"they fixate on the Carmack's but forgot that the Romero's are important too !"

Very true -- You can create an amazing game engine (carmack) but it wont sell unless you have talented people pushing it capabilities (romero)

From memory, referring to Doom and Quake 1, Romero built the level editor for said games. Quake, I believe, was created on NextStep machines. Romero (and others) were also the ideas of creating the world.