I think Raven should steer away from the idea of making the focus of Quake 4 a singleplayer game.  Doom 3 is coming out sooner and is focused on singleplayer, so there is no reason to have two of the biggest names in the PC gaming industry tackle each other on the same field.  I personally have confidence in Raven for making Quake 4 an exciting game.  They did a great job with Heretic, which was the medieval style of Doom, and I think they'll do a great job with Q4.  But I think Q4 will fall to its knees quickly if they don't change the focus to multiplayer.  I am what some people call a "veteran" of Quake 3 Arena, I have been playing it for almost 4 years now (ever since December 1999).  I have never been so hooked to a game like Q3A.  In the past I would buy a game, play it until I got sick of its singleplayer, and buy the next big game.  I got so hooked to Q3A because of the incredible multiplayer possibilities.  You can have mods, updated patches, more maps, and most important: make new friends.  I don't need AIM or MSN like all my friends do in college, I have Quake!  Because of the online gaming phase in Q3A I made a new friend in my life whom I met in person and play with at the cyber cafe.  There is a certain mystique in the online gaming aspect of Quake 3 Arena that is comparable to Notre Dame football or New York Yankee baseball.  There is a vast range of players from all corners of the world of all skills, from the low newbies to the elite professionals.  These players compete against each other to win first place or work together as a team to reach a common goal.  That is the only reason why clans exist, you can't have clans in singleplayer!  Multiplayer is also great for business, not only can a company put together a game, but they can build on it, and so can other companies.  We wouldn't have Tournaments, the OGL, PB, CPL, QuakeCon or other companies or organizations if all games were singleplayer focused.  My point is that I know Q4 will have a multiplayer mode, but it won't be any good if the focus is on a singleplayer mode.  No matter how good a singleplayer game is (even if it's as good as Half-Life) people get bored of it after a while.  It gets too repetitive and bots are too predictable, and the game is no longer challenging.  Multiplayer games never get boring, and the game is always challenging with the different range of players there are in the world.  All singleplayer games lose in the end because people either master it or use cheat codes to see the ending.  But in multiplayer people either love a game or hate a game and move on to another game that they love.

Not gonna happen, as much as I hope it would be MP, but we can all dream. Now just wait for several people to post how they never liked Q3, and all they want is a continuation of the Q2 storyline, with all sorts things like vehicles, turrets, squads, and all other things non-Quake!

I liked q3, but I liked Q2 far better for a number of reasons, one of which was its SP. Also I don't think that a Q4 sp game and a D3 sp game would directly compete. D3 is going to be a horror, survival title. Q4 in all likeliness won't so they won't be the same genre.

Anyone who thinks Q2 was better than Q3, probably simply lost and didn't have the skills necessary to compete in Q3.

Q2 was an obvious mistake, and ID Software made Q3 to feel more like Q1 to make the majority of Quake players happy again.

there are no DX9 features in D3 as it is an open GL game. It doesn't even use shaders extensively. bump mapping is everywhere though. Also D3 won't be one on hordes, It won't be the same as the earlier game, it will be a horror game with small numbers of creepy enemies. (if they put hordes in your computer would die, so their solution is less, harder enemies) so even if Q4 is the same as D2 it won't be the same as D3.

I'm a huge fan of really good single-player games.

Never ONCE in my single-player gaming career have I been tk'd.  Even better, I have never had to interact with a ten year-old useless tool named (l337)n00k13DAWG or some such nonsense.  Abuses of the english language in a single-player game are either intentional, like the very droll writing of Max Payne, or perhaps small errors that escaped editors and QA.  I don't have to tolerate "u r suh a be0tch u whinr u h4x ne way looser stfu" or any other pathetically malformed angst-ridden tweenie gripes.  Single-player games are not interrupted by ping spikes and server crashes.  Firewalls never cause problems.  Skins used on a map will not make your blood effects turn green, and none of the AI characters are using Asus wireframe drivers.  I can play single-player games for hours without once having to mute an NPC for the quality of their singing.  No character in a SP game will relentlessly type "hey hammer u comin wit meh to the case?" and eventually sound off on me in the vein that I'm not responding because (irony) I'm illiterate.  Single-player games afford me more polygons of environment and level, and fewer polygons on brats I wouldn't tolerate within twenty feet of my lawn.  Sound in a computer game is important to me, and the quality of sound in a SP game is unfailingly higher and more enjoyable than the raucous "omg Chixie(kllr) is a GRRRL lololololz" speech that fills my ears every time I play on a public MP server of almost any kind.

In short, while I like MP gaming (despite the above!), there's a lot to love in a good SP game.

Alternatively, a credit-card purchased game requiring the user to be the cardholder would be a wonderful solution to a lot of my gripes about on-line gaming.  

^^ well said.

Single player lasts about 1 week or less and then the game is a toss-away item. MP or nothing.

Well said escapedturkey.  That's the point I was trying to make in this poll.  By the way, do you run West Coast CTF and DM on 1.32?  If you do, is there any way you can get PB not to recognize my name "Insex" as a disallowed name.  I've been using it since Quake 1 and it has nothing to do with sex, it stands for "insects" lol.