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People thought it was like Judgment Day as they were being recorded in it with all their land. It was the first systematic census and tax record for post-roman Brittain. it only counted land holders/heads of house, so it was not comprehensive in the modern sense. It was useful long after it's use as a tax roll though, as it gave things like boundaries and title stuff as of the 1080's or thereabouts. When London burned in 1695 it was the first thing they saved and virtually the only record housed there that survived. Medievalists weep over all those centuries of burned Court rolls. Even so, land disputes were still sometimes settled at the point of sword, as getting access to Domesday records involved a trip to London and it wasn't like you had help pressing land claims except for your personal men at arms and those of allies willing to back you. They were still having land disputes like that in the late middle ages, particularly during a chaotic period in the early 14th cent and during the War of the roses, because the courts really only had power in times of stability.