Longevity of the Doom community

I am very surprised that this community is still alive and not dead yet.
This community is 20 years old and is somehow still alive. Amazing. Anyways, I was born after the release of Doom and Doom 2. (1998 to be exact)

Welcome to the community that never dies. :)

The community is ever-growing, thanks to the easy modding which everyone can learn, thanks to the awesomeness of the original game and thanks to tons of custom user-made content available for free. Welcome on board! :)

I found the thread title misleading. :(

Avoozl said:

I found the thread title misleading. :(

How so?

HydroAmbience said:

How so?

perhaps Avoozl meant that he found the title uninformative, "long time" could mean anything(long time since I took a shower, etc.)

Doominator2 said:

perhaps Avoozl meant that he found the title uninformative, "long time" could mean anything(long time since I took a shower, etc.)

I could of put it in the Everything Else section. But, this had something to do with doom so I put it here.

He may have read the title as "hey, it's been a long time, i'm back" and was expecting an old-time Doomer to resurface. That's what I thought at first too. :P

Xaser said:

He may have read the title as "hey, it's been a long time, i'm back" and was expecting an old-time Doomer to resurface. That's what I thought at first too. :P

Me too. It's not even been that long since the last 'Doom never dies' thread.

I continue to be amazed at how much interest there still is in Doom and how the community continues to this day. I can't think of many (any?) other games that still have such a large, active community after 20 years, though maybe I'm not just looking hard enough. Does Quake have an active community the size of Doom's, for example?

HydroAmbience said:

I am very surprised that this community is still alive and not dead yet.

Most of us are zombies, so until our masters are destroyed our fate is to play and map for Doom.

How so?

Maybe mistook it for another how old are you thread.

The community isn't dead because the game isn't dead. I'm talking about the source ports.

GreyGhost said:

Most of us are zombies, so until our masters are destroyed our fate is to play and map for Doom.

Maybe mistook it for another how old are you thread.

Although the title was renamed from "long time" to "age of doom comunity" after avoozl's post.

The new title is also misleading, I was expecting an announcement of a MMORPG set in the dangerous but exciting Doom community environment. With a wide variety of character classes to choose from (introverted slaughter ninja, jaded forum warrior, source code sorcerer, shameless resource thief and many more), I was ready to surrender my free time to it. Oh well.

one shadowy cartel extends the life-span of the Doom community by continually delaying Kama Sutra 2

dew said:

The new title is also misleading, I was expecting an announcement of a MMORPG set in the dangerous but exciting Doom community environment. With a wide variety of character classes to choose from (introverted slaughter ninja, jaded forum warrior, source code sorcerer, shameless resource thief and many more), I was ready to surrender my free time to it. Oh well.

This sounds more entertaining than it should..

The Doom community will live for some time, but eventually we will move on.

The online players continue to shrink each year.

There used to be about 200 people on back in 2004, and now it's about 100 on a normal weeknight.

dew said:

The new title is also misleading, I was expecting an announcement of a MMORPG set in the dangerous but exciting Doom community environment. With a wide variety of character classes to choose from (introverted slaughter ninja, jaded forum warrior, source code sorcerer, shameless resource thief and many more), I was ready to surrender my free time to it. Oh well.

princetontiger said:

The Doom community will live for some time, but eventually we will move on.

The online players continue to shrink each year.

There used to be about 200 people on back in 2004, and now it's about 100 on a normal weeknight.

What's funny is I've been hearing same thing about the community shrinking for 12 years now. :p

I just booted up IDE.. Between the 3 online ports, 150+ users this very minute. It's been that way for what seems like forever (actually, it seems to have grown, to be honest. If memory serves the number was usually like 60 on a good day back in '04!)

That's not to mention all the new forum members who have signed up just this year and are already active cogs in the machine of Doom! Then you have the highly active Zdoom and Zandronum forums, and frequent posts over on Zdaemon and Odamex too.

At some point, most of us current players may move on, but I have a strong feeling there will always be newcomers to take our place as Doom lovers/modders.

Heh, heres a funny log from 1999 about two guys arguing about wether or not Doom is dead: http://web.archive.org/web/19990117101627/http://doom.quakecity.net - I just love the line "Doom is over.... Nothing new is gonna happen" - Warms my heart to think just how wrong that dude was.

@Eris, even though I love Odamex majorly, that pic is damn hilarious. Poor ol' NewDoom.

fraggle said:

I continue to be amazed at how much interest there still is in Doom and how the community continues to this day. I can't think of many (any?) other games that still have such a large, active community after 20 years, though maybe I'm not just looking hard enough. Does Quake have an active community the size of Doom's, for example?

I don't think there's anything else quite like it. If there is a similar community for something like Quake, it is much more spread out without a central site like this one.

The fact that Doomworld.com has stayed afloat is probably the reason the community didn't fracture and die. I'd bet if all the great Quake websites hadn't been destroyed there might still be a central community. Think of the history that is hosted on Doomworld that DIDN'T disappear into obscurity; Ninja Doom's website is still here! You can find all the ugly remains of Ghostbusters Doom, but I dare you to try and track down Ghostbusters Quake that I based my project around.

Without a central hub that maintains the legacy of the community, I'd wager this community wouldn't be thriving like it is.

Edit: lol found it

I agree, Doomworld is the essential centre of the community, it weclomes users of all source ports and players of all types, the newest newschoolers and the oldest oldschoolers. It's great having a place we can all convene.

Doom is so incredibly unique in its moddiness. It's pretty easy to map and edit after a bit of trial and error. It's far more flexible than other early 90s shooters, and yet its restrictions are a fundamental part of its longevity, since elaborate, inventive projects are much less time consuming than any remotely modern FPS. I suspect interest has probably peaked and it will fluctuate moderately over the next decade. The new computer age--which will involve quantum computing, biology replacing silicon and invisible, radically different interfaces and hardware--will have a very interesting impact on modding.

Scuba Steve said:

The fact that Doomworld.com has stayed afloat is probably the reason the community didn't fracture and die. I'd bet if all the great Quake websites hadn't been destroyed there might still be a central community. Think of the history that is hosted on Doomworld that DIDN'T disappear into obscurity; Ninja Doom's website is still here! You can find all the ugly remains of Ghostbusters Doom, but I dare you to try and track down Ghostbusters Quake that I based my project around.

Without a central hub that maintains the legacy of the community, I'd wager this community wouldn't be thriving like it is.

Edit: lol found it

I think Doomworld.com is a big contributing factor in keeping the community together, but I think there's also a perfect set of circumstances that kept Doom afloat all these years. There are a handful of other mapping/modding communities for other games that have stayed together for years, but unlike the Doom community, they've fallen apart. Jedi Knight (massassi.net) and Quake 3 World were both absolutely massive communities at one point, but folks moved on pretty rapidly once those games entered their twilight.

Maybe Doom has survived this long because of how accessible it is...I mean, you can basically play it on a potato. Or maybe it's all the source ports that have kept the game feeling somewhat fresh throughout the years. The relatively simple mapping/modding has surely also helped, but then there equally simple games to map for (Quake) that just don't have as big of a following.