Quake3World

...suck.

I don't remember there being this many passworded servers for Q3. Seems like every other one has a lock on it. Especially the really good ones (w/ actual players and a lot of times custom maps).

most of those worth playing on will have an irc chan in the hostname. just join their chan to get the pass. #q4tdm/#q41v1/#quake4 on ETG can get you some of those passes as well.

But then my question is, why do all these IRC channels like to implement passwords? I don't see the harm in allowing the public access to these servers. If anything, I would guess it is harming the community because now when little Johnny gets home from school and wants to play some Q4 but can't find a decent server because they're all locked, he decides to go back to CS.

well, most of the people playing on these passworded clan servers are probably at a skill level that would make little johnny quit anyway.

I'm guessing those active servers you are seeing with passwords are the pug (pick-up game) servers that are used for the IRC channel games where ppl meet and then when they get enough for a game they go play on one of those servers. They need a password on the server precisely to keep random people off the server so it is available for the pug gamers to use. If you want to play there simply find the irc channel for that server and join the pug.

I'd use a password to prevent many players killing my experience. If you just wanna play 1on1 with a friend, it's kind of annoying having 10fps because there's alot of other players aswell.