I have been playing Quake since Quake World and dial up. For Quake Live I was ranked highly for a while in RA. It's true that if you were close enough to the server you could get a better experience, but in western Canada servers were limited. In the past though, even with a good ping, rails were much more likely to hit on LAN. The changes to the net code in Quake Live were a welcomed change for myself.

As a note, I recently played for the first time in over 10 years. I got banned until 2029 from the main RA3 sever most people play on because I achieved 60%+ accuracy in a match and people thought I was cheating.

I also got the aim bot achievement from Steam as a result, which only 3.6% of other players have.

Back in the day I had a very tiny sponsorship with HyperGlide where I tested their products before the launch. They are credited for making the first hard surface mouse pad. I only received mouse pads, but I was happy to receive this.

https://www.hyperglide.net/