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Fan site |
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Private host |
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1999 |
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Active |
halo.bungie.org, abbreviated as HBO, is a fansite created in 1999 by Claude Errera (posting under the handle "Louis Wu"), Miguel Chavez and Brian Morden. The website is arguably the most popular and well-known fansite for the Halo franchise.
Background
The website was created in late May, 1999 as "blam.bungie.org", back when "blam!" was used as a codename for Bungie's Halo project. The website was originally maintained by three staff members. At one point of time, one of the staff dropped out followed by another shortly after Bungie announced their end of partnership with Microsoft in October, 2007.
Though unaffiliated with either Bungie or 343 Industries, the website remains to be one of the most popular and most visited Halo fansites. During the release week of Halo 3, the website received about 600,000 pageviews a day.
Features
Daily news
The daily news is located on the website's homepage, providing readers a daily digest of recent news on the Halo franchise, ranging from official content such as the development process of a game, fan-made material and reporting on Halo-related coverage on other websites or mainstream media. Every news entry is archived, going as far as July 20, 1999.
Halo Story Page
The Halo Story Page is a section dedicated to all aspects of the Halo canon, from backstories, to reference articles, speculation and game transcripts. Submissions are made by community members to HBO's staff. One of the most notable feature of the Halo Story Page is the Halo Story Timeline, a detailed timeline that covers events up to Halo 3.
Other features
The HBO Forum is an important feature of the website, giving its community members the freedom to interact with one another. The forum is occasionally visited by the staff of Bungie and 343 Industries. Another prominent feature of HBO is its archive on Halo Updates by Matt Soell, Bungie Updates by Frank O'Connor, Bungie's Weekly Updates and 343 Industries' Halo Bulletin.
The website also hosts a number of notable fan projects, such as works done by Stephen Loftus and Halo: A Fistful of Arrows webcomic by Levi "Leviathan" Hoffmeier.
Trivia
- The website was mentioned in the credits of Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo 3: ODST.
- In Halo: Reach, as a special thanks by Bungie, the original staff members of HBO were mentioned in the HBO entry of the Tribute Room. In addition, the human in-game allies are named after them.
- During October 2008, HBO was hacked twice by an entity calling itself "TheDefaced". Both attacks, the first on October 25th[1] and the second on October 27th[2], replaced the main page with an image of a large face which linked to "TheDefaced"'s website.
Sources
- ^ The front page was hacked? (forums.bungie.org)
- ^ Front page is hacked again (forums.bungie.org)