Opinion of the Top 100 Wads of All Time

[Marnetmar]

http://www.doomworld.com/10years/bestwads/

Just out of curiosity, I was wondering what people thought of this nowadays.

Do they still hold up today? Has the community's opinions changed?

[IMX]

I remember playing Crossing Acheron for the first time a year ago and having a fucking blast.

Overall Cyb and Linguica did an excellent job picking the best out of the bunch at the time, some works may be hard to look and hard to play under certain conditions nowadays (i.e. pistol start) but that was how things were done BITD.

From that bunch, at least 15 wads are still being actively used.

[vdgg]

Putting MM in 1996 = crime!
1998 WADs - I strongly disagree...
But I played >90% of these, so Top100 kind of helped me in the beginning.

[Jaws In Space]

I think that the Top 100 WADS list is pretty crappy. There seems to be a lot of WADs on there due to nostalga factor & importance at the time, such as Momento Mori 1 & Aliens TC. I think most everyone would agree that these WADs do not hold up well at all & that there are much better lesser know WADs excluded from the list because of it. The fact that Doom City didn't make it onto the 1995 list is pretty freaking ridiculous & after playing through a lot of Maximum Doom I feel that there were some excellent lesser known WADs that were not included simply because they were lesser known, such as Brundle's Revenge.

I had hopes that there would have been a revised list for the 20th cacowards, but to my disappointment it didn't happen. Still I think a revised list that actually contains the very best wads should be made.

[Steve D]

Funny thing is that I started in '95 and still haven't played a lot of these wads. Looking at '95, I'm happy to see Fava Beans included, but my eyebrow rose at the absence of Osiris. But I did a fist-pump when I saw Michael Krause's Run Buddy in '98. Krause is one of the best and most unique Doom mappers.

As for the rest of the list, I'll have to give some of these a shot.

[Linguica]

Jaws In Space said:

There seems to be a lot of WADs on there due to nostalga factor & importance at the time

Uh, yeah, that was kind of the point. The list was not just about listing the ten absolute subjectively best WADs from each year, which would have been impossible in any event since we hadn't come close to playing all of them. Instead it was more like Cyb and I sat down and hashed out what we thought were ten WADs that best represented each year, out of a mixture of quality, perceived importance, nostalgia, and what have you. The list was never intended to be definitive, but just a jumping-off point for someone who wanted links to some good stuff, with the hopes that they would wade through the archives themselves to find more gems.

[Capellan]

Mostly, seeing Requiem in there for 1997 reminds me how at the time we thought that it would be one of the last big Doom projects to ever be made.

Shows what we knew :)

[Linguica]

This thread makes me think about how there has been a big shift in how people approach Doom WADs compared to back in the day. For a long time, you literally had to either just browse around on one of the /idgames mirrors, look at text files, and download stuff hoping for the best, or else maybe hear about a particular WAD through word-of-mouth or through newsgroups or IRC or Doom fansites. When I made doomworld.com/idgames this was still basically the dominant mentality, at least for me, and this shows through in how bare bones it is - you still move through big unsorted directories and look at text files. Stuff like the search function and the ratings were, and mostly still are, things bolted on because they were fairly quick and easy to do, and without a ton of thought put into them.

Nowadays, however, the dominant mode for finding neat stuff on the internet is through ratings: either collectively and impersonally through actual ratings systems, be they star ratings or upvote / downvote; or individually and intimately by looking at the curated list of someone whose opinion you trust. People no longer expect to have to spend time browsing around to get the lay of the land and find stuff themself; they want The Answer given to them by some knowledgeable body. (Like how the Cacowards have become the de-facto highest honors in the Doom community, and people actually discuss them and take them seriously, where it's like, you know this is usually something that one dude banged out on December 9, right?)

So yeah this is all kind of a digression on how times have changed in the last 15 years (no shit, right?) and how the Doom community kind of occupies a weird place where it's founded on a lot of these old early-internet modes of thinking that no longer apply. I can tell you that if I was making doomworld.com/idgames today, I would approach it ENTIRELY differently and have it be far more centered around discovery through search / ratings / curation.

[Jaws In Space]

Linguica said:

Uh, yeah, that was kind of the point. The list was not just about listing the ten absolute subjectively best WADs from each year, which would have been impossible in any event since we hadn't come close to playing all of them. Instead it was more like Cyb and I sat down and hashed out what we thought were ten WADs that best represented each year, out of a mixture of quality, perceived importance, nostalgia, and what have you. The list was never intended to be definitive, but just a jumping-off point for someone who wanted links to some good stuff, with the hopes that they would wade through the archives themselves to find more gems.

Yeah I had always assumed that's what you guys were doing, but still there are some pure garbage WADs on a list called the Top 100 WADs of all time, like Earth from 1998.

I get that it's pretty much impossible to play every single WAD ever, heck just getting through Maximum Doom is a daunting task. Still it's quite a shame that so many great WADs go completely unknown.

I kind of wish that there was a search by year option on the doomworld id games archive or a search by star rating. I think it would be a step in the right direction for helping people to find hidden gems.

[Steve D]

Jaws In Space said:

I kind of wish that there was a search by year option on the doomworld id games archive or a search by star rating.

In which case, you'd likely stumble on Realm of Chaos, whose lifetime rating at idgames has now climbed to 3.75, almost as high as Requiem, which it seems Capellan may not be so fond of. ;)

1996 forever! ;D

[Capellan]

I hold heretical opinions on many topics, not just Doom megawads :)

[Steve D]

^^^We might have to do some research on this. ;)

[Gez]

Jaws In Space said:

I think that the Top 100 WADS list is pretty crappy. There seems to be a lot of WADs on there due to nostalga factor & importance at the time, such as Momento Mori 1 & Aliens TC. I think most everyone would agree that these WADs do not hold up well at all & that there are much better lesser know WADs excluded from the list because of it.

Importance at the time is definitely a good criteria for this proto-Cacowards. I think something would be wrong if Aliens TC was not included.

[kmxexii]

the only thing i question is a lack of INVADE2 in 1994

otherwise its a pretty good primer but if you seriously think these were the actual, factual top 100 wads of all time you must be brandon d. lade

[Jaws In Space]

I would have been perfectly fine with Aliens TC not being in the top WADs, when I first downloaded it & played it a few years ago I thought that it would be amazing. Aliens + Doom & it's supposed to be one of the very best from that year! Then I attempted to play it & I was just sorely disappointed, while I will admit that the amount of work that went into replacing the textures & sounds is quite impressive for 1994, the actual visuals & layouts of the maps are quite questionable & the game play leaves Much to be desired.

So I personally would have been happier had I never played the WAD in the first place because it means nothing to me, to you it may be an amazing classic, but to me it's just another crap wad from 1994 that put way to much work into replacing textures & not enough work into making it fun to play.

[purist]

Jaws In Space said:

I kind of wish that there was a search by year option on the doomworld id games archive or a search by star rating. I think it would be a step in the right direction for helping people to find hidden gems.

That would be good, playmode too. I wish you could refine your search by toggling subdirectories megawads and ports.

[scifista42]

Recently, I've tried many random wads from that list, and while they (certainly!) weren't terrible, most of them looked and played rather mediocre to me. Well, surely they were oldschool wads and not modern wads we know today. I admit, I wasn't there back in the 90's, so that I can't judge whether the list is legitimate, because I don't know so many wads to compare it with. But I agree that only few of those wads hold up to this day.

[RichardDS90]

I've played many, and do enjoy them, though I will admit, MM wasn't as good as I expected. Think there should be some runners up in the top 100?

[Gez]

Salahmander2 said:

I've played many, and do enjoy them, though I will admit, MM wasn't as good as I expected. Think there should be some runners up in the top 100?

I think it's a bit too late for changing the Top 100.

But there's always threads like this. The entire list ended up being included here.

[fraggle]

Linguica said:

December 9

Optimistic.

[General Rainbow Bacon]

Being that it's now 2014, this shit needs updating. Last entry is 2003? Pretty sure we've got way better stuff now and we can knock a few of the lesser wads out of there.

[scifista42]

General Rainbow Bacon said:

Being that it's now 2014, this shit needs updating. Last entry is 2003? Pretty sure we've got way better stuff now and we can knock a few of the lesser wads out of there.

The list was compiled in 2003/4, and got continued by annual Cacowards from that point on. :)

[Memfis]

Some of it definitely seems naive today. What is "Earth" doing there? As far as I'm concerned, the only cool thing about it is the starting view: then you turn around and a world of boredom welcomes you. At least the same author's "Phobos" manages to keep entertaining you with cool visual installations all the way through, not just once (the gameplay is still very questionable though). Then there are some factual errors, like I'm pretty sure that Demonfear is actually from 1995, as well as the first MM.

But still it's an entertaining read overall and obviously an impressive effort: just two people had to go through A LOT of stuff to compile this list.

[Jaws In Space]

Yeah, but even some of the old Cacowards could use another go over, for example Phobos Revisited won one in 2004 & it was basically just edited IWAD maps.

[Memfis]

I'm pretty sure that Rex Claussen did everything from scratch in Phobos Revisited. It might seem boring and pointless since we're so all tired of remakes at this point, but 10 years ago it was an intriguing and innovative project I would say.

[Guest Unregistered account]

The only thing I was dissapointed about was the lack of STARWAR1/STARWAR2. It even got a review in a gaming magazine! And Doomguy2000 copy-pasted the starting area of the second one for Millennia Invasion, but that's irrelevant.
Eh, just my thoughts.

[kmxexii]

Memfis said:

I'm pretty sure that Demonfear is actually from 1995

a lot of demonfear came out in 95 but the last two episodes did not

[Salt-Man Z]

I'll be the contrarian and say I have no problem with the Top 100 WADs (nor the continuing Cacowards.) I've played only a small fraction of the 100, but certainly can't argue with their inclusion. I see nothing wrong with supplemental lists or polls, though.

[Gez]

Given that the Cacowards are closer to 20 wads per year when you add a full set of three multiplayer awards, a Mockaward, a Mordeth Award, a Best Gameplay, and a number of runners-up and other special mentions... You could turn the Top 100 into a Top 200-or-so by "Cacowardizing" it.

[7hm]

I'm curious Jaws In Space... What in maximum doom is good?

The problem with finding stuff for yourself in collections like that is that so much of it is terrible.

The top 100 isn't perfect by any stretch but it's a place to start.