- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
I'm in the feeling let down camp. Since I started playing halo multiplayer in December 2001, I have logged thousands of hours (I still suck!)playing it, literally hundreds of times longer than I have spent with any game in 20+ years of gaming. To this day I remain as obsessed with it as ever. Do you remember the rumors of a "halo 1.1" with Xbox Live enabled beginning way back even before Live was up? Have you been playing one of the many crappy online alternatives (always running back and forth to your pc) always praying for some love from bungie in the form of a simple online update? (It is really not that hard, the hardcore fans have done unbelievable work with halo to the level that rivals the developers themselves). We haven't got a thing from them in 3 years! Why is halo still popular to this day? Its because of the hardcore fans and gamers that have had to find ways to expand halo with very little if any support from the powers that be that halo is being talked about in forums like this even to this day. There have been independant halo tournaments that continue to grow in popularity with a very dedicated following who's lives literally revolve around halo. We buy better entertainment centers for halo, fatter internet pipes for halo, some even spend as much time playing as we do working (of course not me...). We aren't just customers, our wallets are literally plugged in to the cause!
I know some of you are as hardcore as me, some less, and some more, and you may have even dared to wonder why not throw the harcore a single f&%ing bone in 3 years? I don't petend to know if there is even such a thing as a short answer to this, but the most well-known aspect about the powers that control every piece of knowledge we know about halo is that they are by far the richest player in this industry. A corporation that large can only get that large by being incredibly good at applying the ultimate guiding principle to ALL its practices; to make as much money as possible for the shareholders. If they haven't done anything sonner it can only ultimately be because MS doesn't think (as mistaken as I think they are) it will maximize their long term returns from halo.
I am sure the developers who are making the game are just like us and wish that over the years they would have been allowed to drop a hint about coding to a modmaker or the play a match against an elite halo clan. Unfortunately the devs will never own what they create (the "original dev" is paying to use what he created now), and will never control any aspect of it.
Instead, this year, our thousands of hours are rewarded by giving the "media" and "bigwigs" who have financial interest or can contribute to financial gain a chance to play. Those who will spend a large portion of their lives playing it but represent a financial contribution of only one or two copies, got nothing.
ATTENTION TO MS: even from your bottom line thinking, imagine what it would have done for the continuing fiscal loyalty from the many hardcore gamers, if to demo the multiplayer at the press conference you awarded the chance for two top clans like stk and ps (who's gameplay is so perfect and impressive to watch that there could not possibly be a better showcase of what the game will be able to do) to battle it out onstage? If not open to ALL fans for play, allowing a representative of the fans would have prevented any thread like this from ever popping up. The forums would have been consumed by the upcoming hype for months, the game sites would have gone insane giving microsoft ridiculous amounts of publicity and "best of the show" awards.
I'll still be buying a third box and new tv when halo2 comes out, but the last 2 years of my life would have been so unbelievably enriched by the smallest gesture from the hand of the halo gods, and this void in my life would have been so much more bearable if I knew that at least one of the starving souls got a chance to get the smallest taste of lightning's second strike.