Cannot comment on Quake or Unreal tournament as I have not played either.

I gave RAGE an 8.5 out 10 when I scored it here so I do think it is a decent game. It has some good fighting aspects and can be challenging at times. I just feel they hyped up the vehicle combat, open-world aspects and the amazingly revolutionary forms of creating warefare too much. The fighting is not all that unique at all for a shooter. It just hyped itself up to be so great at many things and unlike Borderlands and Fallout (as you mentioned) it just does not revolutionize anything. If they continue the series they need to imrover a lot or really hire some new people to make itup to par with other post-apocalyptic games.

Why does Borderlands owe anything to id when Borderlands was released before Rage?

I believe since Gearbox pretty much ignored both,it would be safe for others to do so also .

It isn't a matter of anyone owing anything to anyone.  I was just commenting, to me, it looks like Borderlands did to Rage what Unreal Tournament did to Quake III arena.  Id comes out with an offering that was being hyped as the next big thing and then a competitor comes along and steals all the attention (thunder).  

I don't really think the situations are comparable. id was the top dog for FPS on the PC before it released Quake III, and every new Quake resulted in tons of new games using the updated engine.

When they released Quake III they went head to head with Epic's original Unreal Tournament. It was in the same year (very close actually) and the games were very similar. Multiplayer-only games that featured bots and online play as well as offline multiplayer matches. A first for each company.

Everyone and I mean EVERYONE (I read tons of mags before the internet was big) expected Quake III to kill Unreal Tournament, although they were being nice about it and did these little comparisons where they tried to stay neutral.

UT sold more and had a bigger community and presence. id was pretty much irrelevant after that, as Doom 3 was destroyed by half-life 2 in 2004.

Rage didn't really go up against Borderlands in any way as it came out 2 years later. Rage, Fallout 3 and Borderlands all fall into a similar category though. They are Post-Apocalyptic games that combine FPS mechanics with some RPG features or leveling up system, but they do it in different ways.

Borderlands and Rage are more FPS oriented, as they have solid shooting mechanics and you spend a lot of time shooting. Fallout 3 is closer to an RPG, but it's not a particularly good RPG (Exploration is the best part of this game while Rage & Borderlands suck at it) and it's actually a pretty terrible shooter (New Vegas is more of an actual RPG but the gun-play is much better as well).

Either way Borderlands didn't kill Rage, Rage killed Rage.

To sum up, what is going on is more reflective of Id being passed by than anything else? I have to wonder if part of things being what they are is the split between Romero and Carmack. Could be that Id isn't the same without Romero. And anyone know where Romero is?

Yeah except Borderlands came out first so it stole thunder from no one.  All id did was hype the hell out of there game and then have it fail.