Hello. Here’s a bit of backstory - if you want to skip it, I added some dotted dashes where my question starts:
I’m a huge Halo fan. Halo 1 was the first game I ever played, back in 2001. It was a birthday gift, but it got me hooked. I remember crunching hundreds of hours in the trilogy. I was never into any other games as much as I was Halo. I got the books, the paraphernalia and posters stuck all over my wall as a kid.
Around 2011, ten years after my first encounter with Halo, I stopped playing. I had studies, work and other responsibilities to take care of.
Although I hadn’t really played any game since 2011/12 I remember coming in to work one day and hearing someone playing the Halo music. I was struck by a powerful wave of nostalgia, and my discipline failed me. I’d met so many friends through Halo that were now good mates in real life and had so much fun that I went and bought an Xbox One that night, along with the Master Chief Collection. This was around one month after it was released. I bought the Xbox solely for the Master Chief Collection.
You can imagine my disappointment when I was unable to find a match. All I wanted to do was to play some Halo 3. I played through the campaigns, but what I really wanted to do was find a match. I set the Xbox aside after a couple days of attempts, and didn’t touch it for a few months.
Then in the summer I tried once more. I updated with the newest patches that were supposed to fix the game - but to no avail. I was able to find matches, but it took around 30 minutes to do so. When I did find a match it wasn’t uncommon that half the team quit. And every time a match was over it tossed me out of the lobby so I had to find a new match. This was essentially unplayable, so I set it aside again. I’d like to point out that I have an excellent fiber-optic internet-connection.
Now, three quarters of a year after my purchase the Xbox has only been gathering dust. I gave it one more go, but even with the newest update the shortest time it was able to find a match in was 15 minutes. I was never able to find a match in the Halo 3 mode, which I very much wanted to considering it was my favorite in the series.
I am a very careful consumer. I usually don’t buy things without thinking them through for a long time. But I am a sucker for nostalgia, and this lead me to this purchase which I hate to admit has been the purchase I am least happy with that I can remember.
So my question is simply: will matchmaking ever work properly? Will I ever be able to play some Halo 3 online again?
- Dan, the saddened fan.