Bungie.org

## Bungie.org Generally

Bungie.org is a network of fansites dedicated to providing information and a place to discuss all things Bungie-related. Bungie.org is an independently run fansite with no affiliation with Bungie Studios. It is, however, frequented by  Bungie Staff and longtime Bungie fans.

## The History of Bungie.org

The prehistory of Bungie.org stems back to the Arizona Macintosh Users Group (AMUG)'s *Marathon* FTP site, ftp.amug.org/~marathon, which was once the premier repository of Marathon-related files on the internet. This archive eventually grew a web-based hypertext interface dubbed the *Marathon HyperArchive*, which in turn spawned the *Marathon HyperArchive Northwest*, maintained by Claude Errera, and in turn the *Marathon HyperArchive Midwest*, maintained by Steve Campbell. As the AMUG Marathon site grow, it adopted the monicker of *Marathon Central* and its own domain at Marathon.org, and hosted such illustrious Marathon websites as the *Marathon's Story Page*, maintained by Hamish Sinclair.

The beginnings of Bungie.org itself lie in the EFNet IRC channel #bungie, which was founded by Forrest Cameranesi, Matt Payne, and Steve Campbell, as a merged Bungie community channel, breaking away from rival channels #marathon and #myth. As #bungie became the premier chat room for the Bungie community, it brought many of the maintainers of prominent Bungie fan sites together, and in 1998, from the efforts of Hamish Sinclair, Steve Campbell, and Gary "the Battle Cat" Simmons, Bungie.org was created, featuring a Marathon section populated by the prominent Marathon fan sites of the day, and a Myth section derived from a merger with the prominent Myth fan site *Myth@Nontoxic.org*.

Over the years, Bungie.org's hosting and leadership shifted. Claude Errera joined the site's leadership, and after the departure of the site's original host Steve Campbell, Claude assumed hosting responsibilities, and eventually became the main authority on all things "B.org". Likewise, the site grew other sections: some for Bungie's newer titles, *Oni* and *Halo*; some for Bungie's older titles like *Pathways Into Darkness*, and some, like *Bungie Sightings*, for the general Bungie fan community.

Perhaps the most notable event in the history of Bungie.org itself (aside from notable events in the history of Bungie) is the *Glyph Puzzle*. At an unknown date c. 2000-2001, seven mysterious circles filled with various numbers, letters, and other figures appeared on the top of the Bungie.org main page. Apparently only decorative in nature, they went unnoticed for several months, until Matt Soell of Bungie 'accidentally' drew attention to them during a presentation at Bungie FanFest V outside E3 2001. From there, a year-long endeavor based primarily out of the *Bungie Sightings* forums, drawing on the broad expertise of the Bungie fan community in subjects as diverse as mathematics and anthropology, eventually decoded the meaning of the glyphs: three seven-letter words, "arrival", "archive", and "outline", which turned out to be a website (arrival.bungie.org) and the username and password to that website (archive/outline), which when entered revealed an archive of Bungie's original *Marathon* design documents.

Since the release of Halo, that section of Bungie.org has grown to become by far the largest and most active. The non-Halo sections of the site continued to hum along with respectable levels of activity through the mid-late 2000s, but today activity on most of them is minimal, though still not nonexistent.

## Bungie.org Today

### Core Sites

Bungie.org contains the following sub-sites:

* bs.bungie.org (Bungie Sightings)
* halo.bungie.org (also known as HBO)
* oni.bungie.org (Oni Central)
* myth.bungie.org (Myth)
* marathon.bungie.org (Marathon)
* pid.bungie.org (Pathways Into Darkness)
* destiny.bungie.org (Destiny)

### Forums

Bungie.org is a popular site in part because of its well-run forums, filled with longtime Bungie fans and mature discussion (often joined by Bungie employees themselves). By far, Bungie.org's most popular forum is its Halo forum, but the others receive considerable traffic as well.

Public Forums include:

* Bungie Sightings
* Halo Forum
* Marathon's Story
* Oni Central
* OniRes
* OniShots
* Orbital Arm
* Myth

### Hotline Server

The Bungie.org Hotline server ("BorgHL") was once a very popular server, even home to some Bungie employees back when Myth was young and people were still finishing off the vidmaster challenge in Marathon Infinity. The Hotline protocol allows users to chat and also share files, read and post news, etc. Though the original went offline in the early 2000s, it was later resurrected and can be connected to via any Hotline client (such as Nostalgia for Mac OS X, hx for Linux, or the original Hotline Client for Windows) at hl.bungie.org.

### IRC

The irc.bungie.org (IBO) server is the primary IRC server used by the bungie community. #hbo is the most active channel, growing out of the halo.bungie.org community. Other notable channels are #moap and #TEHEYES.[*citation needed*]