August 4th 2004.
7 years on.
I found out through a PM from CmdrScott1701. I assume that he found out about it through Bungie.me's Account Birthday section.
It surprises me that I haven't marked the date on my calendar. I mean, it's the account birthday; Bungie's favourite number.
I'm not sure what all of the other 7-year veterans find themselves posting about or remembering in these birthday threads, but I think I'll just go through some of my favourite memories and Bnet achievements that I can recall.
Here we go!
* Posting "The Skulls Have Got To Be Cracked - And Soon" in the Halo 2 forum which later became "TSHGTBC-AS - The Search for TUE" ("TUE" being "The Ultimate Egg". Watching and participating as the thread rose to 550+ pages, then awaking one early July morning to find it having been deleted by Pezza's hacked account. I made a lot of good friends and memories from that whole experience.
* During TUE, I came up with the idea of completing Halo 2 on Legendary with all skulls activated. The idea was that as a collective we were trying to unlock an alternative ending, an easily accessible skull-menu or just something. So I went ahead and did it. Went through all of my skull-profiles (with saved checkpoints), went onto my SonicJohn Gamertag, booted up Cairo Station and painfully dragged myself through 26 total hours of agonizing torture. 5 of that dedicated entirely to killing Tartarus (and that's without actually dying). Note: nothing was unlocked.
* As soon as all of the Skulls were found and collected in Halo 3, I decided I wanted to tackle the mad-man's challenge again. So I did, this time armed with a name and a file share: Project L.A.S.O.. You may have heard of it from your weekly challenges in Reach. I'm very honored to see my "LASO" term get so widely used and abused, as funny-sounding as it is. Also, I personally pronounce it "Lass-oh", not "Lay-so" as I've heard some people say.
* To date, I have completed every one of Bungie's skull-featuring Halo games on LASO difficulty, even being one of the first ones to publicly do so for Halo 2 and 3.
* I have a custom title. One of 7 people to ever receive it. Thankfully I don't get as many PMs as I used to regarding it, but whenever I do, I'm reminded of how fun the Septagon was in Summer 2007, and I smile.
* I came up with the name "Bungie Universe" when there were threads on what to rename "The Underground". I don't know if my idea was chosen or whether someone else came to the same conclusion, but I'm proud of that either way.
* Took over the Community Carnages from Cryptic, ran them for a good few months until they were banned by the Moderators due to other people making copycat threads. Glad to see them back up.
* I started Septagon Productions with a few other Community members, and started releasing Bungie Community Podcasts. My only regret with this in my memory was when odmichael posted his Podcast on the same day we did, and before us. I feel very ashamed at my reaction to that. Speaking of being ashamed of actions...
* I've failed to stop coming to Bungie.net over 9 times by this point. Plenty times I've attempted to break the habit, and plenty of times I've found myself sneaking back on. I even disabled my browser's access to the site. By this point, I'm in a better place in my life so that coming here is no longer an addiction, but it sure damn-well scratches that itch.
* I've attended PAX 2009 and 2010 in Seattle, meeting so many amazing people, and for the first time in my entire life, feeling entirely welcome and accepted. That's actually part of my attraction to Bnet, but that's a story for my therapist.
* I inspired Coup d'Bungie to be what it is today. It started off with CAVX just creating a Greasemonkey script that allowed people to locally disable their title bar colours and change their title to just "Member", but then I had the ingenius idea of combining everyone's scripts into one so that we could all see eachother's custom titles and custom colours; even made a rough prototype too. And it just went on from there.
* I once had a consistent post-per-day count of 70+. My fingers won't let me forget it.
* During the 70+ PPD months, I somehow gained notoriety for being the first reply in plenty of threads around the Septagon. I can recall a few amusing threads from people as a result. This thread, for example. Ironically, I didn't post in it.
* I've slapped Yoozel.
* I've made so many close friends and met a lot of really creative people during my time at Bungie.net. This eventually led to the creation of my daily passion, Whisper Game Studios, which is made up almost entirely of members I've met here on Bungie.net. Whisper, as a result, is extremely influenced by Bungie and shares a lot of common ground (more than meets the eye at first-glance). Our site colour-schemes also appear to have entirely swapped, so that amuses me (we started out with a black/grey/blue theme, and now we're whites and blues...Bungie started out with whites and blues, and now they're black/grey/blue). And with Aerospace announced, and with Whisper transitioning from XBLIGs to mobile, perhaps the Bungie Community will get to hear more from us then.
* I was invited to the Halo Reach Launch Party at Bungie's new studio in Bellevue, met a bunch of really cool people from Bungie, from 343, and from Microsoft. Did a little dance, made a little love, got down that night.
* I met my fiancée as a result of starting Whisper (she's the Director of Audio and Management). She has some ties to Bungie too, so it's interesting to me how life is all swings and roundabouts. We currently have an immigration lawyer, and I'm set to come over and marry here in Seattle within a few months, and when I'm there, I'll definitely be trying my hand for an artist position at Bungie ;)
And here we done.
And all in the space of 7 short years. It's not much, but it's everything I've known since I was 13. It's amazing to me how far Bungie, its community, and I have come in all that time.
With the community slowly turning the pages of the Bungie Story towards this fresh new chapter, and with Bungie writing the pages as we go, I honestly feel like anything can happen. I'm excited for what the Community looks like in another 7 years, and for what Bungie has left to show us.
I hope that I'll be here for it.
And I hope that one day I get to be a big part of the magical goodness that is Bungie's ongoing metaphorical book. We'll see.
Thanks for reading (or skimming; it's coo')!
So...how many Se7en-year veterans does that make the Bungie Community now? Heck, there's a good 13 years of Bungie before my time, so how many people here can remember Bungie right on back to Minotaur or Pathways Into Darkness?
[Edited on 08.03.2011 11:54 PM PDT]