I'm surprised they went with a dedicated client rather than trying to utilize webgl and webrtc to have the game run as a native web app. I get that they started the port before those technologies matured, though (some might say they still aren't ready for production use).
Many people still consider Quake 3 Arena to be the best shooter of all time. That's why.
They'd be better of actually getting Quake 3 Arena as it still runs well on modern pc's, still has active servers and has loads of modding support, Quake life was always a gimped browser version of Quake 3 Arena so I would see no reason to play it.
Personally xonotic is more my arena shooter if people would actually play it but that's just me.
Why would anyone want to play arena style death match anymore? It's been done to death and it's boring...
Did you got your ass handed to you that badly? People are playing Quake for more than a decade (perhaps since earlier than your birthday?), it would have been abandoned a long time ago if it would be boring imho.
It"s the mother of all fps games, period. The game mechanics is polished to perfection and skill ceiling is almost limitless. You can try as hard as you can for years, you won't even reach medicore level, it's that good. Nothing comes close to Quake when you want real challenge, (well maybe chess or starcraft does). Go and try to beat a medium tier dueler (let alone top tier players), and you will see.
It's easy and free to say bad things about something you have no idea about (,obviously none whatsoever). Well done!