: 2. As I mentioned above (albeit with no factual evidence), 343i has
: "lost" HBO. Questions: (a) what other "hardcore" fan
: sites/elements, if any, have spawned or grown in the post-H4 era? (b) what
: communities have the same level of interaction/closeness with 343i that
: HBO used to have with Bungie?

Grifball is as popular as ever. GrifballHub is more popular than ever. The biggest Grifball league in Halo 3, when the league was run on Rooster Teeth by Burnie Burns himself, had 270 teams. The biggest league on GrifballHub in Halo 4 had over 400 teams.

We still work with 343 in maintaining the Grifball playlist and several prominent 343 employees play in our league.

And this is on top of the unheard of support that Grifball received before Halo 4 even launched. With all the gametypes and features that were dropped in the transition from Reach to Halo 4, we are still incredibly grateful that Grifball was not only included in the game, but also given a "promotion" from an Assault spin-off to its own gametype. The fact that 343 worked with GrifballHub to bring in real Grifballers when developing the game, and that Grifball was playable for everyone on day one, is truly amazing.

I would say that 343 has been more supportive of Grifball than Bungie was, but that's not really a fair comparison, given that Grifball has a comparatively larger community now than it did in the Halo 3 and early Reach days when Bungie was in charge.

We're not blind, either, to the fact that part of the closeness between 343 and GrifballHub is that we literally have nowhere else to go. Other folks can go shoot things in Destiny or COD. Grifball will always be a Halo exclusive.

We know that Grifball isn't 343's top priority, and we don't hold it against them when our playlist updates aren't first in line or our suggestions for weapon tuning aren't implemented. But we've still been blown away by their level of support for our gametype and our community.