Preston Cyberdog found and Louis Wu posted an apparently poorly-hidden feature of the new Bungie.net site that offers to help you out if it looks like you don't know what you're doing.

It looks like the new Bungie.net forums are powered by IdealBB 1.5, a Windows-based online collaboration system developed by Ideal Science. (Their company is linked from the bottom of the forum pages.)

Users of the new Bungie.net site might find one thing to be problematic- linking their Xbox Live GamerTag. Although Bungie.net allows you to choose whether or not to display your GamerTag if it is linked, you can't actually link it there if it isn't already. To do that, you have to sign in to Xbox.com using the same Passport you use for Bungie.net.

If you haven't logged into Xbox.com lately, you may find some changes there, too-- users are being prompted with a message that they need to "migrate to the new version of our website", and if they log in with the same Passport account they used earlier, that they can keep their previous account settings. However, this doesn't appear to be working for everyone. At least one user (okay, me) has received an error message that only states "There was an error attempting to migrate your account." which isn't very helpful or informative. However, keep in mind, that was from Xbox.com, not Bungie.net.

SketchFactor has posted about this issue in this forum thread.

Those of you with truly nothing better to do may remember that my Christmas wish to Bungie was a flexible statistics system, linked to Xbox Live, that would have hooks that external fansites could link to in order to develop their own customized leader boards.

Well, the latter might still be a pipe dream, but it definitely looks like the new Bungie.net is going to support Xbox Live statistics; there's nothing on the page now, but it is linked from the new features story and it appears in the floating navigation bar at the bottom of the screen, between games and community.

Looks like the new-look Bungie.net is open now for real, and looks like there are a few things to poke around and find.

One is a new video called Can o'Whoop Ass; you can see it on the new videos page.

Another is the link to "webcams" in the Inside Bungie section; looks like two more cams in addition to the original have been added. However, one seems to be pointing at what looks like a kitchen windowsill full of bonsai trees and a fan, while the other appears to be pointing at a Billy Talent album cover.

There are also new forums. The new forums support avatars, thread locking, stickies, and polls, although the new rules are rather draconian: no bad jokes and the use of any variation of the word n00b is punishable by death. You've been warned.

UPDATE: Now there are two new stories on the front page, also. One is a more detailed list of the new site's features, and the other is a retrospective on the Origins of Halo. The latter article, while it summarizes things that a lot of longtime community members already know, is interesting because it's the first time the Mac roots of Halo have been discussed by Bungie since shortly after the buyout, and it also explicitly about a lot of the removed features, such as the elevation map, ambient life, and some of the Covenant vehicles.

Well, Bungie.net isn't down anymore, but it does appear that something has changed. Loading the canonical names www.bungie.net or www.bungie.com now brings you to the Seventh Column site. The links for Truth and Reconciliation, the Myth Vault and the official Halo 2 site from that page seem to be down. Halo Babies mentioned they saw the new site, but then noticed that it wasn't actually ready yet. Passport login appears to be working.

Frankie's thirteenth Bungie Update, originally at Sector 7, is now in our Halo 2 Updates Archive.

Achronos has posted on Bungie.net again about the site, which they expect to be down for perhaps as long as 6 hours on Monday morning starting at 8 Pacific. This covers all official Bungie websites.

If you had an account on the old Bungie.net system and want to link it to a Passport account so you can keep your nickname, you have been warned: your last chance to do so is before this Sunday at 5 PM. After that, the non-Passport accounts will be deleted. Check Achronos' post at Bungie.net for the details.

Editor's note: this probably means that Bungie is a step closer to revealing what they've been working on for the new Bungie.net.

Halo Phenom, a site that apparently started up only in February, is now closing in April. We mentioned them once when they put up an article on online cheating. Thanks Strithe who let us know.

Well, since Bungie started the Weekly Updates again for the upcoming release of Halo 2, there's been an increase in traffic to a lot of Halo sites, and Rampancy is no exception. In particular, a lot of people found Rampancy's Movies page, which while not nearly the complete listing they have at HBO, or the huge downspout of bandwidth that they have at Mythica, had a few good movies and was able to push a bit of traffic.

So much traffic, in fact, that our host is now quite concerned about the usage on what is essentially an account that has no extra bandwidth charges. We were happy to continue as long as no one noticed, but our host has been good to us over the years, so rather than let it all hang out, we're going to scale back a little bit.

In short, we are removing some of the older but more popular movies that we've mirrored and that get a lot of traffic, in order that we can continue to offer occasional mirrors for new movies that warrant attention. As of today, our local copies of these movies are offline:

• Warthog Jump
• Warthog Revisited
• We Grew Up Fast
• Halo 2 E3 Realtime Demo (hires)

Thanks for your understanding.

[image:7244 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Well, after nearly five years in existence, most of the last 2 with only myself at the helm, Rampancy is finding it impossible to keep up with Louis Wu at HBO. As said in one HBO forum thread, inspired by Rams' column over at BGH points out, there's really no point in having any Halo fansites besides HBO anyway.

Besides, with all the real-life things going on, getting married, moving to a new apartment, taking a new job, learning Japanese, and running for political office, I just don't have the time to keep the site updated as it should be.

As of today, Rampancy will cease posting Halo news, and Narc's Retorts will become a semi-recurring forum thread.

Thanks for reading, it's been a fun few years!

UPDATE: The SEC, advised of HBO's arrogant attempt to abuse its monopoly position in the Halo fansite market, has ordered Louis Wu to divest himself of all the Halo websites acquired in the last 24 hours and return them to their rightful owners.

UPDATE: April Fool.

Yet another Halo fansite has been hard hit by the voracious appetite that Halo fans have for movies. Halo GT has taken down the old movies they had in order to conserve bandwidth, and are inviting those who can help with hosting to contact them.