Rampancy

Just a few quick notes here about the site. I'll probably write something longer a bit later, but this should suffice for now.

It's no secret that the code running R.net right now is, in Internet terms, fairly ancient. That's at least partially responsible for the huge influx of spambots I've had to fight off; the latest methods of keeping them under control aren't available on this version of the platform.

A lot of the special features on the site were enabled either by third party modules or customizations I made myself, which means that just doing a straight-up upgrade to later versions of the platform either don't work at all, or break lots of things. I've avoided any such upgrades now in order to avoid that, but it seems as if the time has come.

As of today, user registration is disabled. This is so I can freeze the database in its current state while I work on performing the upgrade, and make sure that no content or user accounts are lost. Addition of new content, including stories, blog entries, sheet music uploads, and images, as well as comments, are also disabled.

Most, if not all, of the restrictions on anonymous users are now removed. During this migration procedure, it is not necessary to login to download sheet music. This will be changed back once the updated site is online. At the moment there is no precise timeline for how long this update will take, or what portions of the site, if any, may be lost or degraded as a result. Please bear with me; because of the many customizations it may take quite awhile to hit on an upgrade procedure that works.

As for the future of the site itself, without belaboring the point, I became a fan of Halo and an owner of an Xbox console because of Bungie. While it is natural to want a good thing to go on forever, I think works have natural endings, and I believe that Halo, at least for me, reached a satisfying conclusion with Halo 3. ODST was a highly enjoyable side story that I thought was probably the most fun since the original, but Reach seemed to me to be a bit of a footnote rather than a whole new chapter, and while it was very solid gameplay wise, it was the start of a number of changes to Halo that seemed to me very... unlike Halo.

Despite my obvious prejudice, which it would be foolish to attempt to deny, I thought Halo Anniversary would be a good way to get a look at how 343 Industries would move forward with the franchise. While I liked the ability to switch back and forth between original and new graphics, and some of the new graphics were quite nice, overall it showed me quite little. What was great about Anniversary was what was great about the original, plus online coop, but without films-- for me, a major sticking point and one of my favorite features in Halo 3. 343 chose to mostly leave the game alone and farm out a new coat of paint for the old game, in the end, telling us very little about the future of the franchise.

Now that the franchise's future is here, I can't say I much care for it. I have not played the game, but I've watched others play it, and to me, it no longer looks, sounds, or feels like the Haloverse I know and love. That's fine; I'm sure the game is as good an exercise at pointing guns at things and shooting them, but for me the context is a big part of it.

The upshot of all of this is that the future focus of this site will remain Bungie games, and Halo is no longer a Bungie game. I'm looking forward to Destiny.