Most players want us to succeed. Some few won't mind if we fall on our butts. We'll try not to. American's clearly articulated vision for Alice gave the buzz some focus and some volume. He's credible, he's got PC development chops and players have very decisive opinions about the levels he created while he was part of the id development team.
Players are really curious about the game.
They smell BS from miles away, and I think they may be pleasantly surprised that they haven't detected any in our stuff. We might have selected a different engine and it might have been customized for our purposes, but there was no need. Following a preliminary review of some competitive technologies, it was clear that the Quake III engine was best suited for the game we wanted to build. The Alice website will continue to be the best source for all information about or connected to the game. With this shorthand characterization, American did not intend to imply that this was a continuation of Carroll's work, or that we were presenting a competing version of Alice.