Okay, so I dove back into this and I'm having a really awesome time. I love it. They've fixed things up nicely and it feels good, the characters are fun, and it still feels like classic Quake just with some modernization. The free to play thing isn't bad either. I have all the characters since I bought in early, but I feel like just playing you get a lot of rewards, and the loot boxes aren't stingy. I really wanted the gun models from past games, and I've already got the original rocket launcher, the original lightning gun, and the Quake 2 railgun. All that in like ... I don't know, 10 or 15 hours of play maybe? And the other stuff doesn't feel important, so it's cool to just kinda let it trickle in and see what you get.
Anyway, if you're a Quake fan, definitely give this a whirl. It's now free, has bot support in case you want to practice (including a real players versus bots mode), and generally just seems great!