April 15th, 2008 3:59AM on a Tuesday morning. After several hours (read: six hours) of waiting, the time had come. The Halo 3 Legendary Map Pack was released, those like myself rejoiced. Starting at 37% I posted in the "official" release thread started in the Halo 3 forums. Every post I made in that thread after that always ended with my download being at an interval with 7 in the ones digit. 47%, 57%, 67%, 77%, 87%, 97%, and I made one last post with my Gamertag in it so my fellow brethren of Halo 3 could join in my celebrations. I tried to make it obvious I was paying homage to Bungie by only posting when my download percentage had a seven in it, those of you who are fans will understand.
Twenty minutes of watching the download bar and posting in the forums...I was ready. I added slamer780 to my friends list and invited him to private chat. Slamer780 was envious that my download was finished and it was then I made the decision to see how much I could irritate him by loading up Avalanche (his personal favorite) and describing to him in relatively vague detail of what it looked like. Slamer780 cursed my name, and the names of any of my future children. I, meanwhile, just laughed and continued. Next on the list was my most anticipated, Blackout.
I loaded up Blackout and slamer proceeded to curse my future children and myself once more as I vaguely described the level. He had his questions and I answered them. "Where are the weapon spawns?" to which I answered "The same as Halo 2's Lockout with some added ones, the equipment is new so that will make things interesting." "I saw the door deals in the vidoc.." and I simply responded "Mapmaker? Yea, they are here." and he continued "Do they fit in the level well?" and my response before I moved on to Ghost Town "Yes, they fit the level design perfectly."
Ghost Town was my final conquest before slamer780 ever had his download finished. Once again he cursed my name, but I think he forgot to curse my children. I did not spend long in this original map: slamer780 rejoiced because his download was finished. I jumped back into Avalanche and he joined my party. We proceeded to "dick around" with the giant man cannons until we decided to try to get six other people and go into DLC Slayer and get our four months of free Bungie Pro. Unfortunately we could only get seven and we were paired with a person with only the Heroic map pack. We were forced to play Standoff.
After that horrible incident (horrible to us anyway), we picked up an eighth member and proceeded to load up DLC Slayer once more. The first map chosen was Standoff again and we vetoed then Avalache was the next map chosen. Slamer was on my team and I wonder if he was having too much fun with the warthogs and man cannons to take the game seriously, what makes me think that is he only scored three kills for the entire game. Admittedly I have no room to talk...I was having too much fun driving a mongoose around and jumping it into man cannons so I was in the same boat as he was.
The last bit of my celebration took place in Forge as I explored each map bit by bit, a sense of respect is what I first noticed when examining the textures and lighting effects. I have seen those that say Bungie screwed themselves and us over when they made the maps the way they did. That no one is going to buy the map packs now because of the "problems" with the maps. I disagree, these maps and access to the screen effects is just what some of my friends and myself needed. I thank you Bungie for these new playgrounds you have bestowed upon your creation. I look forward to your future projects and I hope there will be many more in the near future. Thank you once again for listening to us, your fans. I will continue to be a member of the following, The 7th Column.
Sincerely,
James Sailor a.k.a Shadow Ryo Nightfall
GT: Ryokea Hakubi
April 16, 2008
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