Quake IV. In 2016, it received a direct successor as Quake Champions.

The game has a character sheet.

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See also:

• the Mythology Gag page
• the Shout Out page

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Open the folders to begin reading! Prepare to read the games' examples of:

In general

• Arc Welding: Characters, environments, and items that were previously exclusive to either of the first two games now appear alongside each other. These include Ranger, the more gothic & medieval settings, the Lightning Gun, and an invisibility power-up from Quake, together with Bitterman, the Railgun, and the Strogg villains from Quake II.
• Artificial Brilliance: In Team Arena, Live and the console versions with actual support for Team Arena assets, bots will shoot the corpses of any Kamikaze-holding dead player, to prevent them from exploding.
• Artificial Stupidity: The game uses an AI system based on brushes (previously used in the Omicron AI mod for Quake and the Gladiator AI mod for Quake II) instead of waypoint-based systems. This, however, doesn't mean that the bots will play like humans. They cannot jump, use platforms (there's a reason why Q3 lacks platform-based maps and uses jump pads instead) and they cannot navigate their way onto items that take some kind of risk to get. This is also a problem in its Spiritual Successor OpenArena.
• Ascended Glitch: The Strafe Jump, a bug in the game's physics that allows players to gain higher speeds with constant jumping. By the time of Live, it's even accounted for in the training course.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: Some levels are set in space platforms and just a bunch of the characters aren't helmet-less, spacesuit-less humans.
• BFG: It's a Plasma Gun on steroids, however...
• Bilingual Bonus: One of Fritzkrieg's death sounds has him shouting "Scheisse!", which is the German word for "shit".
• Blackground: The so-called "space maps", despite some of their names and classifications, are set in pitch-black voids with no stars or planets to be seen to be called "space maps". There aren't even ambient sounds, outside of those sounds emitted by the players as well as jump pads and teleporters.
  • The main game has q3dm16 ("The Bouncy Map"), q3dm17 ("The Longest Yard"), q3dm18 ("Space Chamber"), q3dm19 ("Apocalypse Void"), q3tourney6 ("The Very End Of You") and q3ctf4 ("Space CTF"). An update introduced a Capture the Flag adaptation of q3tourney6 as q3tourney6-ctf.
  • The Expansion Pack Team Arena adds mptourney6 ("Vortex Portal") and a Capture the Flag version for q3tourney6 (mpq3tourney6 "Beyond Reality") as well as another version of q3ctf4 ("Chaos in Space"). A Downloadable Content piece added a reversion of q3tourney6 for team games (mpteam9, "Beyond Reality II").
• Body Horror: If not outright monstrous, some character models are humans with visible, usually rough, cybernetic parts or implants. Or having gruesome mutations.
• Bottomless Pits: Many levels feature pits that kill the player.
• Bragging Rights Reward: There are several awards obtained in-game and campaign-only post-game that don't bring any meaningful bonus:
  • "Excellent": Kill 2 enemies in 3 seconds or less.
  • "Impressive": Get 2 consecutive hits with the Railgun.
  • "Accuracy": Get over 50% of weapon accuracy.
  • "Frags": Get 100 frags in the campaign. (Obtained every 100 frags)
  • "Perfect": End a match without dying.
  • "Defence": Protecting your flag or your flag carrier.
  • "Assist": Taking the enemy flag from a fallen teammate and scoring. Additionally, fragging your flag carrier's foes.
  • "Capture": Capturing a flag.
• Canon Welding: The game is notable for incorporating characters and other elements from both the original Quake and the previously unrelated Quake II, thus placing them in the same universe, while also adding the Doom series for good measure. Quake III: Revolution also brings Bullfrog's Dungeon Keeper into the fold with two Guest Fighter characters from that series.
• Chainsaw Good: The Gauntlet, a wrist-mounted circular saw. You receive a humiliation accolade for making a kill with it enhancing the psychological gratification of using it.
• Cherry Tapping: Again, the game gives you a humiliation award for killing your opponent with the Gauntlet. This fact makes the otherwise useless Gauntlet a popular weapon, especially in Live, where other players can see how many people you "humiliate" during all your game sessions.
• Competitive Multiplayer: One of the games that started the multiplayer craze, it still has a dedicated "professional" competitive community to this day.
• Death Is Not Permanent: If Arenas is any indication, characters are rebuilt between respawns. In the game proper, the bots even lampshade this.
• Death Trap: Some Deathmatch levels have these. They range from swinging pendulums to crushing platforms, to death pits and the void.
• Developer's Foresight: In single-player, curse at a bot. They'll comment on your potty mouth. Similarly, typing in racist slurs will have them ask if you're some sort of racist. Typing something religious will either get them to praise religion or throw an insult at you. There are a lot of topics it can handle, even though pretty loosely.
• Flight: You can find this item in just one map during a Multiplayer match, but it's also present in some third-party maps as well.
• Gatling Good: The Machinegun, Team Arena's Chaingun and Live's Heavy Machinegun.
• Happy Ending Override: Quake and Quake II ended on triumphant notes, with the heroes destroying the enemy forces’ leader and escaping with their lives. Arena establishes that, rather than getting to hang up their weapons and return home as heroes, Ranger and Bitterman would go on to be kidnapped by the Vadrigar and thrown into a lifetime of eternal battle- and, in Bitterman’s case, he was recaptured by the Strogg and tortured beforehand.
• Lava Pit: Some of the levels feature pits of lava.
• Lightning Gun: The Quake 1 gun returns, but without the "water discharge" property.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover:
  • This series of games features characters from most of Id Software's major FPS games until its release date battling it out for supremacy, such as the Space Marine from Doom, the Quake dude (referred to as "Ranger"), and several characters from Quake II including the generic Grunt, Bitterman (the protagonist of the main Quake II game), Major, and a Strogg Tank. The only major missing figure is Wolfenstein's B.J. Blazkowicz.^note Well, him and Commander Keen, but then again, Hide Your Children To make up for it, Team Arena adds Fritzkrieg, a reconstructed soldier from WWII.
  • This also extends to the weapons, as the starting guns are a small version of Doom's chainsaw (the Gauntlet) and Quake II's Machinegun. There're also Quake's Lightning Gun, (which, sadly, doesn't include the "instant water kill" property its Quake counterpart had) Doom's Plasma Gun, and Quake II's Railgun. Team Arena also adds a modified version of Quake's Nailgun (which behaves more like a Shotgun with Nails instead of a rapid-fire Nail shooter) and Quake II's Chaingun.
  • Author Avatar: After installing the 1.16n patch of the game, you can even play as some of the developers!
  • Guest Fighter: Bullfrog, the developers of Quake III: Revolution, sure didn't leave the happy owners of this PS2 port without a tasty treat - The Reaper and The Mistress make guest appearances there!
• Midair Bobbing: Most of the pickups, including ammo packs, powerups, weapons, and even the flags in Capture the Flag perform a bobbing motion.
• Mutually Exclusive Power Ups: The "holdables": Personal Teleporter and Medkit in vanilla Q3A and Kamikaze and Invulnerability (plus the unfinished and cut Portal) in Team Arena. Players can use these at any time in the match, but cannot carry up more than one holdable at a time. To pick up another holdable, the previous one must be used first.
• Nintendo Hard: Go ahead, play on "Hardcore" or "Nightmare!". The AI on any difficulties lower is intentionally handicapped, but here they will snipe you with a Railgun easily, react the moment they see you around a corner, and hold nothing back. If you can beat Xaero on Nightmare, you either gamed the AI or you're a genuine badass.
• No OSHA Compliance: Lampshaded by Gorre, when he dies by lava:
  "Where's the 'Under Construction' sign? Who built this freakin' place?"
• Palette Swap: Multiple models have alternate skins, although they all have no more than two team textures. Bolded are the bots available in the vanilla campaign, the console-exclusive bots are in italics.
  • Bones - X-Ray
  • Doom - Phobos
  • Sarge - Krusade, Roderic
  • Grunt - Stripe
  • Hunter - Harpy
  • Klesk - Flisk
  • Slash - Yuriko, Grrl
  • Patriot - Razor, Id
  • Lucy - Angel
  • Ranger - Wrack
  • Uriel - Zael
  • Visor - Gorre
  • Major - Daemia
  • Biker - Cadavre, Hossman, Slammer, Stroggo
• Pop-Star Composer: Front Line Assembly composed some tracks for the main game. Sonic Mayhem also returned after doing the soundtrack for Quake II.
• Recycled In Space: The Excuse Plot can be summed up as "Mortal Kombat with guns".
• Sidelined Protagonist Crossover: Team Arena's Fritzkrieg is the closest thing to a Wolfenstein representative, as B.J. Blazkowicz himself is absent. Quake Champions fixes this mistake.
• Springs, Springs Everywhere: Quake III is full of jump pads to launch the player high up in the air.
• Stat Overflow:
  • The game has the Stimpack and Megahealth items. Stimpacks add +5 HP, Megahealth adds a degenerating +100 HP, and both items can overheal to a maximum of 200.
  • Health degenerates to 100 HP if it's over this value. Players already start with an instantly-degenerating 125 HP, and the Regeneration powerup heals up to the 200 max at a rate of 5 HP per second; after the powerup expires, the excess of health starts degenerating.
• Timed Powerup: All of them are instantly triggered.
  • Battle Suit: Prevents all non-death pit/void hazard damage done to the player, including splash damage.
  • Flight: Allows the user to fly across the level.
  • Haste: Increases the user's movement speed.
  • Invisibility: Turns the user invisible.
  • Quad Damage: Triplicates the user's weapon damage.
  • Regeneration: Regenerates the user's health and armor until both hit the cap or the powerup expires.
  • Double Damage (Quake III Revolution): Doubles the damage output of its user.
  • Super Haste (Quake III Revolution): Quadruples the movement speed of its user.
• Tournament Play: The game's longevity in the competitive scene eventually led to the development of Live.
• Use Item: The so-called "Holdable" items:
  • Personal Teleporter: Teleports its user to a random spawning point of the map.
  • Portable Medkit: Restores/overcharges its user's health by 100 HP.
  • Invulnerability (Quake III: Team Arena): Immobilizes its user and surrounds them in a spheric forcefield that prevents almost all kinds of attack.
  • Kamikaze (Quake III: Team Arena): Sacrifices its user causing an explosive blast that kills anyone in its radius.

Quake III Arena (core PC game)

• Advertised Extra:
  • Sarge has been the centre of many promotional pieces of artwork and is even the protagonist of the trailer and the final boss of the demo. In the full game proper? He's reduced to the first boss you take on.
  • Klesk appears on the cover of Quake III: Revolution and early screenshots but has no big role in the game other than being playable.
• Blood Knight: In the blurb, it says the gods wanted more entertainment, so they put you and the others there to fight and even made you immortal so that not even death would release you from fighting.
• Bond One-Liner: The dev team got creative with them, as many bots can attest. This is something which was refined further by Unreal Tournament and the like.
• Can't Count Bullets: In the opening cutscene, Sarge is blasting monsters with his Chaingun, until he runs out of bullets ("Fuel Cell: Empty"), then he has no option but to hide behind a pillar.
• Credits Gag: In the PC version, after defeating Xaero, there's a cutscene which shows him turned into stone, and the obvious credit list... then Slash appears trying to control her rollerblades.
• Downloadable Content: Fan-made game mods aside, the game has a pair of official downloadable levels:
  • Point Release 1.32 comes with five maps: a Capture the Flag version of q3tourney6 (The Very End Of You) called q3tourney6-ctf, and rearranged versions of four maps for Tournament Play (pro-q3dm6, pro-q3dm13, pro-q3tourney2 and pro-q3tourney4). It also contains seven player models inspired by the game developers themselves.
  • Also officially released was a cut level, q3tourney7 (Almost Lost).
  • And finally the character model "Horny", the demon from Dungeon Keeper, created by Bullfrog Productions (who developed the PlayStation 2 version of Arena) as a Cross Promotion between them and id themselves.
• Dramatic Ammo Depletion: A heroic version happens in the opening cutscene, where Sarge is blasting monsters with his Chaingun until he runs out of bullets ("Fuel Cell: Empty"), and then he has no option but to hide behind a pillar.
• Easter Egg:
  • The DopeFish appears on the level "Deva Station".
  • User Friendly's Dust Puppy appears on "Apocalypse Void", but you must fall off an edge to see it.
• Excuse Plot: The game's plot goes like this: Sufficiently Advanced Aliens kidnapped some of the greatest warriors and made them fight each other to death and re-death. You die? They'll respawn you back. The best warrior will then challenge Xaero, the Arenas Eternal's champion. In the PS2 version, you get to fight against the tournament's host directly, though.
• Foreshadowing:
  • "Arena Gate", the first level of Tier 1, has statues of Major and Visor; you meet Visor in Tier 5 and Major in Tier 6.
  • "Hero's Keep", the first level of Tier 3, has statues of Ranger, Major, Visor and Doom; you meet Doom in Tier 6.
• G-Rated Drug: Bots' chatter concerning addiction has a small pool of unusual substances: breath mints, cottage cheese, fruit juice, etc. There's still a serious one (stamp glue), but they aren't directly drug-related.
• Gradual Regeneration: The Regeneration powerup.
• Loads and Loads of Loading: A pretty painful issue of the PS2 port, in which loadings might span for just as long as two minutes.
• Mid-Boss: The single-player portion of III features one boss per tier, except Tier 6: Sarge, Hunter, Klesk, Anarki, Uriel and Xaero.
• Remixed Level: Point Release v1.32 comes with four remixed versions of q3dm6: "The Camping Grounds", q3dm13: "The Lost World", q3tourney2: "The Proving Grounds" and q3tourney4: "Vertical Vengeance", as well as a Capture the Flag adaptation of q3tourney6: "The Very End of You".
• Shareware: The demo version came with four levels (Arena Gate -q3dm1-, Temple of Retribution -q3dm7-, The Longest Yard -q3dm17- and The Proving Grounds -q3tourney2-) and five selectable characters (Daemia, Grunt, Visor, Major, Stripe and Sarge as a Final Boss of sorts).
• Single Player Gauntlet: The single player portion is a series of six rungs or "Tiers", of four maps each, that must be cleared before the next tier is unlocked. It also begins and ends with two one-tier maps: the introductory tier 0 and the "Elite" final tier.
• Your Mom: These appear in random taunts the bots make, and some of them have unique references to mommy. They can even reply to other players' chats, where the insult path includes some one-liners such as "Your MOM!!"

Quake III: Team Arena

• Art Evolution: Barely noticeable, but it's still there - starting with the menu design and ending with the minor fact that Callisto has little face animation, unlike the other models.
• Ascended Fanfic: Of a sort. Two semi-official mappacks were released for Team Arena under the supervision of Id's Paul Jaquays and Mr. Elusive. These contain Team Arena versions of some popular third-party maps such as "Japanese Castles", "Schadenfreude CTF", "Crossed Paths" and "An Iteration of Hell", as well as "Smear Campaign", "Courtyard Conundrum" from Threewave CTF and "Dynatron", plus a tweaked version of "Pyrmageddon".
• Attack Speed Buff: The Scout rune doubles the firing speed of your weapons in addition to your movement speed.
• Back from the Dead: Pi and Fritzkrieg.
• Bond One-Liner: The characters rely on "uniformed" voice acting rather than text chat lines and there are significantly fewer one-liners than in the vanilla Q3, but they're still here.
• Competitive Balance: In Team Arena, you start as Jack of All Stats, as in any FPS, but in the maps with the Runes, depending on the rune you've taken, you may become:
  • Fragile Speedster: Scout. (Negates your armor, and you're unable to pick up armor, but makes you faster)
  • Mighty Glacier or Lightning Bruiser: Guard. (You receive the max health and armor, and the health will regenerate to the maximum)
  • Glass Cannon: Doubler. (Increases your firerate and weapon damage)
  • The Bard: Ammo Regen. (Your ammunition regenerates... rather slowly)
• Double-Edged Buff: The Scout rune increases the carrier's movement speed, at the cost of not being able to gather armor.
• Downloadable Content: In addition to the Arena content, TA got an extended adaptation of q3tourney6 for team-based games with an extra floor and the pack's exclusive items called q3team9.
• Expy: Like Galena in Quake Champions, the Crusaders seem to be inspired by the Heretic and Hexen games, which id Software published.

• Nerf: The Railgun, later carried to Arena. It was overpowered in the main game, being hitscan and doing enough damage to reliably kill an opponent in one or two shots. In TA, the weapon gets weaker with distance, making it useless at longer ranges. This was later carried over to vanilla III by the time of Point Release 1.32.
• Power-Up Letdown:
  • As an exchange for Nigh-Invulnerability, the Invulnerability holdable stops the player from moving. Two things can happen in this position: the player having the bad luck of using the holdable above the void or a death pit, and falling in consequence, or an enemy being able to slide a Proxy Mine onto the shield, as only proxies can ignore the shield, in whose case it's a One-Hit Kill.
  • While many of the Runes have their utilities^note (Guard is useful for all-guns-blazing attack and surviving an enemy attack while defending, Scout is useful for Hit-and-Run Tactics at the cost of losing ammo, and Doubler can be also paired with a Quad Damage for a ludicrous damage output, which is great for defending) the Ammo Regen rune regenerates ammo... until the bare minimum the weapon has as a pickup. Not an ideal rune you want to have in any situation.
• Remixed Level: The pack contains remixed versions of all the Capture the Flag maps as well as two team-based versions (one which comes with the pack and another as Downloadable Content) of q3tourney6: "The Very End of You".
• Shareware: The game came with a standalone playable demo that included a playable map, two playable characters with four heads, and the Prox Launcher, Guard, Ammo Regen and Doubler items.
• Timed Mission: All of the single-player missions are this, as well as some matches on the main game.
• Time Trial: Basically to what the singleplayer mode has been reduced - a series of free-to-choose challenges, in which you need to score points. The time bonus, complete with the skill multiplier, delivers the biggest impact on the challenge's final score.
• Why Am I Ticking?: Hit an enemy with a Proxy Mine, (or many, for amplified effect) and in 10 seconds, more or less, he will blow into pieces.

Quake Live

• Adapted Out:
  • The Overload gametype from Team Arena was cut.
  • The Steam update removed the Nailgun, the Chaingun and the Prox Launcher from all maps.
  • The original PC maps "Arena Gate" (a3dm1), "House of Pain" (q3dm2), "Arena of Death" (q3dm3), "Powerstation 0218" (q3tourney1), "The Place of Many Deaths" (q3dm4), "The Forgotten Place" (q3dm5), "The Bouncy Map" (q3dm16, formerly called "Cobalt Station"), and the original "The Very End Of You" (q3tourney6) were left out of Live.
  • The Team Arena maps "Teamwerkz" (mpteam5), "Capture Chamber" (mpteam7), "Assassins' Roost" (mpteam8), "Distant Screams" (mpterra2), "Final Strike" (mpterra3), "Death Factory" (mptourney2), "Temple of Pain" (mptourney3, renamed as "Sacellum") and "Evil Playground" (mptourney4) were left out (either initially or eventually) of Live as well.
  • Cadavre, Pi and Fritzkrieg are left out of Live as well. The latter two are jarring since James and Janet were not cut.
• Art Evolution: For being in the same engine, many of the Arena and Team Arena maps received really big visual changes, compared to the original versions.
• Bowdlerization: In order to get the "T" rating, Live has many of the gothic/demonic architecture changed or covered up by LCD screens, characters that were revealing being covered up, dead characters turn monochrome and didn't gib, and changing of several location names (for example "Apocalypse Void" was renamed to "Terminal Heights"). Finally, all character models were given crotch plates.
• Call-Forward: Arena CTF made its debut in Quake IV as a gamemode.
• Cosmetic Award: There are more announcer announcements in comparison to the original games:
  • Combo Kill: Finishing an enemy with the Railgun after damaging them with another weapon.
  • Headshot: Fragging an enemy with a Railgun shot at the head.
  • Quad God: Getting 10 frags in a single Quad Damage carry.
  • Rampage: Gibbing 3 enemies within 3 seconds of each frag.
  • Midair: Fragging an airborne enemy with a projectile-based weapon.
  • Perforated: Telefragging an opponent.
• Easter Egg:
  • The training maps are full of these. First of all, it's modelled after the Introduction difficulty map selection from Quake. Then, by rocket jumping into the right places, players can discover red key(card) of doooom! ("You found a spooky secret!"), a poster of Orbb with Crash riding on it (OOOOOOOOOOOOOOH SNAP!), a support with "Method was here" written on it, a list of the Quake Live team and a secret, harder bonus challenge ("You're my hero!").
  • As part of the bowdlerization, the eggs on "The Bouncy Map" and "Apocalypse Void" (renamed as "Terminal Heights") had to be replaced with "MMM BOY". The "Chemical Reaction" (fka "Deva Station") egg was replaced with the Turkey from Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 3, which also appears in the map "Arcane Citadel" (in a location only available via noclip).
  • The map "Corrosion" has the Dopefish inside of an unreachable area.
  • References to the clan 2K are found in the maps "Limbus" ("Quake Forever <3") and "Arcane Citadel" ("Monument of Honor" and "Akm & Yellack were here <3")
  • There's a creeper hidden in the map "Realm of Street Rats".
  • The map "Purgatory" has an unreachable BFG.
  • The maps "Cure" and "McSarge's" have birthday cakes.
  • The map "Ragnarok", fittingly, has the Mjolnir, in a specific, unreachable location.
  • The map "Reflux" has a QR Code.
  • The map "Elden" in FFA mode has a room with a Red Armor and a Megahealth which can only be opened with a Gold Key.
  • Blue side, middle area, of the map "Stone Keep" has a carving ("AP & LP <3")
  • The map "Blood Run" has an area only reachable by noclipping ("I'm Bad")
  • The map "Repent" has a funny "Sorry! Invis is in another secret!". The Invisibility itself is VEEEEEEEEEEEERY hard to get, and requires tons of trickjumping.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: The Arena CTF gamemode makes all players spawn with one.
• Lighter and Softer: Live has blood and gore removed, along with the map decorations of corpses, torture victims, and skeletons.
• MacGuffin: The Quad Damage becomes this in the "Quad Hog DM" mode, its duration extending to a minute.
• Nostalgia Levels: Aside of the fan-made maps, Premium Pak 16 for Live added Quake II maps "The Edge" (q2dm1) and "Warehouse" (q2dm8). A special, winter-themed version called "Winter's Edge", was available for some time.
• One-Hit Kill: Deathmatch, Capture the Flag and Freezetag have "Instagib" gamemode variants where all the players spawn with the Gauntlet and an infinite, enhanced Railgun which frags on contact.
• Product Placement: Live originally had billboards displaying ads for various things.
• There Can Be Only One:
  • In the Clan Arena, Vampiric CA, Freezetag and Freezetag Instagib gamemodes, the objective is to be the last team standing.
  • In Red Rover, the objective is to be the sole team with members.
  • In Infected Red Rover, the objective is to be the last non-infected player.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: The Easter Egg in the "Repent" map: by headbutting a certain light you open a secret area with a message which says "Sorry! The Invis is on another secret".

Console versions

Tropes exclusive to Q3A for Dreamcast, Revolution (PS2) and Arena Arcade (X360). Tropes from Arena and Team Arena may apply here as well.

• Adapted Out:
  • Arena Arcade: The PC maps "Fatal Instinct", "Brimstone Abbey", "The Nameless Place", "Dredwerkz", "Lost World", "Space Chamber" and "Apocalypse Void"/"Terminal Heights" and the character Orbb.
  • Revolution: The maps "Deva Station"/"Chemical Reaction", "Dredwerkz", "Grim Dungeons", "The Bouncy Map"/"Cobalt Station", "Apocalypse Void" and especially "The Very End of You", plus the characters Mynx and Uriel.
• All Up to You: The "One Flag" Capture the Flag challenges in Revolution. You're on your own against a team of bots who will prevent you from getting to the capture limit.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Several selectable skins in the PC version were upgraded to AI opponents in some ports: Krusade (a Palette Swap of Sarge) in Revolution, and Flisk (Palette Swap of Klesk), Slammer, Stroggo (both of Biker/Hossman), Yuriko (of Slash) and Zael (of Uriel) in Arena Arcade.
  • The Vadrigar, the Big Bad, was only mentioned in the PC version's instruction manual (where they are vaguely described as a deity or deities that "virtually nothing is known about" who gathered the player characters together to fight), and the announcer was merely a disembodied voice that announced gameplay statistics and had no identity. Revolution reveals them to be the same and upgrades them to being the Final Boss.
• Bonus Dungeon: In the literal sense of the word! After finishing the Vadrigar in Revolution, you get a special rung called The Keeper, where you face The Reaper and The Mistress. Winning it unlocks them.
• Boss Rush: The "Who's The Boss" challenge in Arena Arcade pits the player against every previous boss until that point^note Anarki, Hunter, Klesk, Sarge, Uriel.
• The Cameo: There's a Deathmatch-only level in Revolution called "The Keeper", featuring Dungeon Keeper characters Reaper and Mistress.
• Continuity Nod: The description for the map "Cobalt Station" in Arena Arcade says that "veterans of the arena call this map 'Bouncy'". This is a reference to the map's original name back in Q3A, "The Bouncy Map".
• Damage-Sponge Boss: Vadrigar has a whopping 400 health, on top of starting with a protective shield that you have to destroy first.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Hunter becomes just another challenger in Revolution.
  • Xaero, usually the game's Final Boss, becomes just another challenger in Revolution as his place was taken by the True Final Boss, the Vadrigar.
• Down to the Last Play: The capture limit for the One Flag CTF challenge "One Cap to Win" in Arena Arcade is 1.
• Gimmick Matches: Most of the challenges in Arena Arcade take place in the other gamemodes aside from Free For All. Some of them have quirks, though, such as the low-gravity-based challenges "High Flying", "Long Jump" and "Zero G".
• Letters 2 Numbers: The challenge "Death B4 Dishonor" in Arena Arcade.
• Loads and Loads of Loading: One of the main criticisms of Revolution, averaging over a minute.
• MacGuffin: The white flag in the One Flag CTF and Possession matches.
• Mid-Boss: In addition to the PC bosses, Arena Arcade adds Pi from Team Arena to the list.
• Shareware: The demo of Arena Arcade included the maps "Arena Gate", "House of Pain" (and the challenge "Short on Time"), "Arena of Death" and "Temple of Pain", and the characters Crash, Mynx, Phobos, Ranger and Sarge.
• Timed Mission:
  • The "Kills Vs. Time" rungs in Revolution are about scoring the highest amount of frags or reaching the frag limit before the time limit expires.
  • The "Short on Time" and "Hustle" challenges in Arena Arcade are about scoring the most frags in a short time.

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