Longest Doom break

[Pezl]

5 years, the break was probably in 2012-2017.

I stopped playing doom and then somehow found cd with the game

[RetroAkaMe]

Right now.

[Uncle 80]

I don't think I've ever been away from the game more than a couple of months - then again, all my breaks from Doom are usually somewhere between a month or two, so in a year I sometimes end up being more "off" than "on" depending on what's going on in my life. These days, I'm on - mapping for and playtesting an episode which is around 90% complete.

[DMPhobos]

Longest break i had was somewhere around 2008 - 2015, where all doom related things just stopped interesting me, but with the new doom game around the horizon, i started getting interested into the series again and not long after i feel into the mapping/modding rabbit hole again, and haven't gotten out of it yet

[DrRock]

There have been quite a few breaks ever since I got into classic Doom, with the longest ones being around a year or a year and a half. Usually because I got sidetracked by some other video game or a completely different hobby for that time(or simply work duties). The game does manage to lull me back in regularly however. Coming back to Doom is like slipping into a comfy pair of slippers. Plus there always is an abundance of new interesting projects vying for one's attention, making sure that things stay fresh whenever someone decides to return to the game. Trying to catch up on all the releases almos seems like a futile task.

[Doom_Dude]

11 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

 

Fortunately by the end of the third month, our intrepid Doom Dude unscrewed the top of his head, plucked out the fried Doom egg, slapped it on a piece of toast and ate it. The source of protein helped him grow a new and stronger Doom brain, so he's all better now and making even better maps. :^)

Haha, sounds like a Monty Python skit.

[D0M0]

Im not as sad as I sound by saying this but. Since i’ve picked up doom more recently, my longest break wasn’t really that long. Maybe like 3-5 months or so

[taufan99]

I don't really remember tbh. Ever since I discovered DOOM via the 32X port in 2010, I've taken several breaks because of school and such. Probably about a year or two at the very most, but never too long.

[enigma101]

Probably 8-10 months. I've been meaning to start playing it again but then I start playing another game and get distracted by that instead of going back to Doom.

[deleted-account]

For me personally I think it was around the late 00's I gave a short-lived break to Doom and moved on to other things.

I could be mistaken, but I think most people in the community agree that time period was sort of the "dark ages" for Doom and id software specifically, and when people's interest in the franchise dwindled.  You still saw community content, but the franchise as a whole was seen as a by-gone thing.
 

I also recall watching this segment in particular back in the day and taking Todd's quote here to heart.  Why I actually believed Todd, I'll never know...

[Lizardcommando]

Oh this is a good question!

 

I think I took about a 3-4 year break at one point, mostly due to school being busy and playing other games. Finding out about the different source ports and the different modding tools and how to use them was a huge game changer.

[Thelokk]

16 hours ago, Robo_Cola said:

I could be mistaken, but I think most people in the community agree that time period was sort of the "dark ages" for Doom and id software specifically, and when people's interest in the franchise dwindled.  You still saw community content, but the franchise as a whole was seen as a by-gone thing.

 

Well, a cursory look at the Cacos between 2008-something and 2016ish does show it was... kinda the same people, over and over. Definitely more variety and breadth since then. 

 

Then again, I remember little to nothing of my brief very late 2000s stint. I clearly recall trying out a few Sunder maps, but that's about it. Was too busy virtually teabagging orcs and trolls.

[invalidlain]

I actually go through phases when it comes to playing Doom. Sometimes I just simply don't feel like playing it, sometimes I just don't feel like playing any video games, it all depends on my mood. I'd say the longest I went was maybe 5 years due to depression.

[Stupid Bunny]

I've never really had a true break from playing Doom or my favorite wads since I started back in the mid-2000s or so, but I've definitely had long hiatuses from mapping and from the community.  Usually I have gone through the cycle of

1. I come back with fresh eyes and do a bit of lighthearted, free-form mapping
2. I have a lot of fun with it, start mapping a lot more
3. Become obsessed with whatever project I'm on, it expands in its scope and ambition
4. As I invest unhealthy amounts of mental energy into said project, I start to feel the project is boring and uncreative and falling entirely short of what I want of it
5. I become exhausted and start to hate the sight of my own maps. It's time for a break
6. I rediscover my interest in another project I had previously had going on in another creative medium
7. GOTO 1

The good thing is I think I'm getting better at managing obsession, time and expectations and as such these cycles have become shorter and less extreme.  My longest break from mapping was around 6 years long and I don't see that happening again any time soon.

[Devalaous]

I take frequent breaks, followed by frenzied activity bursts, then I burn out and vanish again. Sometimes I outright leave the forums in the process. 

 

As much as I love this game, theres a thousand other games out there too.

 

This does have a huge detriment to my projects though. While I'm off chasing a new interest, naturally my modding will totally stall.

[SharkyChip]

I have never taken an intetional break from Doom, though I guess that's understandable considering I'm pretty much just starting adulthood. However, there was a long period of time in which I didn't play Doom only because I didn't have the "tools" for it.

 

I used to play Doom and Doom II on an old MS-DOS computer, which, around 2011, was stored away with a bunch of other things we weren't using at home anymore. As I was transitioning to playing other games, my brother told me he found a program to run Doom in a windows computer and that there were many "WADs" to play, so he handed me a flash drive with everything. It was Skulltag, and the folder had a huge collection of WAD files (or at least it seemed huge to me at the time because I wasn't even sure what a WAD was). In there I played like half of TNT on ITYTD and messed around with Town Infection and a WAD called something like "4000 monsters" only to leave it all behind like a month later, mostly because nothing really caught my interest

 

It wasn't until 2020 that I found Coincident on Youtube and actually discovered the modding scene, which motivated me to get a source port and replay Doom. I had recently finished highschool so I had plenty of time to spare, and I used a lot of it to play through Ultimate Doom and Doom II. After that, I took a look at Coincident's channel again and got the 2 WADs that I saw in there: Valiant and Sunlust. I told about them to my brother and we played both on co-op. And from there I haven't stopped playing Doom and looking for new WADs.

 

So, in short, an unintentional break from about 2011 to 2020

[Pegleg]

I started playing Doom in mid-1994 and mapping in early 1995, but when I was an undergrad in college (1997 - 2001), I didn't do either often. I would play or map a bit when I would visit my parents during winter and summer breaks. However, from December 2000/January 2001 to mid-2016, I didn't do any mapping. My friend and I played Doom 3 for a few hours one day in September/October 2004 after renting it from Blockbuster. Around that same time, I looked at a few websites online (Dr. Sleep's Apothecary is the only one I remember). I recall that the "latest" version of the game was JDoom, and I didn't really like the look of the OpenGL monsters. I preferred sprites. I thought about doing some mapping again, but ended up not doing it. I didn't know there was a Doom community, and I definitely didn't know it was as varied at it is.

 

But why the break of ~15.5 years (or ~12 years if you count Doom 3) from Doom? I just a lot of other priorities in my life. I was busy getting married, finishing grad school, starting a family, starting a career, buying a house, and doing the rest of the things that go along with that. I was never a big gamer anyway, so it wasn't an issue to me.

 

So how did I end up back in the fold? That's a good question. I don't really know what spurred me to look back into Doom in the middle of 2016. Despite the timing, I don't think it wasn't Doom 2016. I've still never played either Doom 2016 or Doom Eternal. Regardless of why I ended up back, I'm happy I did.

[Nightmare2989]

Longest break hmmm maybe for a few years after i got burnt out on doom and speed running from the early 2000s to 2015 i think as i was having tough time in my personnel life as well but when i came back i forgot all my old doomworld logging and passwords and it was all thanks too Brutal Doom and modding i got back into to Doom it reminded me why i fell in love with the game like how i felt back in 1993   

[DoomGater]

On 10/16/2022 at 5:07 AM, IcarusOfDaggers said:

Break: About 10 years. (better games to play)

SACRILEGE! THERE IS NO BETTER GAME!

 

But to answer the question: can't remember exactly, maybe 2 or 3 weeks break, when a new sex partner appears or
during periods of plain exhaustion due to extreme workload or while building our house. But most of the time since 1994,

I have to grab the rocket launcher once or twice a week to make a big mess.
 

 

 

 

[BaileyTW]

Sort of like a large chunk of the past year maybe a bit more. I think I started playing Plutonia 2 and I burnt myself out at some point where it basically took me 11 months, 3 months ago, to beat the whole thing cause I was playing so little. I think it was just work and I think at some point in early april I super burnt myself out trying to speedrun doom 2 again with just a route I wasn't ready to execute on on top of like trying to edit a huge map I had kinda bit off more than I could chew in making in the first place (the sin of making a 3 hour map where you get just the shotgun, chaingun, and rocket launcher) and editing it to split it up felt insurmountable just with stuff in my life going on. Trying to ease back into things by replaying some stuff I had before, and maybe when I'm up to it doing some mapping (but definitely not editing that monstrosity I made quite yet) and then go from there. I do still enjoy it after all, I guess it is just easy to get lost in the sauce.

[RoastDoom]

The last break I had was the longest by far. 12 years...between 2010 and the start of 2022.

 

I wasn't even hardcore into Doom back in 2010. I was just revisiting the IWADS one more time for a laugh, and then I scratched that itch of playing through a couple megawads (Requiem and Fragport of all wads!). I had a blast playing both but that was about it for me in terms of my Doom fix! I was more of a console player back then and my PS3 got most of my attention.

 

Fast forward to January of this year. I was watching a NoClip(great youtube channel) documentary of Doom 2016, which prompted me to reinstall the game and give it another spin. It was a lot of fun, but then I found the classic secret areas(Doom1-Hanger, Doom 2-Entryway), and then.......here I am!  I've replayed all the IWADs for the umpteenth time, I've played dozens of highly regarded megawads and maps from the last 25 years, I've joined the forums, I've even started a Doom youtube channel( the excellent content from Decino, Doomkid, MtPain27 and Sandwedge, to name a few, inspired me to give youtube a shot myself!)

 

I think the absolute abundance of unique quality content the Doom community has put out year after year, and how awesome I've found the community to be in general, has kept me from wandering off again in the last 9 months.

 

So it's fair to say Doom has sucked me right back in again, and this time maybe for good?(Or maybe I'll burn out...I guess time will tell!) 

[AmnesiaSilence]

june 2021 - may 2022

 

11 months

[Chezza]

I don't know how long the break was, but it would have been at least a decade at some point. It was discovering mods like Brutal Doom and source ports that modernize the resolutions among other improvements that got me back in.

 

Then I discovered mapping late 2015 (roughly when I joined DoomWorld when looking for answers to my mapping questions) and got really into it.

 

Now on occasion get back in and play a wad here and there casually.

[Dragonsbrethren]

I don't remember how many years it was exactly, but I borrowed a copy of the PS1 version in '97 or '98 and didn't really play again until downloading a copy off some shady abandonware website in the 2000s, then I picked up the PC Collector's Edition. At the time, I felt like the PC version was a huge downgrade over what I had played on the PS1, but I loved the mods for it! I went through a weird Wolf3D phase after that, too, and I really can't even get into Wolfy nowadays.

 

For some more fun: I thought Revenants were a custom Final Doom monster when I saw the first one in Plutonia...somehow, I had totally blanked it from my memory of the PS1 version, they're not exactly uncommon there, even showing up on MAP07, but I sure didn't remember them at the time. The arch-vile totally blew my mind but I hated it and was glad it got cut! I did warp to Plutonia MAP11 a lot to try beating that maze, though. The Icon of Sin was incredibly lame to me the first time I saw it (and the texturing in that level is so, so bad).

Edited October 19, 2022 by Dragonsbrethren

[TheSlipgateStudios]

2003 - 2008 Probably my longest period of not playing Doom 1 or 2.

[TheCarsEdge]

pretty much every year until 2022

i've always wanted to pick doom up and the eshop sale of this year was a good opportunity

[IcarusOfDaggers]

18 hours ago, DoomGater said:

SACRILEGE! THERE IS NO BETTER GAME!

 

But to answer the question: can't remember exactly, maybe 2 or 3 weeks break, when a new sex partner appears or
during periods of plain exhaustion due to extreme workload or while building our house. But most of the time since 1994,

I have to grab the rocket launcher once or twice a week to make a big mess.
 

 

 

 

Sacrilidge! Doomers don't reproduce, they are spawned in by the demon overlords to keep their hellspawn in check. 

 

Jokes aside, you should try Ready or Not, or one of my emulator favorites, Crash Bandicoot :D

[DoomGater]

15 minutes ago, IcarusOfDaggers said:

Sacrilidge! Doomers don't reproduce, they are spawned in by the demon overlords to keep their hellspawn in check.

 

..there is a difference between sex and reproduction, didn't you know?
CRASH of course is fantastic an yes, since many years he has a permanent home on my HDD. But...Ready or not?
I like the movie,(not only because of Elrond's nice niece), but I guess I could not stand a "Tactical realistic shooter".
Duh! Not my cup of tea, sorry.  "Wrath: Aeon of Ruin", that's an early access game I like.

[joepallai]

The year and a half I was obsessed with Fallout 3.   Currently (past two years) I still play intermittently but not actively mapping so it kind of feels like I've stopped.

[Mystic 256]

maybe a few weeks, not long