I'm pretty sure DMC / DMQ can do really well... it just needs a little TLC and I really believe DMQ is exactly that.  GoldSRC is old, yes.  To be perfectly honest, QW looks awesome with all the 24 bit bells and whistles (and this is from a guy who's working on a DarkPlaces mod) BUT:  It's still Quake, and it's still subject to the brutally basic tendrils of the Quake .qc.   That's the way it is.  You can polish it however you want, it's still Quake (and furthermore - there isn't as high a playerbase as you think; the kitschy appeal wears off for all but 1% of new players, leaving the same old crew).  You can run .md3s and .pk3s on a server, but you will still have an empty server because only a handful of people use engines that support it - leaving you with a very dead and very confused deathmatch scene.  What DMC has is STEAM.  As an admin, you see this - Steam is your baby.  When STEAM hiccups, we pat it on the back and try to find out what's wrong.   We all get our clients from the same source, and they all use the same game.  Being resourceful and making DMQ awesome,  appealing, and available to people and getting the word out should be a priority if you want people to latch onto this mod.  It takes DMC that extra mile.

GoldSRC is old, but it's still miles ahead of what Quake is.  There are eye candy upgrades to HL as well, and all kinds of little things that can work within HL1 (not to mention things that haven't been invented yet)  they just haven't been explored and exploited too deeply with this mod.   

That's just my $.02 and pep-rally for the day.

Triangle man, Triangle man Triangle man hates person man
They have a fight, triangle wins Triangle man

Just saying.

I was about to tackle this one but it looks like that thread handled quite a bit of it.  Without knowing the intent of your question, I would say the best of all (and I'm a bit biased here) worlds looks to be iD Tech4 as far as usability, developer friendliness and running SP and MP without hideous amounts of lag  (See the Shambler's Castle Mod or Hexen: Edge of Chaos for more on this).   The bias portion of my program comes from the fact that material creation, texturing, shading, and mapping in iD Techs are much more straight forward, versatile and user friendly compared to Source.

Both Source and T4 have their merits.  I don't map for Source because Radiant isn't designed to handle it very well (and I'm not switching to WC).  I guess personally, I'm waiting on the Tech5 engine and see if it merges with the ZeroRadiant branch before making a decision on which path I'd like to continue developing on.  Rage looks like it's going to be pretty tits.  By the sound of it, iD is going to make that their staple engine for quite some time soon.

I don't know enough about Unreal or the CryEngine to make a satisfactory analysis of either of them.

I think it can.  What it lacks right now is cohesion and that's due to a few things.  There is no real support in the form of websites and especially since the demise of DMC-Central and PDMC.  There haven't been a lot of developments in the form of maps and support media in the last few years, and the DMQ code hasn't been touched in awhile. 

This isn't really a big deal.  This game has been through far worse.

The best thing right now is to get it back on track, and it sounds like the new site Nextgen's working on will be integral in doing that.  Free-Fall's download section is still afaik operational, the geeky DMQ site is working,  Fireball's site is still there.  I'll be putting a dl section on the new site soon, and if we all link to each other there's a good chance people will be able to find things easier.

DMC became really expansive with the addition of DMQ, but it didn't get pushed into the spotlight enough to capture a lot of fanfare.  That's not really anyone's fault, it's just the way that things happened, and the game seemed to be winding down.  IMO a full client release with all the bells and whistles is what's needed to get it done, but that's easy for me to say because I'm not doing all the groundwork (just some of the whistles).  The issue with moving forward into Source territory is that this community lacks the people to get it done.  That's a whole different undertaking because it's starting from scratch with no maps, no weapons, or anything else.  How many people that play DMC anymore can effectively crank out 10 - 20 DM Source maps in a year, or come up with weapon models, all the material files, code, etc?   It's mind boggling.

No need for the kevlar, m8 but have a pint.

They fear teh bunnies!  Raaaahr!  =:D

Yep that was me!  Hello!  o/

I haven't run a HL Server in over 2 years, but the Carbon-Moon server was DMQ, and if I were ever to start one again, it would only be DMQ. 

Oooo nice template!

Looks great.