Doom 3 GONE GOLD! (APRIL FOOLS)

That's right kids, you heard it here first, we at Doomworld have just received personal e-mail from John Carmack himself victoriously announcing what we've all waited four long years to hear, Doom 3 has in fact gone gold. For those of you not in 'the industry' like us and who may be unfamiliar with the 'l33t l1ngo', when a game goes gold it means that, uh, the developers finished. Anyway, here's a snippet of Carmack's e-mail:

After four grueling years of workmanship we have finally completed Doom 3. It has been a long and arduous process and was the combined effort of many, many people including some of the guys here at id like, uh, that other guy with my name, and that guy with the beard and, does Paul Steed still work here? Well whatever, I'm sure there's enough game content finished by now so we won't anger too many people. Either way Doom 3 will be an amazing experience for both veteran and newcomers to the FPS genera. I've also fought many battles to the death in order to simplify Doom 3 since I think a simple game is the most enjoyable experience. Here is a non-exhaustive list of some of the newest features of Doom 3 which we have not mentioned to anyone else:

• Freelook has been removed. This was done not only in spirit of the original, but also because I felt it might be too confusing if the player has to look up or down while they play. I also fought for removal of looking side to side, but the other developers were steadfast for keeping that feature.
• HUD weapons were removed. This is because I felt having a HUD weapon cluttered up valuable screen space, plus I think it's more simplistic if the player doesn't have to worry about which weapon to use. As a result of that:
• All weapons and ammo have been removed. You get one weapon which has infinite ammo. It fires some kind of rocket projectile, I think.
• The armor system has been totally revamped. Now instead of different classes of armor there's one class which has no effect when you put it on except it makes you walk slower. We felt that this adds to the immersiveness of the game along with the real truth that there's no such thing as body armor.
• Monsters have been reworked to all look like versions of John Romero. After weighing all our options we realized that our monsters weren't very scary, so we scrapped them all and replaced them with something far more frightening. We were considering adding American McGee monsters as well, but felt that might make it seem like we were holding grudges or something.
• All the maps have been reworked to be 100% pitch black. I know the engine has a great lighting system (I made it myself, after all), but we felt that, in order to make the maps as scary as possible, we should make them as dark as possible. So now when you play you will be scared the entire time.
• The physics system was removed. This was a tough decision, but in the end we felt that ragdoll corpses and objects that react to you in real time in realistic ways would probably just confuse the players, so they had to go. It was too hard to see the physics in the dark anyway.
• Finally, we added support for co-operative play. Haha, just kidding about that last one! April fools!

So that's the definitive list of all the newest features of Doom 3. You can expect to see it in stores in the very near future (within a week or two). We hope everyone enjoys playing it as much as we've enjoyed developing it.

So there you have it folks, right from the Carmack's mouth... or mailbox. Whatever. I hope you all reserved your copy of Doom 3 because they're gonna be hard to come by.