What is the secret behind the longevity and popularity of Doom?

[slugger]

Besides the positive traits that everyone's mentioned, Doom has fewer factors that alienate people. The big catches are gore (but clay monsters and toy soldiers exploding is mild and friendly compared to the brutal drawn-out torture that you see in genre horror) and demons (but even strictly religious people tend to like killing demons). So it's a scary game that even squeamish people can stand, and it's a religious morality tale that atheists and theists equally enjoy. Most games have much more limited audiences.

[ZethXM]

There's a sense of active development between tools, source ports, and content that shrouds the future in excitement and mystery.  We aren't at "all downhill from here" yet.

[jerk-o]

You can "Run Around" or you can "Rip and Tear"

[GraphicBleeder]

Mods, pretty much. Whenever a mainstream gaming outlet (ex. Kotaku) talks about classic Doom they usually talk about how """someone""" (never credited) made some wacky Doom mod (usually for GZdoom).

[Old-Doomguy]

IMHO one of the most satisfying feelings you can get from a game is by gunning down zombies and imps with either of the shoguns in Doom. The sound, the damage, the devastating effect - no modern game comes close to it.

[Kute]

After reading that thread with the guy requesting easier maps at the end of wads, now I'm thinking a big part to the everlasting glory of Doom is that there are no paying customers to appease on these wads, because every game I've ever been into has had the difficulty "requested" into the ground.

 

Why bother beating those maps if it's via a plea for a nerf? If it's purely about seeing the content, IDDQD? Drop the difficulty? Doom maps can look pretty great, but not great enough where it's absolutely imperative I lay eyes upon them immediately, all challenges be damned.

 

Oh yea, just save scum through them. I keep forgetting all these options exist that trivialize these maps. Why request a nerf to the content when you can just do it yourself?