Ladies and gentlemen, it's been over half a decade since I even took a look at the HBO forums, much less posted in them. Today, out of whatever impulse, I decided to take a look back. And...well, things have changed. Destiny is due in a month's time, Halo 5 is on the way, Marty the Elder got fired (good grief!!!)...well, I wish I could call it interesting, if it were not so strangely surreal.

I've changed too. Back in the day, I was quite the insufferable jerk and attention hog - and I owe Louis and Jilly very belated apologies for being such a nuisance. A seven-year exile is enough to change anyone, and I'm no longer the same person I was back when I was a teenager. My old obsessions are pretty much dead and gone, and when I look back I was plainly putting too great an emotional investment in trivial and petty things.

That being said, I see some familiar names - Gravemind, Cody Miller, the incomparable Stephen Loftus and the ever-amazing Rockslider, still posting on these pages. It's great to see you still around.

To the old guard - how has everyone fared with all the changes to the Halo franchise and to Bungie? Have things changed, and how do you see things having gone by all these years? My idea of asking this question is not to "stir the pot" or "stoke the flames" but to take a kind of retrospective look. My apologies to Louis Wu and to any other administrators still active if this topic is in any sense unacceptable, but after years of being active on an entirely different forum, my sensibilities have changed and I am no longer in tune with the sort of discussion that happens here, the discussion that I used to have earlier.