GT Thread/Discussion

This is a must read and I think all members of this community should do their part to help.

Bungie fans, we’re asking you to step up, “Be a Hero,” and help us help Haiti.

At 4:53pm on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake swept through the Republic of Haiti and shook the nation to its knees. We’ve watched in shock, horror, and sadness as men, women, and children scramble amidst the rubble looking for friends, family, and loved-ones. We struggle to make sense of it and can’t help but feel helpless as we witness their struggle for survival from afar. Sadly, the situation is only getting worse.

For some of us, this is a grim reminder of our own tragedies. We hear echoes of the ocean spilling into the streets of New Orleans. We recall broken buildings slipping away from our skylines, falling into dust. And as shattered families in Haiti begin their own relief and rescue effort, we are reminded that the divide between our nations and our peoples is not so wide, that we are not so different, and that we are not so helpless.

We can do something. We can make a difference. But we can’t do it alone. We’re calling on the Bungie community. We’re asking for your help.

BE A HERO!

Right now, in the Bungie Store, you’ll find a special edition of our Superintendent tee. Pick one up and we’ll donate 100% of our profits directly to the relief efforts through the American Red Cross.

BUY BUNGIE SWAG, HELP OTHERS!

In addition to the special shirt, from now until the end of February, we will be donating all of Bungie’s profits from the Bungie Store directly to the American Red Cross. If you had your eye on a sweet Bungie hoodie or bag, there’s never been a better time to buy than now since that money will go right to supporting a great cause. Please note that this really only applies to Bungie apparel and accessories in our online store – if you wanted to add an HD TV or Xbox 360 game to your cart at checkout, Bungie doesn’t actually see any real proceeds from those 3rd party items.

PLAY HALO & WE’LL DONATE $77,000!

So, you want to help but don’t have a way to get one of our shirts or make a monetary donation? Not to worry, we’ve got you covered with the easiest possible way to be a hero – playing Halo!

We are rallying our fan community to show their support by playing Halo 3 or ODST online next Wednesday or Thursday while wearing a special emblem signifying your commitment to the cause. For every thousand heroes that participate, we will make a $100 donation on behalf of Bungie and our fan community to the Red Cross for Haiti relief efforts, up to a maximum of $77,000. All you have to do is don a special emblem and play a game online and know that you’ve done a small part to help those in need.

Please mark your calendars and help spread the word!

Here are the specifics:

1. Round up all of your friends and hop online with Halo 3 or ODST any time next from 00:01AM PST Wednesday, 1/20, through 23:59PM PST Thursday 1/21.

2. Edit your appearance settings so your character is wearing the RED HEART emblem.

a. Press START
b. Select “SETTINGS” / “APPEARANCE”
c. Select “EMBLEM”
d. Select “Hearts” ICON, “Circle” BACKGROUND
e. Back out to the APPEARANCES menu and select “COLORS”
f. Set “EMBLEM PRIMARY” to RED (or MAROON / BRICK / ROSE depending on which game you’re playing!)
g. Set “EMBLEM SECONDARY” to WHITE

3. Once your emblem is set, play! This can be a custom game or a matchmaking game, just make sure it’s played online, on Xbox LIVE, or we can’t track it.

If you keep playing more games through midnight on Thursday, KEEP THE HEART EMBLEM ENABLED or you may not get counted.

Link

I hope everyone on LG does this – it’s no cost to you and it helps the victims who need the money. Please try and spread the message around to your friends.

If there is enough demand maybe we could all play some H3 matchmaking that night in BTB and just have a good time.

Happy New Years from all the staff at LG. May this year be better than your last and we hope we’ll be around to say this next year as well.

This post will probably be fairly lengthy and will explain in detail what I am trying to do with the site and how I came to buy it, so if you have a short attention span or cant read just skip this. Though if you want to find out most things read on…

From the time we changed to a WP blog and a BBpress forum I think most of us could see this site was beginning to decline in popularity, content and general activity especially since Rhapsody didn’t invest as much time as he had been doing with the older sites and had moved on to other things as well as college. The site slowly declined in activity until it was finally decided that we needed a change again to try and restore ourselves to our former glory. At first this appeared to be working but with time activity declined and again Rhapsody was too busy with his other projects to be able to have enough time for LG (this is no dig at Rhaps – it’s the truth and at that point in time his other sites were more successful than LG so who can blame him?). However, this was also partly the members fault who did not have the motivation or drive to post new things – I saw LG crumbling once again and I decided to step in by trying to buy the site.

- I’ll admit it now and this is still mainly the case – I knew almost nothing about running a site and dealing with hosting, domains and maintaining one and I did not know what I was really putting myself forward for.  -

So I contacted Rhapsody and made him an offer, the first one was declined so I raised my price to one I was still happy to pay for LG with, but at the time I didn’t have much money so the amount I paid was about as far as I could stretch (no I will not disclose the amount). I proceeded to buy hosting and move the site over and try and get everything set up and this is where we are at our present state.

What the future holds.

When I bought the site I realised I had to change it somehow to bring in new members while keeping the sense of community alive and this was the vague plan I had formed in my head when I bought the site – it has now become a plan which I am fully going through and this should generate activity on the site. I thought there was a lot of potential when LG was a blog – it just wasn’t executed the right way imo and that combined with the little time Rhapsody and people like myself and Shwan put into the site was our main downfall. This new version of LG will still be the same as most of the other ones in a respect:

• We’ll still have a forum
• We’ll still remain a Gaming site
• And most importantly we’ll still remain a community

So what is this grand plan?

Well that’d be telling.

You’ll know very soon when the first and second groups are set up.

For those have you who read this, I’d just like to thank you for staying with us. I’d also like to thank Rhapsody for accepting my offer over those who offered as well.

So basically most of the site is done but I’m still installing mods and things for the forum and i’ll give you guys the choice: Do you want to be using the forum in it’s current state while I am still working on it or would you prefer me to continue working on it until it’s done – either is completely fine with me.

If you would be willing to design a banner for the site please contact me for more details – I don’t care how good or bad it is as long as it is made by someone who is a member of the community.

So please comment below with your answer to the question above and once I feel I have received enough of a response  from evrybody here and on Live etc I will then make my decision. Thanks guys

I’ve gotten a few messages on AIM and the like asking me questions like “How long left” “Why isn’t it done yet” etc. So I may as well answer these in one post.

Since I am transferring files from Rhapsody’s server directly to mine this can take some time – from what I understand it can be quite a lengthy process.  Anyway, if you wanted a general release date where everything will be ready…there isn’t one. I’m trying my hardest to get everything set up and ready ASAP but there are a lot of factors limiting me from this.

Thanks to all of those who are staying with us and who will be active on the new site and thanks to all the newcomers who have come.

We’re on our way to being a fully functioning forum soon. Some of you already know that I bought this site from Rhapsody and all will be explained when everything is back to normal. For now though sit tight and hit F5 constantly!

Kapow