I will place my knife between the notches of his spine, and my boot between his jaws. - ME!!! ><
Ok The reason Halo 2 was shut down is because it ran on the OLD xbox live 1.0 servers. Halo 3 and Halo:Reach run on the Xbox Live 2.0 servers.
Halo 2 wasn't the only old Xbox only FPS to die that day. Along with Halo 2 died: Counter Strike for xbox, Star Wars Battle Front 2 for Xbox, And pretty much any other original Xbox original, Xbox live compatible game. I bet though if Halo: Combat Evolved had Live multiplayer more people would be complaining about that instead of Halo 2.
Now before you go off on me and call me a cod fanboy (god forbid)
Even though i might not have played it as much as the rest of you. I loved that game. It was the first Halo game I played and the one that got me hooked on Halo. Even though I sucked really bad my first time (i was like nine at the time so give me a break.) I had fun and my first kill was an assassination. The first map i played was lockout. I played 2 or 3 matches a day or two before they shut it down. I did horrible, but I had fun! I downloaded all the maps too. After they shut it down i decided to go back and just mess around on the maps i downloaded. I got to the title screen and it said an update was required for the game from Xbox live. I clicked update and It destroyed all my DLC maps. So i just played a few levels of campaign. To this day I REGRET not playing Halo 2 a little more before it died.