The Death Of Halo 2 - Part Three

So yeah, after staying up all night to see Halo 2 off in style...it was still going! When was it going to end??? People were confused..some were ecstatic, some were distraught...most just couldn't believe their luck.....

I was knackered! 8am!!! And it hadn't stopped.....it could go at any minute, or be on for days! I decided I'd made it this far, so I'd sit around for a bit longer. Detwiler had had enough...he had already sat through two countdowns and neither of them had given him the closure he seeked. He said his farewells, and left us to battle on for him....

Ivantrembow and the rest managed to hang on until 1.30pm GMT, which is when I decided I had better give up too, as I was meant to be signing on...we sent our friend requests and went our seperate ways, and reflected on the games we'd played, the things said and done....

At least I did for about two minutes, and then I faced a two mile walk to try and get a bus to the Jobcentre...I set off knowing too well that the lack of sleep and food would make it difficult to get there on time, and was proved right when I arrived at the next village to see the bus zoom past in front of me! Feck!

After calling the Jobcentre to see if I had to go in that day or could wait until Friday, I walked another two miles back home and collapsed on the sofa.....I didn't need to go in until tomorrow....I should probably try and sleep...or get something to eat........But...Halo 2 is still going. I can see people on my friends list playing it. Another few games then!

And that was me until 3.30am on Friday morning.....Slowly people started giving up, trying to end on a good game. But a hardcore few hundred decided to sit it out! I tried, but having had no sleep the night before it was only a matter of time before I had to give up....I didn't know then that if I had stayed logged in I could still be there now...the servers have been shut, but those still playing have until they log out or are forcibly removed from the game. The guy whose team I finished in sent me a friend request and I notice he has now been playing for 3 days solid....

It was an experience that will stay with me forever, probably because the game has been burned into my retinas...it changed my views on LIVE a bit too. I realize now that game communities can all come together and stop the silly insults or annoying habits, and share an experience that will never happen quite the same way again...It was almost like some sort of weird festival. A Woodstock of sorts for the gamers of the 00's...I'm just glad I hung around until the last 600 or so players, and had a great time!

Only a few guys and girls remain online now....the community is split down the middle, some saying it should have ended at 12 PST Wednesday, and others willing the remaining to hang on as long as possible....

Halo 2...it's been a blast! I may have only experienced the online stuff over the last year, but it's the game that helped build LIVE....it's influenced many of today's shooters, and has now been played more than 800 million times online...In fact here's some stats for you....

•Unique Players (not including guests): 6,603,900


•Kills: 36,784,837,266 (Or something like 5.5 times the current population of the earth)

•Assists: 10,422,552,715

•Current total games: 803,136,816

•Current player games: 5,417,490,994

•Seconds in Matchmatchmade games: 1,798,459,752,186

•Minutes in Matchmatchmade games: 29,974,329,203

•Hours in Matchmatchmade games: 499,572,153

•Days in Matchmatchmade games: 20,815,506

•Years in Matchmatchmade games: 56,991 (So since around 54,981 BC, about the time Europe was thought to have started being inhabited by Neanderthals)

•Seconds playing campaign on live: 850,462,468,852

•Minutes playing campaign on live: 14,174,374,480

•Hours playing campaign on live: 236,239,574

•Days playing campaign on live: 9,843,315

•Years playing campaign on live: 26,950 (Or about 1.7 billion dollars at a minimum wage of 7.25)


•Total Clans: 8,653,124

•Clans with 8+ members: 68,868

•Clans with 16+ members: 16,752
 
 
It's been a heck of a journey for it.........but now, it's finished it's fight!
 
RIP HALO 2
 
2005-2010

The Death Of Halo 2 - Part Two

Date :- 14/04/2010 Time :- 2.25pm GMT

Mission Objective :- To see Halo 2 through until the very end, due to happen at 8am GMT 15th of April 2010. Must not play anything else until this goal is achieved...plus you get an extra bit of bling for your Halo - Reach character which is, y'know, cool......

Equipment :- Xbox 360, Halo 2, wired controller (to stop battery changing mid-game), broken Headset that I can hear people on but not use to talk, phone (switched off so not interrupted), 6 Cans of Irn Bru, 8 bags of crisps and 3 chocolate Hob-Nobs

Mission Log Start :-

2.25pm- Have to download extra multi-player maps again, after deleting them so as I could download The Ballad Of Gay Tony for GTA4...still, shouldn't take long...

3.00pm- ...Shouldn't take long at all...

3.25pm- COME ON YOU BLOODY STu.....oh, you're done! What? Another two maps?? GAHHHH!

4.25pm- Logged into Halo 2.....finally...and prepared to see this thing through to the end. Except now I need the loo...

6.30pm- Have just been called something unprintable by someone who sounds like they're just having a quick game before In The Night Garden comes on....Some thing's never change!

7.47pm- Already becoming tired which isn't a good sign...losing quite a few games as well, and considering giving up for a few hours.....

8.12pm- Hahahahahaha! Eat that, Frank FJA!! Maybe just a couple more games before I rest....

12.16am- Rest did not come....now far too in the zone to give up, going to sit this one through until 8am!

1.35am- Something strange is happening....all of the swearing and abuse seems to be disappearing and everybody is talking about games they've played in the past, or what Halo 2 has meant to them...or just having a laugh and congratulating people on good kills...it's all rather weird....

2.47am- Have got some really excited guy on my team, who keeps mentioning how long it is until the servers shut down....He really is quite excitable, but also sounds quite scared..as if the world will blow up....

2.54am- detwiler - the excitable one - has invited me to join his party. We zap into another game and meet up with ivantrembow, a chap who sounds just like Jimmy Stewart and has a shining wit and strange habit of calling everybody on the team Harold, regardless of who they are...

5.47am- detwiler is about to have a heart attack...although people have been trying to tell him otherwise, he still believes that the servers are going to close at midnight East Coast time....he is panicking and wondering if everybody's Xboxs are going to explode..

Our ranks have grown to include a gaming couple who watch each others backs on the battlefield, and we did have a French sniper but he left after getting killed a bit too much...This combined with our Stewart-esque "leader" and detwiler's manic countdown to doom, makes me feel like I am actually part of some squad of doomed soldiers fighting in a battle they know isn't going to end well, but making the most of it....

6.02am- Having realized his mistake, detwiler has now reset his death-clock and started counting down the next two hours...Our rag-tag bunch are holding up well, but the tiredness is starting to creep up on me. I'm making silly mistakes...oh well, only two hours left! Ivantrembow is helping keep me going by mocking people's gamertags...Violated Manatee was asked how he played with flippers, and told we were sorry he had been violated...It was all taken in the light-hearted manner it was meant in, and he has joined our party....

7.59am- I should have been asleep hours ago....but the whole craziness of the night has meant that I just couldn't leave my group....detwiler is really on the edge now, and even ivantrembow doesn't know how this is going to end...Battle after battle has been fought, some won - some lost, but all of them in good spirits....the trash-talking and playing of music down mics is a thing of another age...On this night, I have realized that LIVE can be a thing of beauty! People coming together to see off a much-loved game, something many of them have grown up with..people are going to be genuinely upset by all this..They might even need counselling....detwiler definitely will!

All these battles, all this death and fun and in a minute it'll all end!! But how, what's going to happen? Detwiler's countdown is halted only for everyone to say goodbye and wish everyone well.....5, 4, 3, 2, 1......

8.01am- Uhm...we're still all here....hello? Microsoft.....????

The Death Of Halo 2 - Part One

This week saw the death (online at least) of one of the best FPS games ever...Halo 2! Released over 5 years ago, this sequel was to become one of the most popular online games ever, the most popular on LIVE for two years after it's release in fact, only being toppled by Gears Of War..It really doesn't need much of an introduction...If you know videogames at all, you'll have heard of Halo 2...

Now although Bungie Studios crafted a lovely single player campaign, as always with Halo games the real fun was to be had in multi-player. I was introduced to it one night about four and a half years ago at my cousin's house...he'd invited me and a few other mates round for a few games of System Link. Four guys sat in one room, four in another and four in yet another! I'd never experienced a game against so many other real people before, and after that night I was sold on the idea! Cushions, beer, crisps and profanities were hurled between the rooms as the night wore on, and a few games became almost 50 as daylight started creeping in over the hill....

Many more nights like this were to be had, but it wasn't until last year when I finally got connected properly up to Xbox LIVE, that I experienced the online community of Halo 2 fans....They seemed just like any other bunch of gamers online - A mix of angsty, teenage Americans and unemployed wasters like myself, with the odd random gamer girl drowning in a deluge of "What are you wearing?" type questions...."Meh!" I thought....seen one game community, seen them all....

The one thing that did shine through was the love of the game amongst it's fans...they tried to do pretty much everything they could with the game, and discovered crazy ways to reach bits of the multi-player maps not meant to be seen by prying eyes! The mythology of the Halo universe was lost on a casual observer like me, but these guys knew it all and conversations online were filled with things I knew nothing about...But I hung around, bought the novels and learned to just keep quiet and let them get on with it! And eventually, having entered the game thinking it was all over-hyped nonsense, I began to enjoy it all the more because I knew stuff like Master Chief's past, or how the Spartans came to be....

And then, just as I was really getting into the whole Halo thing, the news came that Microsoft would be closing down the servers for original Xbox games, meaning that no-one would be able to play Halo 2 online anymore.....By this time I had Halo 3, but Halo 2 just seemed better as a multi-player somehow...more fluid, better maps, more epic....just better! Apparently, everybody was going to have one last night of Halo 2 gaming to send the game off in style! I knew I had to be there to see the old gal go.....