Now that the forums are being discontinued, where will you go now? Would you join a new Halo forum or is this it for a lot of you now in terms of long form Halo discussion?
I’d like to know what the community plans to do with itself as I know many will be on Reddit, some may check Discord but there must be a reason why people come to a forum in this day and age?
What are your plans?
EDITED MY EDIT
I have created a new community forum that people can use once the Waypoint forums become read-only. Feel free to jump on and check it out!
I will stop participating in Halo related discussion. I have no interest in joining Discord. I don’t even look at the Halo subreddit anymore. I guess I’m going to continue playing the games and just talk about it with my friend, and not pay attention to what’s happening in the community.
I’m building a new home I welcome everyone too htttps://lysithea.ai/forums the site is based off of Lysithea and her access to ONI, to learn more about Lysithea here is her Halopedia page https://www.halopedia.org/Lysithea
I welcome and invite everyone especially since not too many forums are around Halo
This was hard to read, I recognize your name as a regular contributor here I hope the site above could be a tenable solution for you.
The only remotely realistic alternative for me is the official Discord, and that is heavily contingent on Discord’s forum features being at all viable for proper long form discussion. It’s sad that that is the only alternative, because I’m not a fan of everything Discord stands for: centralization, walled gardens, ephemeral chat-style discussion format that moves too fast for meaningful discussion to occur. Whole host of reasons I see communities choosing Discord as their platform being a net negative for society.
At the same time, when it comes to Halo at least, I’ll always be an official forum kinda guy. I never sought out to get into a community. Frankly, I have no idea anymore why I even started posting on Bungie.net, but I just did, and eventually when Waypoint came around I just saw that as the new place to be for Halo discussion. Now, Discord evidently is the new place, and the only difference to 2011 is that I just really, really, really don’t like it.
If I entertained the idea of joining a fan operated community, the options don’t seem too good either. The Halo subreddit is the only option with a substantial user base (and the only one I can name off the top of my head), but it’s, again, not a forum, and not a substitute for a forum. I’m sure there are some small community run forums out there that I’m not aware of. I’m sure some of them are lovely, and I’m sure some of them suit my interests, but I just don’t see myself seeking out for one.
So my plan is to keep an eye on the Halo Discord; see how it evolves. Secretly I’ll be hoping Discord eventually becomes not hip, and 343i will have to look into a platform that is less bad than Discord. In other words, I’ll keep on doing the same I’ve been doing for the past 12 years: dreaming of 343i abandoning decisions they steadfastly made a few years ago.
I’ll probably ride with the forums until their upcoming demise then I don’t know were I’ll go. Discord just doesn’t seem appealing and like many have said reddit never reached the amount of important conversation like these forums did. I think this may be the end of the road for me when it comes to conversing with the community outside of the game. So all I can say is goodbye for now. Hopefully the upcoming hills spawn in your favor, the oddball stay within your grasp, and the kills in slayer always add up to 50 for your team.
I’m not super active here, but I do like the forums. What I really miss is the old waypoint. I made several friends there and owned an active Spartan company that served as a hangout spot. I moved to a Discord server after the update and it just… didn’t work. I think I might be abandoning Halo for good now. People sometimes ask me, “Do you play Halo?” I of course, always say yes, then say something about the disaster that is Infinite. I think I’ll try saying “no” for a change.
It’s heart breaking the forums are shutting down. I don’t use reddit or Twitter or discord (discord sounds like a toxic place from what I have read about it) … So I guess I will go no where. Guess like playing Halo I will just go do something else. 343 seems content on slowing killing off the franchise. It’s quite mind boggling they won’t have an official place to discuss Halo on what is supposed to be the official place for Halo… But I can almost guarantee after shutting down forums it won’t be long before they just shut down waypoint.
It’s sad to see so many say they’re not sure and that they’ll either try Discord or do nothing. I’m right in the edge of starting a fan-made forum for Halo, although I just don’t know if it’ll be popular enough to run.
Even just a handful of active users would be worth it but it’s one of those things where Reddit and Discord already exist and people find too easy to jump on whenever they feel like it.
Like this reply if you want to see it. I’d love to get feedback on this idea.
Honestly a unified place for all the waypoint users would be amazing. If we could even get half of the waypoint population in there I think it could create some good conversations like these forums have.
I am actually optimistic about Discord in its forum features but I cannot see it be sustainable for growth and the long term. Discord essentially sells our data, its own data privacy and collection far outreaches anything that should be acceptable to anyone. While I do look to the future, I don’t see it as a competitive option to Invision, Discourse (the current forums) or XenoForo forum softwares today for a long time.
Time can only tell what will happen though and as someone who also prefers forums, I made my own inspired around Halo to solve some of the problems in Discord like public SEO indexing, data privacy breaches and ringfencing basic features behind Nitro. But I would be a liar to say I don’t want an official forum too, I joined from Bungie.net days and participated Waypoint pre-update to even now. This is a special place that get exposure far beyond any fan community site will recieve and cannot be replaced. I too hope that 343 reconsider the decision in the future as the franchise continues to grow.
I can say I did do the looking for you and most of the greatest forums of the decade are no longer with us. The Beyond forums (well known in competitive Halo) pivoted into a tournament platform “PlayBeyond” smaller communities like Halo Archive/Archive Installation forums (well known before to lore fans) ended long ago, and many more forums are abandoned.
The best forums for the experience, I may also make this another thread. Only including forums that show life. STEAM DISCUSSION BOARD https://steamcommunity.com/app/1240440/discussions/
Light client, very active and very simple in design. Limited per game but the most active of all forums with similar ad nausem topics to share and voice opinions too.
HALO.BUNGIE.ORG http://carnage.bungie.org/haloforum/halo.forum.pl
The design is dated and harder to navigate but its still active with a few familiar posters. I can’t see its future, but it is also the oldest site easily around Halo.
405TH HALO COSPLAY DIVISION https://www.405th.com/forums/
Many might recognize this site as a cosplay-only community but they do have a full forum that is very active. I don’t particularly like that they have ads everywhere, so I don’t recommend it but it commends respect.
NEXT LEVEL DESIGN HALO https://www.nextleveldesign.org/index.php?/forums/
This is a relatively new and modern Forge related forum, has a specific target audience but anything can be discussed there including
ONI SECTION 3, LYSITHEA AI https://lysithea.ai/forums
Another relatively new modern forum designed similar to the current Bungie.net, not as active but best progression system in place and developing a iteration of Spartan Companies.
They were many smaller forums abandoned now and communities also taking different exits from forums (Forgehub for example and their killer new webapp) I also didn’t add XboxEra and large forums that span multiple games that are out there too.
This is where I genuinely believe my sites unique, but it all starts with you and others on Waypoint. To wrap up what I want to say altogether in this now long response - there will always be a home for Halo and to talk about Halo over forums so long as you look for it.
Unless someone else makes a new forum for Halo then I’m probably out. Discord is not a place for discourse and Reddit has the tendency to either be a terrible cesspool or a place that just buries your opinions and thoughts in memes. Any social media platform is just that and is not a place to have a conversation. It just comes down to the fact that you can’t go anywhere else other than a forum to talk to people like this.
Forums are forums and the only place that you can actually format a proper dialogue in this manner. So like I said, unless someone else makes a new forum for Halo then I guess I’m done.
I’ve listed several in my reply in this thread, I definitely agree with you though. Reddit is a very strange place in my opinon and Discord is not as warm and welcoming by others yet. Both have space to grow, in the meanwhile other communities and people seem interested in a few forums around Halo.
NobleZero.com 
