In QuakeWorld there are three different armor types coloured green, yellow and red. They all give different amounts of armor and of different quality, with red being the best one and green the worst. Probably the most famous feature of QuakeWorld is bunny jumping, but its possible to play QuakeWorld without utilizing that one particular skill.

nQuake
nQuake is a small package containing everything you need to play QuakeWorld except pak1.pak (which is owned by id Software and can only be gained by buying the game through services such as Steam or through brick and mortar stores). The client it uses is the ezQuake client which is also the most popular one, except for this it also contains a lot of graphics and configs that will help you set up QuakeWorld. nQuake also contains bots for QuakeWorld, while I suggest you start out by trying to play these bots at a low level like three, it quickly becomes useless to play them, compared to a human they are very stupid, but have amazing aim.

The install of the package is very easy, but it does ask you to tell it where pak1.pak is at one point. If you do not have pak1.pak just skip this part. By not having pak1.pak you will not get the maps e1m2, dm2, dm3, dm4 or dm6, which are the most played maps in competitive QuakeWorld. Note that any map that the server has running will be downloaded automatically.

Publicly available servers can be found at QuakeServers.net

Community

The QuakeWorld community is very centralized. In the middle of it we have QuakeWorld.nu a site containing news, blogs and a forum. It also host a lot of popular QuakeWorld sites.

Most of the activity in the QuakeWorld community happens on IRC, over at Quakenet to be more precise. A good place to start is in #QWrookie. Most people hang out in clan channels and tournament channels such as #tVS and #QWDL. The ezQuake team also have their channel #ezQuake, you'll probably want to be in, especially if you are looking for help. To make the community feel connected through the hundreds of channels that players are spread out in, a service called ServeMe has been developed. This is a network of bots that can be found in most QuakeWorld channels. By typing .qw or .spam together with your message in a channel where you have op that also has a ServeMe bot you can send a message to the rest of the QuakeWorld community. Because this can make channels vulnerable to spam, an mIRC script has been developed that puts this all into one window, which can be found here.

For those of you wanting demos, Challenge-TV.com has been the archive of choice for QuakeWorld these part 9 years.

1on1

The most common play style in QuakeWorld, like in all other Quake games, is duel. Your normal duel in Quakeworld is played with a 10 minute limit, spawn health is set to 100, weapons don't respawn and they can only be picked up once. If the score is equal at the end there is 3 minute overtime. The popular duel maps are dm4, dm6, aerowalk, ztndm3 and dm2.

There is also a form of duel called DMM4, the aim mode of QuakeWorld. In this form you start with all weapons except a grenade launcher, unlimited ammo, 5 seconds of invulnerability, 250 health and 200 armor. The popular maps are PovDMM4, End and Endif. Like in all other deathmatch games, the one with the most frags wins.

Currently QWDL is the only duel league running. It's in its second season having moved on from the very successful first season. Players are divided into divisions based on skill with all games being played to best of three. It ends with the season play-offs to determine which player will go up or down a division, division zero is the top division.

There is usually a duel tournament going on as well. Right now everyone is waiting for the final of Aerowalkage, an aerowalk only tournament created by 'Phil'. The next duel tournament expected will be at Dreamhack with 1500€ in the prize pool!

TDM

While not the most played, the most popular mode is Team Deathmatch. It's played in either two on two or four on four competition, with four on four being the most popular one. The reason it's not played as much as dueling is, is because it can be difficult filling eight slots.

Four on four is played on the maps dm2, dm3 and e1m2, some tournaments also include cmt3 and cmt4 to have a map pool with five maps, but these two maps are not even close to the popularity of the first three. A regular four on four match is played with the following rules applied: 20 minute match timer, 30 second spawn time for weapons, weapons can be picked up more than once for ammunition, one minute spawn time for power-ups and a five minute overtime if necessary.

Two on two, on the other hand, is played much like a duel, with the slight difference of power-ups being enabled on the maps aerowalk, ztndm3 and dm2.

Currently the only four on four competition going on is European Quake League, which is quickly approaching this season's play-offs. Traditionally EQL has used five maps for their map pool. This year, in an attempt to raise the level of activity in the QuakeWorld scene, they adopted a style similar to the four on four league Nations Quake Rank by launching with fewer divisions, but admitting more teams to each, with only three maps in the map pool. NQR is currently on hiatus, but is expected to come back in the near future.

Clan Arena

A new Clan Arena tournament called Fusion Clan Arena has just opened its doors and they are making a new CA mod for QuakeWorld, because Clan Arena has been on the decline in QuakeWorld as there isn't really any good mod to compete with. Sign ups will be open until the 27th of April, there will be divisions for each continent so no matter where you live you can sign-up to play. If you don't have a team there is also team building going on here.

The format will be three on three, spawning with 100 health, 200 armor and all weapons. The maps will be a2, dm2, dm3, q1edge, q3dm6qw. Two of the maps are from different games, those being edge from q2 and dm6 from q3, along with a2 these maps will be a new experience to most QuakeWorld players, which, hopefully, will give new players a better chance to do well.

Quake-TV

QTV is the HLTV or GTV of Quakeworld. It comes with nQuake and watching a game with it is very easy. Simply go to www.quakeworld.tv and press Watch Now for the game you want to watch. Your web browser will want to download a file, you simply open this with your quakeworld client and it will start up by itself. You can spectate any player and chat with other players watching through QTV.