Regarding people not watching the Reach thread continuously, I have a few reasons -
- this is out of the public eye here in the community area, so we get less random people coming and mixing it up a bit.
- Bungie folks frequent less and less. Halo 3 thread had regulars.
- Frankie doesn't make fun of us as often.
- Less contributing members - in the past year we've lost some of our best and most interesting/left wing: voc, cocop, Eazy, etc. thank God we still have some regulars - Louis Wu, Ghaleon, KyleJ/Juices, Ram, Shake, etc.
- Speaking of which, what made the thread so interesting was the interesting banter between hardcore, middle of the road, and casual players. Losing that dynamic through so-called 'Bungie-balance' and the complete lack of updates and dialogue with Bungie members has led to a plague in the thread with endless debate that goes nowhere. It's not only exhausting, but boring without direct feedback that we were so used to. It didn't help that on the podcasts they were almost mocking fans' detailed views on balance and the new weapons. I've seen entire posts that I could tell were carefully crafted over hours of thought and planning, and only to be completely ignored by the entire GAF community and the Bungie employees it should have been seen by. Instead we get posts like 'meet me in customs' or DMR vs BR or Armor lock posts written right over it.
It's painful to watch, and I remember this happening in the Halo 3 thread about 2 years after development, but then some folks stepped in and we got some interesting posts and some legitimate 343 material to sink our teeth into. I think we are all waiting on baited breath to see something new come out gaming-wise from either studio.