The deal with the Halo 2 interview..

**Reclaimer** · 01-12-2004

OK.. You might be wondering what the heck just happened to the thread I made.
It's gone.
Some problems came up, along the lines of miscommunication.
Through my intentions, I led everyone to believe that this was an XBA exclusive deal.
Well, as it turns out.. it was not. There is potiential still for an interview, but I would like let everyone know it is not, and I repeat, not an exclusive event soley to XBA.
The way I had worded the original thread raised some eyebrows, and as it turns out not to be the deal intended. I'm sorry if I ramped up everyone, but hey.. we all just learned a lesson.
Keep any questions that you may have, because it could happen. But it won't happen the way I had led everyone to believe.
I'm not asking to be forgiven or anything. I just ask that everyone understands that the deal was not as I thought it was going to be, and sometimes jumping the gun causes more problems than you can imagine.

So keep on gaming, and keep on making this the greatest Xbox community there is.

**BunnyRabbit** · 01-13-2004

Hey man, Its all good. I admit that I did percieve it worng as others did, but its still an awesome deal. =)

**Reclaimer** · 01-13-2004

Originally posted by BunnyRabbit
Hey man, Its all good. I admit that I did percieve it worng as others did, but its still an awesome deal. =)

Well, the worst thing I got out of it was a bruised ego. But, hey... what's life without your normal scrapes and bruises? It keeps you human.
Anyway, hang in there. It'll happen. Just not the way I had planned.

**mrgeorge88** · 01-13-2004

you're not asking to be forgiven but ill forgive you anyways

**CLOUDJU** · 01-13-2004

Originally posted by Reclaimer-XBA
OK.. You might be wondering what the heck just happened to the thread I made.
It's gone.
Some problems came up, along the lines of miscommunication.
Through my intentions, I led everyone to believe that this was an XBA exclusive deal.
Well, as it turns out.. it was not. There is potiential still for an interview, but I would like let everyone know it is not, and I repeat, not an exclusive event soley to XBA.
The way I had worded the original thread raised some eyebrows, and as it turns out not to be the deal intended. I'm sorry if I ramped up everyone, but hey.. we all just learned a lesson.
Keep any questions that you may have, because it could happen. But it won't happen the way I had led everyone to believe.
I'm not asking to be forgiven or anything. I just ask that everyone understands that the deal was not as I thought it was going to be, and sometimes jumping the gun causes more problems than you can imagine.

So keep on gaming, and keep on making this the greatest Xbox community there is.

I am very dissapointed in you....lol...joking =D It's alright. But one thing I dont understand, maybe you can help clarify it for me and potential others. When you mean it's not exclusive to XBA, does this mean other websites or magazines will be holding the interveiw ? Or was there no interview to begin with ?

**LiquidX** · 01-13-2004

I cant believe what they said about this over at HBO...

Link: http://halo.bungie.org/oldnews.html?item=8423

They accused you guys of posting about this for site hits and that TXB is getting the REAL interview... Now you said that all this interview stuff is still unconfirmed. Somebody is lying... and I trust XBA more than HBO/TXB...

**BunnyRabbit** · 01-13-2004

Originally posted by LiquidX
I cant believe what they said about this over at HBO...

Link: http://halo.bungie.org/oldnews.html?item=8423

They accused you guys of posting about this for site hits and that TXB is getting the REAL interview... Now you said that all this interview stuff is still unconfirmed. Somebody is lying... and I trust XBA more than HBO/TXB...

HBO is retarded... I cant believe they would say such crap..
That seriously infuriates me.. Why the heck are they watching us so crazily close anyway? Maybe TXB saw the mess up and tried to make us look as bad as they possibly could.

All I know is that the people at XBA should know the truth.. Pfft trying to get site hits. What a bunch of losers. HBO sux my ballz.. Or well at least whoever wrote that column. The site full of Halo is good though.

**No Fear 23** · 01-13-2004

Originally posted by LiquidX
I cant believe what they said about this over at HBO...

Link: http://halo.bungie.org/oldnews.html?item=8423

They accused you guys of posting about this for site hits and that TXB is getting the REAL interview... Now you said that all this interview stuff is still unconfirmed. Somebody is lying... and I trust XBA more than HBO/TXB...

i know, this is total bull.

**Reclaimer** · 01-13-2004

In a nut shell, I said it was an exclusive interview for XBA. I thought that it was such a huge deal for XBA... well anyway that word was the wrong word to use. Because people everywhere not at XBA flipped out thinking how did XBA get an exclusive interview with Bungie? Well, the right (or wrong) people saw it, and this became a bigger issue than I wanted it to be. Somebody made a powermove, some people where contacted, and I was instructed to pull it down because that was not the deal. "You don't have an exclusive interview with Bungie."
There will be an interview. It just won't be exclusive. God forbid you ever put the words "exclusive" and "interview" in the same sentence.
So now H.B.O. is accusing me of just luring traffic? Bah! Let them think what they want. We have plenty of traffic as it is. I can be assured that the 2 days my thread was up, the influx of traffic was nothing in comparison to any given day. We're a busy site, with phenomenal daily traffic.
TXB is having a ball with this? Fine. I made a mistake. I got the point. Not everthing goes according to plan. Show me a staffer that doesn't make a mistake, and I'll show you a liar.

So that's it.

**l Maximus l** · 01-13-2004

Originally posted by Reclaimer-XBA
Show me a staffer that doesn't make a mistake, and I'll show you a liar.

So that's it.

I don't know, man...I'm pretty border-line perfect.

hehe

**BunnyRabbit** · 01-13-2004

Originally posted by Maximus-XBA

I don't know, man...I'm pretty border-line perfect. hehe

Liar...

Yeah, well lets ignore their crap. Mistake is in the past. If they continue to give crap like little kids so be it. We are teh r0x0r0us in all. Hehe. Reclaimer dude. I feel you owe nobody an apology.
You said like exclusive as in you have to be a member of the site to put Qs in here or no?

I dont know, but it doesnt matter. Its all good. No matter where it is we get to have a chance at gettin our questions answered. Thats what matters.

**MikeMan91389** · 01-13-2004

Originally posted by BunnyRabbit

Liar...

Yeah, well lets ignore their crap. Mistake is in the past. If they continue to give crap like little kids so be it. We are teh r0x0r0us in all. Hehe. Reclaimer dude. I feel you owe nobody an apology.
You said like exclusive as in you have to be a member of the site to put Qs in here or no?

I dont know, but it doesnt matter. Its all good. No matter where it is we get to have a chance at gettin our questions answered. Thats what matters.

chaching... exactly what i woulda sed

**JDHack0822** · 01-13-2004

Originally posted by Reclaimer-XBA

So now H.B.O. is accusing me of just luring traffic? Bah! Let them think what they want. We have plenty of traffic as it is. I can be assured that the 2 days my thread was up, the influx of traffic was nothing in comparison to any given day. We're a busy site, with phenomenal daily traffic.
TXB is having a ball with this? Fine. I made a mistake. I got the point. Not everthing goes according to plan. Show me a staffer that doesn't make a mistake, and I'll show you a liar.

So that's it.

Can you say jealous! Let them wine if they want, who cares! They just wish that they had a community like this one. I expect that the people on this site will still come up some of the best questions to ask of the developers. I'm still just excited about this interview as before. Ignore anybody who wants to give you crap about it.

**BigJosh359** · 01-14-2004

Here ya go, lookie at TXB

HBO can go to hell

and TXB, there ya go, more traffic your way.

**Louis Wu** · 01-14-2004

Interesting. You folks do exactly what you've accused me of doing - jumping to conclusions.

I had no problem at all with the whole interview thing. I was thrilled when someone found the thread on your forum, and posted it on ours. EVERYONE wants more Halo 2 info right now; I don't give a damn where it shows up, I just want it to be out there.

Then, yesterday, I get an email from Bungie, telling me that this posted interview is a total hoax; nobody there had any plans to talk to you guys. (Yeah, I know, that's not what you've posted here. I can't help that; I'm only telling you what I was told. I suppose it's possible that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.) I came back here, to see what that thread said about all this... and it was gone. (My bad - I didn't even look in the main index for another thread; I would have seen this one, and my wording would have been quite different.)

Someone asked why we're watching so closely - pretty simple, there's almost no real Halo 2 info out there right now, something as big as an interview is pretty big news. (After getting burned once, I actually had to check with Frank O'Connor to make sure the TXB deal was legit; I didn't want to get suckered twice.)

I'll post an update pointing out this thread.

(I had to register again to post here; I'd registered back in November 2002, after meeting Chris Millner at the XBL Bootcamp thing. Did you guys overhaul your messageboard or something?)

**Rams** · 01-14-2004

After seeing this on HBO I just wanted to stop by to say that Louis is the single most respected guy in the Halo community. He is a great guy and I am certain he meant no harm or disrespect to this site or it's members. I say this despite the fact that I run a competing Halo fan site. I too report Halo news on my site and if I had received an email from Bungie saying this whole interview was fake and then seen the thread removed I may have reacted in the same way. Site's all over the net use false information to lure people in and then try to get out of it by claiming they made a mistake. I don't think that happened here but you can see why someone may think that.

The whole reason this situation came to a head is because Bungie employees read HBO more then their own site. They probably seen the news post and then emailed Louis and Reclaimer. Obviously there is still some confusion since Bungie told Louis one thing and you guys are still claiming another. No offense to any of you but outside of a Bungie or MS, Louis is the most reliable person for Halo news.

**Reclaimer** · 01-14-2004

Originally posted by Louis Wu
Interesting. You folks do exactly what you've accused me of doing - jumping to conclusions.

I had no problem at all with the whole interview thing. I was thrilled when someone found the thread on your forum, and posted it on ours. EVERYONE wants more Halo 2 info right now; I don't give a damn where it shows up, I just want it to be out there.

Then, yesterday, I get an email from Bungie, telling me that this posted interview is a total hoax; nobody there had any plans to talk to you guys. (Yeah, I know, that's not what you've posted here. I can't help that; I'm only telling you what I was told. I suppose it's possible that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.) I came back here, to see what that thread said about all this... and it was gone. (My bad - I didn't even look in the main index for another thread; I would have seen this one, and my wording would have been quite different.)

Someone asked why we're watching so closely - pretty simple, there's almost no real Halo 2 info out there right now, something as big as an interview is pretty big news. (After getting burned once, I actually had to check with Frank O'Connor to make sure the TXB deal was legit; I didn't want to get suckered twice.)

I'll post an update pointing out this thread.

(I had to register again to post here; I'd registered back in November 2002, after meeting Chris Millner at the XBL Bootcamp thing. Did you guys overhaul your messageboard or something?)

Originally posted by Rams
After seeing this on HBO I just wanted to stop by to say that Louis is the single most respected guy in the Halo community. He is a great guy and I am certain he meant no harm or disrespect to this site or it's members. I say this despite the fact that I run a competing Halo fan site. I too report Halo news on my site and if I had received an email from Bungie saying this whole interview was fake and then seen the thread removed I may have reacted in the same way. Site's all over the net use false information to lure people in and then try to get out of it by claiming they made a mistake. I don't think that happened here but you can see why someone may think that.

The whole reason this situation came to a head is because Bungie employees read HBO more then their own site. They probably seen the news post and then emailed Louis and Reclaimer. Obviously there is still some confusion since Bungie told Louis one thing and you guys are still claiming another. No offense to any of you but outside of a Bungie or MS, Louis is the most reliable person for Halo news.

I appreciate you guys for taking the time and coming in here to say what you did. I will tell you now, that I was forced to take down that announcement thread, not by our boss, but by a reprentative from MS' Public Relations. Their take was that we didn't have an exclusive interview and we couldn't say that. I will admit that I made a mistake by saying exclusive. I was thinking in terms for Xboxaddict, and that this was going to be big because I was going to take questions from the members. I had no idea that by saying that, those words would actually mean that we had something that the other players in the industry don't.
I'll tell you up front that it wasn't a PR stunt. We have a good community here, and we receive a large amount of daily traffic already. We where told that there will be an interview. That just doesn't come from thin air. You have to get permission, all the stars and planets must align, and when the sun sets on the seventh house on the seventh block, you submit an interview. As the date loomed closer I set forth to arrange my plan. My intentions where to move the event to the chat room that we have to take the questions. I was also going to make it that you had to be a member here already for at least a month, and have a set amount of posts. In short, our infamous particpation rules that we set when we do our giveaways. I had it all lined up and ready to deploy right up until I got the news from our boss the second night. Honestly I don't even think Bungie knew what was going on.
I never did imagine that all this would come from that, and so fast.
But, you live and learn.

**BunnyRabbit** · 01-14-2004

Man I said some things I definitely shouldnt have. At least now that I see what happened. Im sorry Louis. You seem like a good guy.

I just got frustrated with words said. I apologize.

**nof** · 01-14-2004

Sorry XBA and all those involved in this little dilemma. I was the one who alerted HBO to your deal. I feel bad for jumping the gun and posting something before anything concrete was said.
http://carnage.bungie.org/haloforum/...pl?read=361114

I was real excited that you guys got a interview. I've been visiting this site for a long time and finally decided to post. You guys are the best Xbox community site out there IMO. I posted this on HBO's forum with the hopes of only improving your already high quality website.

Curse me for being a community "networker".

Hope everybody's happy now!

Let's have a big HBO, XBA, TXB, and BG:Halo cheers. It's all about the games guys.

**E Nomini Patri** · 01-14-2004

That was really cool of Louis and Rams to post here, I hope they have earned the respect they deserve from some of you. I am glad this is back under control and peacefully settled.