You read that correctly. An entire decade as a member of bungie.net (as of right now, British Summer Time, so I suspect Bungie’s timekeeping hasn’t caught up yet. Swift edit to the contrary: 10 YEARS WOOT). Where to begin? Well, not at the beginning, I suspect that would bore some of you to tears. I’m not going to take a tour down memory lane, because I did that with my 7th Bnet birthday and not a lot has changed, really. I mean sure, now we have Destiny, and… y’know, an entirely new forum layout. But fundamentally the same sort of stuff still happens, though we seem to have had an uprising of undesirables. But this isn’t about them. Hell, it’s not even about me.
The reason I’ve been coming here for the last 10 years is you lot. I was going to lament how little I’ve actually achieved in this time. I mean, sure, I have a degree and wrote a [url=https://www.createspace.com/6048171]novel[/url], but nothing in my life has changed to any significant degree, besides now being in employment rather than education. I was going to get a tattoo of my emblem, in hopefully the same place as my Halo 3 SPARTAN-II bears his, but all of my tattooed friends are either too busy to help me get my first ever, or are away. Sounds about right for my farcical life. But enough about that. I wanted to celebrate, not wallow in self-pity. So share your memories of Bnet, what’s kept you coming back, and ask me anything* about my time here too.
This has been the single longest endeavour of my life. Primary school wasn’t this long, neither was secondary school (especially after moving halfway through Year 9). Longest I’ve had a job is six years, though I’ve bounced between the different departments at the local supermarket for nearly nine, at this point. Still, I’ve been here longer. So, in the words of the great Joe Gatto, work can ‘suck it!’
Onwards and upwards, kids. Another 10 is pretty much guaranteed at this point, short of Activision** setting fire to the servers.
*I can’t guarantee 100% honesty, mind. Some things are best left in the past. Like Sapphire.
**Of course, we all know who to actually blame. I hope we all do…
[spoiler]Fun fact: I named this draft on Google Docs ‘Pathways Out of Tartness’.[/spoiler]
Edit because anything I say about this as a comment might get lost: I've had a lot of Reach's more gentle music in my head recently. Probably because of revisiting Reach's sweeping Campaign with backwards compatibility. Ironically, after that, it was Uncharted 4's gorgeous vistas that put that music in my head. And now, the reflection and monument (which I'm now making an abstract noun) of the music is the perfect accompaniment to this.
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By technicality, I've been on Bnet since mid-2009. Though most of it was lurking, and just looking for people to play Xbox with, so I don't count that. I really started posting in late 2010, on my old account. Then that account was closed and I made a gmail one after a while. Then they didn't allow Gmail anymore so I used my new Xbox Account. And here I am.