QLPP12 Site Update and Free Premium Week - April 30, 2011 SITE NEWS | Apr 30, 2012 | SyncError

We’re pleased to announce a content update for Pro and Premium subscribers to QUAKE LIVE, with the addition of the Premium Pak 12. With this update, Pro Start-a-Match players get five new game modes, led by a first for QUAKE, the command point teamplay of Domination. This is accompanied by a brand new Start-a-Match interface, built from the ground up to offer players the most in-depth match customization out of any shooter out there. With more than 200 customization settings, our Pro players can get down to individual weapon tweaks. Rounding out this package are four new premium arenas including the popular Camper Crossings, and two arenas from the Xbox 360 version, Quake Arena Arcade.

In addition, all QUAKE LIVE premium content will be free beginning today through Sunday, May 6th. During this Free Premium Week, new Premium and Pro subscribers will receive one or two free two-week Pro Subscription Tokens which can be redeemed to extend their subscription or gifted to a friend.

The Free Premium Week content includes:
• Over 50 Premium Arenas
• 6 Premium Game Modes
• All Premium in-game Features
• No payment or credit card required

New Gametypes

Domination

A first for the QUAKE series, Domination is a team-based gamemode centered around a series of command points which your team must attack and hold to score points. Similar to Clan Arena, players spawn with all weapons, and all pickups have been removed from the level. Regenerating health and armor has been enabled to allow players a chance to return to full strength after combat.

Attack & Defend

This Capture the Flag variant features teams alternating between offensive and defensive roles, with one life to live, and all weapons. Teams can score points by grabbing the flag from the base, capturing the flag, or killing the enemy team. Be careful, though, if you kill the team before anyone touches the flag, you'll lose out on an extra point. Play as a team, assault the enemy base, and maneuver your way out with flag in hand.

Red Rover

A mix between Clan Arena and Free For All, players compete against each other. When you frag someone, they switch to your team and respawn. These teammates make loose allies, however, since they will still be eager to frag steal and bump you off of ledges whenever possible. The round ends when all players are on the same team. The player with the highest score at the end of 10 rounds of play is the winner!

1-Flag CTF

A neutral flag spawns in the middle of the arena, and teams fight to run it into the enemy base. To spice things up a bit, players have the ability to throw the flag over the heads of enemies and to teammates to help move it further ahead. We've also embedded a small microchip inside the flag, which allows the flag to activate jump pads and teleporters, which is sure to make playing on Space CTF an interesting experience.

Harvester

Two teams face off, and each frag spawns a skull in the middle of the arena. Players must then collect those skulls and bring them into the enemy base, without losing their own head. The ability to destroy your own team's skulls by picking them up allows players to deny the enemy the rewards of a hard earned frag. Make sure to go target whoever is running around the arena with a long tail of skulls!

Start a Match 2.0
Start a Match has been rewritten from scratch to support over 200 configurable server options, including:

Customizable Weapons: Disable spawning, adjust damage, reload times, railjumping, and more for every weapon.
Customizable Physics: Air Control, Air Accel, Ramp Jumping, Ground Accel, Ground Friction, and more.
Gametype modifiers: Quad Hog, Drop Damaged Health, Vampiric Damage, Regenative Health, Infinite Ammo, Weapon Switch Speed, Weapon Stay, Allow Self-Kills, Spawn Protection, and more.

The new interface also features the ability to import and export your favorite settings to share on websites, forums, and with friends.

Premium Arenas Added
Similar to our last update, the three new arenas will be available FREE for all players, for the first week, after which they will return to Premium status. Everyone is invited to hop on and check out the new content!

Camper Crossings (CTF/A&D/1-Flag/Harvester/Domination):

Inspired by perennial favorite Campgrounds, Camper Crossings is a three-storied CTF level created by Dan "Scancode" Gold. The middle ground features the iconic jump pad taking you from bottom to top in an instant. Once you move into the bases things start to look a little less familiar, with three hallways to bring you into the flag room. Attackers will find themselves either dropping down or jumping up to reach the flag, with a hallway behind the stand that can be taken advantage of by both teams. An acceleration pad in the base allows attackers to fly across the flag room, or to be used as clay pigeons and be railed out of the air.

Cliffside (FFA/Domination):

First seen in Quake Arena Arcade, Cliffside takes place on a mountaintop above the clouds. Combining Gothic themes with the open areas seen in maps like Longest Yard, Cliffside is definitely one of the most gorgeous maps in QUAKE LIVE to date. A castle featuring a smattering of rooms faces an island that holds the Railgun. Keep an eye out when indoors for the Quad Damage; you'll need to do a slight rocket jump to reach it. The island also features an Invulnerability sphere, which can be deployed most humorously while midair in a jumpad, to send people, including yourself, falling to their death.

Jumpwerkz (CTF/A&D/1-Flag/Harvester/Domination):

Also debuting in QUAKE LIVE from Quake Arena Arcade, Jumpwerkz is a fast CTF arena with an open flag room. The highlight of the arena is the two tunnels in the middle, built into a large concrete structure. These acceleration pads provide a super fast path to propel players onto the top decks of the bases, while a slower, more manual route is available by dropping down and taking the low route. Jumpwerkz is a pretty simple design, leaving a lot of room to maneuver around the space.

Space Camp (FFA/CA):

Included as a bonus, is the April Fool's 2011 arena, Space Camp. This is a version of the popular Campgrounds arena mirrored, and set in space, with a new weapon layout.
Premium Awards Added

Over 14 new Premium Awards added to be unlocked while playing the new gametypes.


Premium Scoreboards Added
In addition to the brand new Clan Arena Premium scoreboard, we've also updated the CTF scoreboards to show kills and deaths. Premium scoreboard support has been added to Domination, Attack & Defend, One Flag CTF, and Harvester

PQL Updates

PQL is now ranked.
Resolved an issue in player movement related code that would result in the game feeling "laggy" and cause weapon switching when callvoting to and from PQL.
Walk Friction lowered from 8 to 7 to improve circle jumping.


Web Updates

Changes & Additions:

Pro players can now invite 5 Standard level users to a Premium match.
Invitations sent to an online player will now appear as a chat IM to the invitee, with a link to join instead of the Invite Monitor.
Hovering over the wrench icon on the browser will show more detailed server modification info.
Last Match and Time played are now counted for Unranked matches.
Hovering over Time Played will distinguish between time spent on Ranked and Unranked matches.
Updated browser to sort populated Start a Match servers and premium matches to the top of the list.


Resolved Issues:

Sending multiple invitations to the same standard level guest will no longer take up multiple guest slots (Maximum number of non-premium guests reached.) If multiple people invite the same player, it will use the guest slot of the last person to send an invite.
Many inconsistent uses of timezones have been corrected on the Profile pages.
Browser filters are disabled while looking at invited matches.
Corrected Recent Competitors not always showing the most recent match with that player.
Improved sorting of Quake Live Chat, should now alphabetize players that are online.
If teamsize is greater than maxclients, browser will show whichever is smaller.
Some minor formatting on Quake Live Chat to make unread IMs more visible.
Match Stats are now viewable when a full team or player quits.
Match Stats will now properly show if the match was InstaGib.
A Not Found error is no longer generated when linking directly to a match stats page.
Website key binding and game settings have been removed in favor of in-game options.
Creating a clan will now automatically activate it.
Fixed instances where a player leaving a clan is still shown with the tag.
Joining an invited match with a password will now show the password screen before connecting.
Resolved one case where the friends list would not appear until an action occurs.
The tooltip for Freeze Tag matches in the browser now shows Round Limit instead of Frag Limit.
Game Guide and FAQ updated with more current information.
Fixed improper usage of "Reticulating Splines" on loading screen.


Game Updates

Changes & Additions:

New Point of Interest (POI) system. This is an enhanced version of the original Team Locators, extended to show gametype objectives, and your team's flag carrier in flag-based game modes. POIs are also more visible when players are at a distance, no longer disappearing or shrinking.
Added 'Flag Style' for premium users to choose between the default cloth flag and the new holographic flag in CTF based gametypes. (CTF, 1FCTF, A&D).
Added handicap displays on the scoreboard on all scoreboards (except Premium Duel).
Reduced HUD clutter from award medals by stacking them rather than drawing them in a horizontal row. Added cg_drawRewardsRow to allow users to revert to the old behavior or specify the size of the the medal row.
Changed the ready up behavior at the end of matches such that you can only move from 'not ready' to 'ready' once. You may no longer toggle back and forth. (This was leading to userinfo flooding).
Changed the 'Auto Join Team' behavior such that it will now randomly choose a team if both teams are tied and have the same number of players (instead of always choosing blue).
Changed Clan Arena damage scoring such that overkill damage no longer counts toward total damage dealt or score.
Changed the in-game options menu to reflect the correct default FOV value of 100.
Added "Last Man Standing" voiceover to accompany announcement.
Bonus health will no longer tick down during round countdowns.
Enabled Team Force Balance by default on public matches. This prevents players from switching teams mid-match if the switch would result in a 2 player imbalance.
Small/Large CA and Large CTF servers have been removed. Callvoting teamsize and map on a Premium CA and CTF, in addition to Start a Match settings can be used to create matches of a desired size.


Resolved Issues:

Optimized bandwidth usage by reducing frequency of team count updates. This will improve one of the most commonly seen cases of "Server Command Overflow" errors when clients are not experiencing connection issues.
No longer drop clients while transition between maps for "cl.snap.serverTime < cl.oldFrameServerTime".
Under specific conditions, cylinder collisions could be miscalculated. Hitscan hit detection has been greatly improved.
Players disconnected from a server and are sitting at the menu will no longer appear to friends as in-game.
If a match is not able to start, more detailed messages are displayed with the reason.
Resolved memory corruption caused by enabling r_fastsky.
Dead or recently joined players would sometimes be moved to spectator if Follow Powerups was enabled.
The "One" voiceover is no longer played twice during the match countdown in non-round based gametypes.
Resolved one condition that caused the " dropped for flooding" error between matches.
The Duel Premium Scoreboard would sometimes appear to change the ready status of the wrong player.
Resolved an issue where third person was incorrectly enabled in online matches.
Players will no longer get stuck on terrain in certain conditions while using Flight.
Bots will no longer improperly use the func_bobbing on Beyond Reality.
dropflag, droppowerup, and dropweapon can no longer be used during a pause or timeout.
The callvote menu was not listing the appropriate map list for FreezeTag.
The callvote map preview shot would be out of date, after selecting a map, closing the menu, and then re-opening the callvote menu.
The UI code would attempting to play ROQ cinematics of maps selected in the callvote menus.
The winning player's weapon model was not being displayed on the scoreboard in InstaGib FFA and InstaGib Duel matches.
Resolved an issue where the player capturing a flag would sometimes hear the capture sound twice if Draw Rewards was enabled. Added cg_rewardsVO to all players to disable award images, without disabling the medal VO/SFX notification.
Resolved an issue that would cause the "Round Begins in" VO to not play during the first round countdown in FreezeTag.
Disabled teleport sound effect and shader effect when players are sitting at the post-game scoreboard.
Renamed the 'Doubler' rune to 'Damage' rune to better reflect the 1.5x damage multiplier.
Removed the bonus starting armor from pre-game warmup. A player will now spawn with the same amount of armor that they will spawn with during the match.
Removed team switch cooldown when changing to specator. Players do not have to wait when switching from spectator to a team.
Resolved an issue that could cause callvote teamsize checks in elimination based gametypes to be wrong if mid-game voting was allowed and a vote was initiated mid-round while some players were eliminated.
Removed deprecated '/team scoreboard' command.
Flags can no longer be grabbed after the timelimit but before the end-game scoreboard appears.
Scores will no longer increment after the timelimit but before the end-game scoreboard appears.
Resolved improper player model orientation and scaling of the winning player on the Duel Premium Scoreboard.
Resolved an issue that prevented damage dealt in instagib from being tracked. It is now tracked in-game and will show in the website stats.
Resolved an issue that caused visual jitters when using cl_timenudge while spectating.
Resolved a shader sort issue that caused blue teleportals to draw on top of other surfaces.
Drop Damaged Health would drop health when receiving falling damage when no self damage was enabled.
Resolved multipliers on items picked up both immediately before and after respawning by clearing pickup history on respawn.
Negative values would display on the DrawTeamPickups area of the premium scoreboards for one second before data was retrieved.


Plugin Updates

Resolved an issue where Mac (and potentially some Linux configurations) users would constantly reconnect to the Friends network.
Improved behavior when running under Windows 7 with Internet Explorer as a limited user.


Arenas Updated

Arena Gate - Fixed out of world hall of mirror effect.
Bloodrun - A new spawn layout designed to reduce spawn fragging.
Devilish - Brightened the map, and added a Quad in FFA.
Dueling Keeps - Starting spawns have been moved into the flag room.
Industrial Accident - Fixed hall of mirror effect in blue base.
Ironworks - Starting spawns have been moved into the flag room.
Japanese Castles - Starting spawns have been moved into the flag room.
Stonekeep - Fixed the floating flag base.
Wargrounds - Added a Quad in FFA.
Windowpain - Fixed vertex light mode.

Free Premium Week: April 30th - May 6th

All QUAKE LIVE premium content will be free beginning today through Sunday, May 6th.

The Free Premium Week content includes:
• Over 50 Premium Arenas
• 6 Premium Game Modes
• All Premium in-game Features
• No payment or credit card required

We have also added a Start-a-Match Demo which shows off the level of control that we make available to our Pro Subscribes when creating a server. Available on the main navigation bar 'Home->Play Online->Start a Match Demo', this new interface built from the ground up offers players the most in-depth match customization out of any shooter out there. With more than 200 customization settings, our Pro players can get down to individual weapon tweaks.

Why wait to subscribe? During this Free Premium Week, new Premium and Pro subscribers will receive a gift for subscribing during our free play week.

New Premium Subscribers will receive 1 two-week Pro Subscription Tokens
New Pro Subscribers will receive 2 two-week Pro Subscription Tokens

Subscription tokens can be redeemed in the 'Settings->Account Settings->Redeem Membership Token' menu on the website to extend your subscription or may be gifted to a friend.


We hope you enjoy the free play week.