Multiplayer Overview

So, you’ve gone through Quake III’s single player ladder, beaten every bot, and now you’re ready for some live opposition. Have no fear, QuakeIII.nl is here!

Following you’ll find all the essentials to playing Quake III against others, whether it be on your LAN or on the internet against thousands of other players. We’ll even show you how to set up your own server so you and buddies can frag each other!

Getting Started

The first thing you’ll want to do before heading out into combat is make sure you’ve got your controls and settings in place. If you haven’t done so already, check out the “getting started” guide, enter your onscreen name, and set up your controls.
Joining a LAN game

If one of your buddies has a LAN set up, joining a game couldn’t be easier! Load up Quake III and choose the “Multiplayer” option at the main menu.

Once at the Multiplayer menu, highlight the top line where it says “Servers”, and click on it until it reads “Local”. Any Quake III servers running on your LAN should appear, as they do here.

To join the game, simply highlight the server by clicking on it, then click “FIGHT” at the bottom right.

If your buddies are in the middle of setting up a game and it’s not showing up, click the big ol’ Refresh button at the bottom of the screen. It’s never too early to get that psychological edge, so talk all sorts of smack while waiting for the server to appear… “hey Fargo, you setting up that server on an iMac?”
Setting up a LAN game

So your buddies all want to play Quake III, but have no skillz and don’t know how to set up a server. It’s easy!

  • First, select one of your PC’s to be the game server. Ideally, you should use the fastest PC you have as the server — if the server is slow, everyone’s game will be, too. If you have a spare PC, you may want to use it as a dedicated server (more on that in a sec).
  • Start Quake III and select the “Multiplayer” option. At the bottom of the Multiplayer screen, click on the bouncy red “Create” button”. This will take you to the “Game Server” screen.
  • On the “Game Server” screen, select your Game Type. You can choose from “Free For All”, “Tournament” (one on one), “Team Deathmatch”, or “Capture the Flag”. For now, choose “Free For All”.
  • To choose a map, click on a map’s picture in the middle of the screen. Only one tier of maps is shown at a time, so use the red arrow buttons to scroll back and forth between tiers. Once you’ve selected your map, click the “Next” button in the bottom right.
  • Finally, set your game options. The list along the left shows the varying players allotted for your game. For each slot, you can choose between empty, “Bot”, and “Open”. “Open” will allow open slots for players to join your game, so make sure you have enough open slots for all your buddies and anyone who may want to join in.


If you’re low on players but still want a full match, you can throw a few bots in the mix by selecting the (you guessed it) “Bots” option for as many slots as you want.

In the lower right of the screen, you can set your frag and time limits, as well as add your server name. If you have a spare PC to act as the server, set the “Dedicated” option to Yes — it’ll run much faster. Otherwise, leave it set to “no”.

Once you’ve got all your settings ready to go, click “Fight” in the lower right…and let’s get it on with the killing!

Joining an Internet game

You think you’re really tough, and are ready to take on the best the Internet has to offer? Finding Quake III games on the internet is extremely easy, whether you’re using Quake III’s built-in server browser, or if you’re using external software like GameSpy3D. (Obviously, you’ll need an internet connection before you can play, but we didn’t really have to tell you that, did we?)

Using the Quake III browser

  • Load up Quake III and choose the “Multiplayer” option at the main menu.
  • Once at the Multiplayer menu, highlight the top line where it says “Servers”, and click on it until it reads “Internet”. A list of servers will then begin to refresh and fill the list below.
  • If at any point you want to stop the refresh process, hit the Space key. If you want, you can change your search to look for games of a specific type, such as CTF or Team DM.
  • Once you have your list of servers, you can sort it by clicking on the “sort by” option at the top of the page.
  • To join the game, simply highlight the server by clicking on it, then click “FIGHT” at the bottom right.

Using GameSpy3D

  • First download GameSpy3D from Fileplanet. GameSpy3D is unlimited-use shareware, so you can use it as long as you want without paying a cent. (Of course, you can register it for $20 and get extra-cool features like SmartSpy, which can quickly help you find particular maps or mods without having to go ping every server on the Internet.) Installing GameSpy is easy — just double-click on the installer and the program will do the rest.
  • Once you’ve installed GameSpy, you’ll want to set it up for Quake III. Start the program and on the menu bar, click “GameSpy” > “Games and Filters”. Scroll down, check off “Quake III”, and then browse to the location on your hard drive where you have Q3 installed. Click OK.
  • On the menu bar, click “Tools” > “GameSpy Updates” > “Update Master Server List”. Once your server list is populated, right-click on the Quake 3 tab on the right, and click “Update”. This will populate GameSpy with a list of servers running Quake III.
  • You can sort the list by clicking on a column heading, which will allow you to find the servers you have the lowest “ping” — the amount of time it takes your PC to communicate back and forth with the server — to. Generally, the lower your ping, the more stable your game will play.