Poor neglected poll, suffering our slow updating with its limitless patience. Wrapping up last week's poll, which asked how the cancellation of Oni's multiplayer affected buying decisions, we apparently have a two to one split among the 450 voters:

A little late, but as promised, here are the rules for the first Das Boot Contest, to be held at hl.rampancy.net today at 6pm CST:

Just goes to show how far out of control a casual suggestion can be taken. Rampancy HL, which can be found at hl.rampancy.net, will be hosting our first (and possibly last) free for all bootwar, Das Boot, tomorrow night. Special provisions are being made to allow for the controlled chaos, but you can only do so much to control dozens of users with boot privs...

And you thought it would creep past unnoticed. ;)

Exactly one year ago today, Malory and myself started up the Core, reporting on the then enigmatic Blam, which appeared at MWNY 1999 with the official title Halo. Since then, we've been redesigned twice, moved to two new servers, and expanded our scope to cover all sorts of things. The size of our captive writ--er, staff has also doubled since then. Noctavis, Narcogen, and SiliconDream now man the assorted posts around here, and the site flourishes for their efforts.

I have the pleasure of announcing that Rampancy.net has gained two new additions to its staff: Narcogen and SiliconDream. They've contributed to the site in different ways, whether publicly or otherwise, and so now we're just making it more official. Both are no stranger to the crack pipe and have been members of the Bungie fan community for years. I hope you'll welcome them in their new capacities and think they will make Rampancy.net's coverage of all things Bungie even better than it has been.

It ran a bit longer than we meant, but E3 kinda got in the way of a timely update. Asked whether or not Halo alone would be worth attending E3 for, just under 550 voters replied with a resounding yes:

If you have been trying to access the forum in the last few minutes, don't panic. The A.I. here at Rampancy isn't raising hell again; we're just updating some things with the server right now. Hopefully the forum will be available within a relatively short period of time. In the mean time you can always visit RHL if you have the desire to gab.

I'm proud to announce that RHL, the Rampancy.Net hotline server, is online and open to the Bungie fan community. Just in time for E3! For those of you who don't know, Hotline is a server/client communication arrangement that acts much like IRC or the old-time BBS chats in some respects, but also has file support and some other nice features. The client software can be obtained for free at Big Red H.