Bungie.net is the official website of video game developer Bungie Studios, makers of the popular Halo series for Xbox, as well as earlier games such as Minotaur, Pathways Into Darkness, the Marathon series, Myth, Myth 2 and Oni. In addition to being the main portal to all official information about Bungie and their games, Bungie.net also operates as a statistical database for the game Halo 2.
Bungie.net retrieves data directly from the Xbox Live servers and stores it in its databases. Every Xbox Live player that participates in a match of a Halo 2 will have an account created on Bungie.net. Connecting your Xbox Live Gamertag with a Microsoft Passport enables you to log on to your account. When logged on you can access much more information. The Game Viewer allows you to see any match on a series of images of the map telling you where you got killed, who killed you, and where they killed you from. You can also change settings to show where a specific player has achieved all his kills. You can also access information on any of Bungie's past or upcomming games, along with news posts and information from the developers themselves. There is also a message board that can be accessed and posted on.
PlayerStats
PlayerStats is a site within each individual Xbox Live Gamertag. Each page displays this players level in the various game types and where the past 1000 game scores can be accessed and viewed. The number of matches played is displayed along with the number of wins. These statistics can also be accessed via RSS feeds. A recent two developers have come up with a template for "Microsoft Excel 2003 Pro" that allows you to download your RSS newsfeed and view it in different charts and tables.
Groups on Bungie.net
One feature of bungie.net is creating groups. If you have an account registered, you can create groups-commonly referred to as "chapters" or "fanclubs". Groups can have any theme to them-you can create a free for all chat room or a Halo fan club. Unfortunatley, many of these "fanclubs" are overrun with generally unpleasant people - group "conquerors", hackers, and spies. Mature people try to stay away from them. Groups have a special system in them generally referred to as "ranks". These "ranks" are admin positions that vary in power, such as kicking members out of the group, banning members, posting news stories for the group to read, changing rank positions, and the Full Control rank, which the group's founder automatically has. Some groups have been created to help bungie.net's Community, such as the 7th Column Assembly. These groups involve making allies with other groups and banding them together - the "senate" approach. Currently, two of the most organized ones are The 7th Column Assembly, created by Papa John, and High Alliance, created by dogbert14. The first one created was High Alliance.
Forums on Bungie
Yet another feature on the Bungie website are the forums. The forums are a part of Bungie that let the members discuss things in certain topics, to each forum, it's own topic. The list of forums are as follows:
The Underground
"Discussions about anything and everything Bungie."
All too often, members violate the rules in this forum and post topics concerning the Halo series.
The Septagon
"Improve the Seventh Column and take over the world!"
Many members post suggestions here to improve the 7th Column, though more for feedback from peers than hope of it actually being accepted. As well, it is the 'hub' of the community of Bungie.net, and one of the more mature forums.
New Mombasa
"Dedicated forum for Halo 2 related discussions."
Here, people talk about Halo 2's campaign. It has barely any flamers in it, luckily.
Zanzibar
"Dedicated forum for Halo 2 Multiplayer related discussions."
This forum is fairly well known throughout the Community, mainly for the insanely large amount of flamers in has in it. If you create a thread, you are bound to be flamed at least once.
Optimatch
"Dedicated forum for Halo 2 Xbox Live Optimatch Playlist Discussions."
This forum is very much like Zanzibar, only that it is overrun with egotistical "pros" of Halo 2, who prefer the Battle Rifle (an overused, cheap weapon in Halo 2 equipped with a scope and a three round burst of bullets. Only four bursts to the head can kill you) over all weapons. Unfortunatley for them, that is the only weapon that they know how to really use. They have almost no knowledge at all about the other weapons in the game. The members here flame as well, calling themselves "pros" and everyone else "noobs", an overused and immature word used mainly on the bungie forums as a whole.
The Maw
"Dedicated forum for Halo PC related discussions." This forum is calm and fairly inactive.
The Library
"Dedicated forum for Halo Xbox related discussions."
Although this forum is, specifically, only for Halo 1 discussion, it is overrun with members who were disappointed with Halo's sequel, Halo 2. Usually, the topics relate to how much Halo 2 supposedley "sucks" compared to Halo 1. The moderators there do not bother to lock any of these threads. Most members there are rather egotistical and overly opinionated.
The Gallery
"We post zany pictures, you get to write about them."
This forum is fairly inactive.
The News
"This forum is for discussion of the latest Bungie.net news stories."
Many members post here, discussing the news stories that are found on the homepage.
Voting Booth
"This forum is for official Bungie polls."
In this forum, you cannot create any threads. You can only reply to them, which are created by moderators.
The Classifieds
"This forum is for promotion and recruiting for Chapters."
Many people post here, advertising their groups. However, hardly any threads in it have any replys. This is due to the fact that members simply post their group ad in it and leave, not bothering to check the others.
The Flood
"Off topic forum. Use at your own risk. Say your stupid things here."
All too often, however, the rules are violated, and it is within the wrong forums that stupid things are said. This is known as spam. Even then, spam can still exist in The Flood, a forum of stupid things. How such a thing happens is beyond comprehension. To control spam, Bungie has an organized group of carefully selected moderators to clean up spam on the forums. These Moderators (or mods, for short) are known as Forum Ninjas. Within Forum Ninjas exist two different subclasses: Forum Ninja/Master Forum Ninja, although there is only a slight difference between the two. When a member spams a forum, either intentionally or unintentionally, the Ninjas take action and suspend the persons forum posting privledges. This is known as banning. In some instances, the banned user will create an alternate Bungie account to get around the ban. Some members, however, disguise themselves as other members, claiming they're using an alternate account. Doing either one of these things can result in a permanent ban as well as having your Xboxlive gamertag banned from the site as well.