Weekly Challenges | Halo Reach Daily Challenges

Just dust and echoes…

17/04/2012 by Matthew Vose 70 Comments

I’ve been writing this post in my head for a while, and have decided the time has come to do it.

First up the announcement – I will no longer be posting the daily challenges online.

If you are still eager to find out what’s been set for a particular day go to http://halo.xbox.com/en-us/Career/Challenges (you might have an error returned here, if so it usually means you’re not logged in so go to http://halo.xbox.com and sign in, then drop down your gamertag at the top and select challenges). If you want any previous tips on how to achieve a challenge, you can use the search bar at the top of this site to look up the challenge name and view an old post where it was set.

Why am I stopping after all this time? Simply because I have less time to spare for it than I did during 2011, and since there are no longer any new challenges or difficult things to do the need for discussion on challenges has vastly diminished. We’ve seen it all before, hence why you can use old posts to look up the tips on completing a challenge. Back in October 2010 I created the site to have a central discussion space about the challenges, away from the forums where it was incredibly difficult to conduct those conversations, and I can definitely say it’s done that.

In 18 months there have been 881 posts, 18110 comments and over 1.8 million hits. Pretty good I say. 🙂

(And no I don’t know 1 and 8 occur so often in those stats, crazy random happenstance I guess!)

I’m not the sort of gamer to stick with a game for a particularly long time once I’ve played my fill, as my XBL history shows I always look for a new experience. But I have played Halo: Reach probably more than any other game, ever. That includes Snake (at which I am the family champion). What has always made me proudest in running ReachDailyChallenges has been receiving comments from people who said they also would have stopped playing the game a lot earlier had it not been for the challenges and the discussion here about ways of beating them and doing things in-game. To me that’s a great thing to hear.

Posting everyday has been a wonderful experience for me, and everyone who has come to RDC to talk about whatever we’ve talked about has taught me something about running an independent online environment. This seems as good a time as any to doff my cap to HaloReachDaily and HattedHaloFox, both sites that started around the same time I did and who posted some awesome stuff, helping with the very discussion I created RDC for. There have also been imitators and people using my content as their own, which were compliments more than insult. Being the site used in the Reach Service Record app was a pretty cool moment and has again helped motivate me to keep going with the posts.

For the past 6 months I’ve used the site as something of a personal blog, putting comments about what I am up to and games I’m playing at the start of each post. I know this wasn’t to everyone’s taste, however it has helped motivate me to find topics to write on, to think about how I write, and has helped me continue this past the 1 year mark I thought RDC would last.

For me now I will continue with the occasional posts on my personal blog, Seven Months Later, writing the odd article for Pixel Perfect, and playing games like they’re going out of style! I hope everyone in Reach continues to enjoy the game, and I shall see you all in Halo 4 at the end of 2012.

Good luck to you, Spartan