Abandoned Quake 4 expansion finished by modders and now playable

The completed Quake 4 expansion prompted contrasting reactions to both nostalgia and the value of revisiting old games. lavendermon welcomed the release, recalling the pleasures of Quake 3 and saying they did not mind whether AI helped finish the project: easier, cheaper access to nostalgic experiences was enough. By contrast, imbusy111 found Quake 4 sluggish when they tried it and argued it was not a classic worth playing today. Their disagreement turns on whether the appeal lies in recovering a remembered era or whether the game itself still holds up.

Commenters also differed over how to think about finishing work left incomplete by its original creators. johnnyApplePRNG felt the project was like releasing posthumous music the artist never finished or intended to publish. LoganDark replied by pointing to Michael Jackson’s “California,” implying that such releases can still produce something worthwhile. lavendermon connected the AI question to World of Warcraft’s nostalgic “WoW Forever” launch, crediting AI with helping Blizzard handle a huge influx of players smoothly. ecshafer focused instead on the engineering, praising WoW’s shared-realm and layering systems for scaling to millions of concurrent players while noting some remaining issues around zone transitions and PvP.