What was the vibe of Doom community in late 90s / early 2000s?

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

I was introduced to Doom very late, at that point, I also had Duke3D, Quake, and Tactical Ops (counter strike clone). So I wasn't exactly impressed, and only returned to it many, many years later. Now, I think of it as vintage car. But before cars become vintage, they're just old. But I know many of you were in the community back then, when it was getting old. When we got the sequels to quake, we got half life, system shock, and unreal and what not. 

When people talk about wads of that era, it's as if there was a lingering feeling that Doom's days are numbered, and we need a bombastic send off. So every wad got more extreme than the ones before it. More monsters, more intricate detailing, more memorable set pieces..

Am I gauging it right? What do you remember the era feeling like? 

 

edit for people from the future when this thread is dormant: chime in, I think it would be super interesting to have the memories recorded

Edited December 13, 2022 by Sneezy McGlassFace
appendix

[RastaManGames]

Dude, "Tactical Ops" was dope! I still remember that hostage bots can pick up weapons and graphics with ballistics was nice!

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

18 minutes ago, RastaManGames said:

Dude, "Tactical Ops" was dope! I still remember that hostage bots can pick up weapons and graphics with ballistics was nice!

Hahaha, right? I didn't even know any English do I didn't figure out you can open a menu to buy guns so I was running around with a pistol hoping to kill someone with a better weapon, or loot a corpse

[Doomkid]

Take this with a grain of salt because it's from way back when my username was actually accurate... Some details are inevitably going to be misremembered :)

 

2000 was a different time for the internet (and culture in general), that's one thing important to keep in mind. Some stuff that you'll hear people say about "bad old 2004 era Doomworld" or whatever applied to the entirety of the primordial social media that existed on the internet at the time, and frankly Doomworld was always above average compared to its peers. The fact that people would say "lol, omg haz0rz!" didn't invalidate that, since the game-based net was completely drenched in it anyway at the time.

 

More specific to Doom - I'd say the year 2000 was easily the nadir of Classic Doom-related activity. Doom has never been "practically dead", but this is the closest it ever got. Map production was at a low point even compared to 97-99 (Doom mapping's adolescent phase) and it felt like there might actually be some merit to the woes of the "Doom is dying!" pearl-clutchers. New "Doom websites" on GeoCities and such were getting rarer and rarer. Even then, the most hardcore Doom fans were still making maps and doing early work on source ports like ZDoom which has just been massively influential ever since.

 

Since 2001, when I pretty much became engrained in the community, I feel like it's just been varying levels of growth, although I doubt it's actually a clean upward line. I can say though that since 2004 (Doom 3's era) the community has never even felt close to being "dead", with a pulse substantially stronger than what I was seeing in 2001/2002.

 

2011ish was already boppin' relative to 10 years prior, but saw the numbers pretty much double-up overnight with Brutal Doom. Not much steam was lost in the years between, but 2015/16 saw yet another huge bump with Doom 4, and once again in 2020 with Eternal.

 

You asked about the vibe, and I gave 10% vibe history and 90% population charts in the form of long-winded sentences.. The vibe was pretty good, similar to today though I'd say the average age skewed slightly younger in the early 2000s, which did have an impact on the vibe. I feel like putting 16 as the average online Doom player/account holder at the time, whereas now it's probably about 25 or so. Again, this is really vague average! There's always been 40, 50 and 60somethings on the scene too, just in pretty small numbers across the board. Heck, the peak of "old Doomers" activity was likely in the CompuServe era before DW was a glint in Ling's eye, but this is just speculation.

 

FUCK, I fell into speculative statistics babble again.. Anyway, the vibe has always been pretty cool, ya ask me. I feel like there was a slightly higher percentage of standoffish douches in the early 2000s, but there's never been any shortage of cool, chill and friendly people to rub elbows with, get mapping help from, and all that fun stuff. I never had any troubles meeting buddies then or now!

[Pechudin]

9 hours ago, Doomkid said:

2011ish was already boppin' relative to 10 years prior, but saw the numbers pretty much double-up overnight with Brutal Doom

 

I wondered what the BD's effect was, I know TotalBiscuit's video on it brought me into Doom.

[LoatharMDPhD]

Well... Thanks to Joe Lieberman for throwing shade on the scene, what with his crusade against violent videogames... He had some hand in Nintendo removing the blood from Mortal Kombat, etc. And what do we know now? 29 years later... The Doom community is one of the kindest group of people on the world pipe... We openly share our creations, and for free a staggering majority of the time; what other hobbyists are as philanthropic with the fruits of many nights labor of love, spinning 30 year old C code into entertainment and art. All the while, with some files, that barely break the bank, on floppy disks, from FTP's, the .7zs the world over..

 

...And so we Slay the evil... Forever...

 

 

(In Edgelord Baritone)

[Nikku4211]

As someone who was a baby back in the early 2000s, I've played plenty of WADs from before my time thanks to Doomworld's very own Top 100 WADs of All Time.

 

They were all really good, and gave good vibes. At least as much as the work actually represents the community behind it.

[RastaManGames]

Also, recently I recalled in my head this moment: https://youtu.be/6A4-SVUHQYI?t=67

 

[Steveb1000]

Doomkids comments seem to help put the important of Alien Vendetta and then Scythe in context. Would it be fair to say they modernised and to an extent saved Doom and its community? 

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

31 minutes ago, Steveb1000 said:

Doomkids comments seem to help put the important of Alien Vendetta and then Scythe in context. Would it be fair to say they modernised and to an extent saved Doom and its community? 

I think the community wasn't and isn't ever likely to die off. These wads definitely helped strengthening the community and motivated players and creators but I don't think it would have faded otherwise. 

Also, we may be underestimating the importance of zdoom and later gzdoom. If you're not in the community, the names of alien vendetta or hell revealed or scythe wouldn't tell you anything. But lots of non-doomers know brutal doom. At least have heard of it. I myself have come to Doom through a total conversion gzdoom mod, and only then found love in the vanilla doom experience. 

That is to say, keeping members in the community is one thing, and bringing new members in is another thing entirely.