Quake Live beta opens to high demand
Users experience long queues as "overwhelming number of people" try to access game
The beta for Quake Live, which opened yesterday, has been flooded with gamers wanting to play the title, causing technical problems and extremely long queues to access the game.
The total number of applicants is thought to exceed 110,000 so far - an "overwhelming number of people," according to a community team posting on the game's website.
The queue itself has consistently numbered in excess of 10,000, leading to complaints from and frustration on the part of gamers, but the id Software team maintains that it's the only way to reasonably manage the process.
"We obviously didn't intend for tens of thousands of people to have to wait in the queue, but it was put in place for a reason, and that was so once you made it to the site, it still performed fairly well and didn't crash under heavy loads, which for the most part has worked well," read a statement.
"We apologise for the frustration a line causes, but it will be in place until we can scale and optimise our back-end to accommodate 'everyone.' This is our top priority right now and when we get to that point, there will be no queue. You can certainly trust us on this - for a game funded by advertising revenue, we don't want a queue keeping you out anymore than you want it."
For the time being, ranked matches have been suspended while the situation calms down, while id has also admitted some players may have to wait "several hours" for confirmation emails.
"Everyone here appreciates your patience during these early days of opening the site. We've seen a lot of terrific 'reviews' of the site and game from those that have made it through the queue and hope that everyone remembers that we want you in the game as bad as you want to be there - so we're working hard on all of the above and will continue to keep you updated," the statement concluded.
Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software, had yesterday announced the opening of the beta with some fanfare.
"Gamers have been eagerly waiting for months, but the day has arrived where everyone can now come and play Quake Live," he said then. "We've taken the greatest online deathmatch game of all time and made it even better with skill matching, chat, stats tracking and a ton of other cool stuff. And we've made it totally free!"