id Software unleashed the Quake III engine as Quake Live yesterday. Quake Live is a free online version of the classic Quake III. Sounds great! The only problem is that it's totally over loaded. id Software was smart enough to put a Queue mechanism in front of the Quake Live servers to prevent damaging the game play experience.
This does not change the situation though that I just experienced. I registered for Quake Live and I am queued at position 16,135. 10 minutes later I am at 15,490. Dudes, my day at the office is over before I get to play. Quake Live is still in beta and id Sofware is still busy figuring some things out to make this work. At least they know now that the world just waited for a free, web version of Quake.
You can try your patience at the Quake Live site.