after Quake,
before Quake 3 Arena,
there was Quake 2. And it kicked ass, dammit. The CTF mod especially.

When you eat dirt for the first time and leave your family to build a shack in the woods

After Quake one John Carmack and American McGee began work on Quake II. It was released in 1997 and featured cutting edge graphics and 3D acceleration. It took advantage of the latest hardware. Allthough it was not an exact sequel to Quake 1 it had a similiar feel. The big feature of Quake II that made it a hit was its Deathmatch mode and later added Capture the Flag modes.

It also spawned a pile of mods including Weapons Factory, Lithium, and Action Quake. The success of Quake IIs multiplayer led to the development of Quake III which was solely based around CTF and Deathmatch.

The opengl game engine was also a big success and was used by other developers in games such as Daikanta. When it was made available for free to the public small third party games where also released, LTKTBM (a standalone version of Action Quake), and Alien Arena which now is a mixture between the Quake 2 and 3 source codes.