[quote]A lot of what was so magic about it was that the internet was a different place back then. I remember playing about 5 games of matchmaking with a guy, then we went into a custom lobby on Coagulation (Blood Gulch re-make) and literally just shared our whole life stories with each other over the course of a whole afternoon, and at the time this is just the sort of thing you'd happily do on the internet. We ended up playing together almost daily for 3 years. The attitude in matchmaking was different too, the social lobbies were really social, people weren't worried about KD like they are now, they'd shout more (excitedly) and get angry less.[/quote] Hnnngg. Yes. I do miss those days. I'm able to recapture it with one game I've been playing for about as long as Halo 2 has been out (because most of the people playing it are have the 'grizzled ancient' status in common), but it is strange to think how internet interaction was back then as opposed to how it is now. I mean for example, I would very often find myself in a room full of strangers back then and play a few hours of custom games because it was just fun. I'm definitely guilty of not being as social as I used to be at least on XBL, but as he said, it's not the same as it used to be. I got a sense of community out of games back then, these days you can capture that sometimes, but mostly it just feels like a bunch of random people who happen to be playing the same game as you. And a lot of those people tend to be people I don't enjoy playing games with.