The big diffierence this time around, though, is that there are many multi-player shooters out there that have more exciting and interesting gameplay than the stock Quake experience.
This in itself is nice if the industry were at the same point it was when Quake 2 came out, I'd say that Quake 3 would be a major contender.
Now, we have Quake three, which has basically gone and done to Quake 2 what Quake 2 did to Quake 1 Point 'N' Frag, fast-paced deathmatch action, stunningly improved graphics, and optimized performance for network play. At that point in the industry timeline, though, such a game was still a very viable entry in the network play category, especially with things like capture the flag to make play interesting. With Quake 2, the chunkiness of Q1 was cleaned up a bit, but there was a distinct feeling that, well, you were still playing pretty much the same game. I was enthralled by Doom when it came out all those years ago Quake represented another big leap from sprites to 3D vector-based gameplay.