id's David "Zoid" Kirsch made an appearance on IRC this evening to gauge reactions to the announcement earlier that Quake III: Arena CTF wouldn't be shipping with the grappling hook enabled (although again, the code is in there). A full log is up on Elite Strike, and here's a quick explanation of the decision (which wasn't made lightly):

No instant weapon switching--no grapple. Grapple worked in Quake because you could chase--switch, launch, switch fire. You can't in Q2. I didn't like how the grapple turned out in Q2. You couldn't chase grapple monkeys--they were just gone if you didn't kill them immediately.