Sunsetting Waypoint Forums

Community General Discussion
1

Update: March 20 - Per the schedule below, Waypoint forums are now set to Read-Only for the final stretch before they ride off into the sunset on March 31. Please join us on Discord to keep the conversation going.

Howdy folks!
Today I need to share some important information with our Waypoint community about changes coming to the site.

Over the years, the ways and places which players engage with each other and with development studios has continued to evolve. Back in my day, we didn’t have many choices – we went to the Bungie.net forums (and maybe one or two fan-run sites – looking at you halo.bungie.org) and that’s where you talked about all things Halo. Nowadays, there are more platforms and opportunities than ever to participate in communities of all shapes and sizes.

At Waypoint, we’ve seen this shift impact our official forums as overall usage has continued to dwindle. Meanwhile, we’ve seen steady growth across other areas – particularly our social media channels and our Halo Discord Server – as our Community Team works to better meet players where they’re at.

Given this ongoing shift in player behavior, preferences, and overall usage, we have made the decision to sunset the Halo Waypoint forums at the end of this month. On Monday, March 20, we’ll put the forums into a read-only state as a transition step before we power down for good on Friday, March 31. If you have content and memories within these forums that you want to hold onto, please take steps to save and archive prior to March 31.

For years, these forums have served as a communal hangout where we’ve shared our passions for Halo, relayed feedback, engaged in lively debates, helped each other with issues, and fostered friendships. Thank you to everyone who has contributed along the way and been a part of the Waypoint community. In particular, I want to give a special shout out and thank you to our Waypoint forum moderators who have worked tirelessly to help make these forums a safe and welcoming space for all simply out of a mutual love and passion for Halo and this community.

At 343 Industries, our commitment to the Halo community is unchanged – we will still be listening, engaging, gathering your feedback, giving you updates, and helping you with support matters.

Halo Waypoint and our Halo social channels will continue to act as a source of official news for Halo (links down below). Player feedback and overall conversations with the development team and community will live on the Halo Discord Server. And for feedback in particular, we’ll continue to utilize the Halo Insider Program for periodic surveys along with the ongoing outreach our partners in Xbox User Research conduct. And of course, we continue to monitor social media channels and some other forums, even if we can’t always respond.

For support, please bookmark the Halo Support Site where you can find helpful articles and submit tickets if you encounter bugs or issues. You should also follow @Halo Support on Twitter for timely updates and info for Halo Infinite and MCC. To report players or request an enforcement appeal please visit aka.ms/HaloSafety.

Thank you for your continued support and we look forward to seeing and speaking with you across our other Halo channels.

Cheers,
ske7ch

12 Likes
2
3

End of an era!

I’ve always loved my time here, coming over from the old Bnet forums. I appreciate all of the mods work over the years, and I hope I’ll see you online elsewhere.

12 Likes
4

I hope I wrote something here that brought some value to someone.

15 Likes
5

Thanks for the heads up. It would be cool to have some sort of in game charm or banner for legacy Halo Waypoint forum users.

10 Likes
6

so that means also that discusions about some topic’s are also gone for good since that was the good part to have a forum in the first place.

same with the feedback about the game is then also gone more since you cant give your feedback then anymore.

5 Likes
7

So will we still be able to see our stats on the site?

Also, I’m curious how you’ll get feedback on the discord channel when it’s more of a chat with opinions only staying on the screen for short periods of time?

3 Likes
8

plays Amazing Grace on violin

5 Likes
9

Gonna be honest, seems like a skill issue to me.

But actually, given the status of Halo at large, I feel this is just the final confirmation that Halo is no longer the juggernaut it used to be.

It was a ride, but all good things must come to an end.
Rip waypoint, you will be missed.

13 Likes
10

Goodbye Waypoint forums. I’ve had many great discussions here. Definitely the end of an era, others have pointed out. It’s been fun! Some good times, some not so good, but I wish you all the best!

4 Likes
11

Another cycle ends. It’s been nice to see the evolution of the forums and the conversations until the end.

2 Likes
12

Seems like the move to new forums was a colossal waste.

15 Likes
13

This really is a tough pill to swallow. I absolutely loved the WP Forums. I hear you when you say that numbers are dwindling here however we can’t ignore the fact that nothing much was added. There was never any incentive to come to the forums and there hasn’t been in a very long time.

When this new version of WP was announced, myself and a lot of others in the community were super excited to see this new version of WP and where it would take us. We didn’t go very far.

It is easy to sit on the sidelines and say that not enough has been done to prevent this upsetting situation from occurring, and I appreciate everything 343i do for Halo - I absolutely do.

All of that aside, I’d like to end this post on a positive! I’d like to thank all of the people I’ve discussed, debated, and laughed with over these good years on each iteration of the Waypoint Forums. Even sometimes having a cheeky bag in game when we recognise a familiar name. 343i make the Halo games, but it is all of you, the community that give it heart and make it whole. I will absolutely miss the forums, I will miss the people in it more!

Thanks for the memories! :heart:

8 Likes
15

This is actually disasterous, why?
The old forum UI was so much better then the current one.
It’s not a shock to me at all as to why numbers have dwindled down so hard regarding the new Waypoint forums, no one wants to use it because of how badly designed it is.
Even for me to use it, it’s confusing to navigate & that’s absolutely not good if you wanted people using these forums at all.

I’m just shocked you guys are shutting it down for good instead of trying to fix it or revert back to how Waypoint used to be. It was so much better back then, now it’s just a shell.

2 Likes
16

GGs thnks fr th mmrs

1 Like
17

It’s been an honor and a privilige.
.

11 Likes
18

Discord has added threaded topics / basically forum-like functionality which makes it more manageable than just a single nonstop chat. We’ll see how it goes!
But we also still regularly gather feedback from a variety of sources and you’ll still have official avenues like Halo Insider, flights, User Research surveys, etc.

6 Likes
20

End of an era :') Forums being phased out is sad

2 Likes
21

We will meet when the sun rises again…

2 Likes
22

this is a mistake discord isn’t a good replacement for forums
its horrible not being able to find a solution to a problem with a game from googling because the solution was hidden away on a discord server instead of being on a public forum

13 Likes