An excellent question. Early Monday morning, my former host Gamestats not only pulled the plug on the Core, but entirely removed my home directory from their server. It wasn't until I asked for my valued news data files and forum archives to be returned that I learned the story behind the termination.
After a nerve wracking three days of downtime, the Core is back up and running, largely thanks to the efforts of our readers. Special thanks to Xzzy, who went above and beyond the call of duty to arrange this hosting and help get the site settled in its new crib.
I'm currently uploading and porting over sections of the site, but most of it is here now. Broken links will abound, but a few days of cleaning will probably get all of those. Ignore them for now, and report them if you're still seeing them a few days from now.
What a lousy time to get axed. The three days during which the Core was down have proven to be the busiest three in since Halo's announcement, with new information and materials flooding in. But I'm not bitter... no, not me. KILL! KILL THEM ALL!!
Shamelessly snatching news from here and there around the web, here's a roundup of the events, simply so that the archive won't be lacking:
Thanks to Hamish and Freewill, who were both quick to point out that Quicktime 4 has no problems playing an AVI file. That being the case, neither did I a few minutes ago.
My take on it? It's nice to have a higher resolution film to show off, not to mention a clean and detailed one. That said, there's very little new material in the film. The most obvious change is that the marines are firing back, and anyone who has watched the MWNY movie to death (guilty) will notice a few other minor changes. In how the marines behave.
Forgot to mention this about the movie below--it is a zipped AVI file, not a Quicktime movie. PC users should have no problems with it, but that may not be the case for Mac users. While I'm pretty sure the Quicktime Movie Player will play an AVI file, I can't be sure until I've actually had a go at it myself.
And if it turns out that you can't, I'll find a way and post it as soon as possible. If nothing else, I'm pretty sure there are AVI to Quicktime converters out there (I know I had one my my drive at some point). Stay tuned.
It's big, it's nasty, and it's certain to crash our poor downloads server. Yes, the updated Halo trailer from the CGW November issue CD is finally available for download:
I'm just starting my own download (back, back, you bandwidth sucking fiends!), so I can't comment on it yet. Those of you with blazing fast connections are invited to share your thoughts, though.
It's not up yet, but it should be too long now. Responding to requests, Noctavis has started uploading the preview movie uncovered yesterday on the November CGW CD, generously donating his modem to towards that cause for the evening. Currently at 13 megs, and rising slowly, it should be available later this morning.
Stay tuned. I'll be checking in on it every hour or so and will post the URL once it's up there.
Literally tons of kudos to Noctavis, who has posted a list of highlights from a new and very detailed CGW Halo preview, which calls Halo one of the five games that will change gaming forever.
Among the goodies Noct has bestowed upon us are three shots from what appears to be a revised version of the MWNY Demo trailer, found on the November issue CD: