Random: 3DS & Wii U Players Beat 14-Year-Old Halo 2 Server Record

What a bizarre accomplishment. Congrats to them, though. Whatever floats your boat, and all.

I stayed on New Leaf a bit over, but I couldn't imagine doing that for this long! Congrats!

Imagine doing this and suddenly having a power outage in the middle of a game 🥲

I feel for the server crew. Hope these folks log off soon.

I'd made it four hours past shutdown in Splatoon before having to go to sleep.
Godspeed Magnificent Seven.

I thought an error message was popping up for people between matches on Splatoon, but I guess not.

I forgot XCX had online features. What were they, now that I'll never get to use them again?

@Dr_Corndog Very light in the overall game, at least in the most part
You could "hire" basically a ghost of another player from online to join you and assist with missions.
As well even less direct, others would/could work together (in their own world) toward a common mission of defeating certain enemies or collecting certain drops.
There might be other stuff but I did them very rarely...

I tried doing this in Mario Kart 7, but everyone else zoomed right past the finish line, completing the race with me in last place -_-

From what I understand, once the matchmaking is complete, you're basically in a peer-to-peer mode...so technically not on the Nintendo Network anymore. But still impressive to hang in there like that.

You know, I should have expected this.

Long live the Wii U! And kudos to the poetic Magnificent 7, keeping the spirit alive 😊

We are cheering for you, all seven of you! Stay stong!

The fact that you can stay connected peer-to-peer almost indefinitely just highlights how unnecessary it was for Nintendo to shut down the service in the first place.

Wow... I mean just wow...

@TheMainMii @dr_Corndog There was a server boss as well that would respawn like in Dragon's Dogma. Co-op missions and the boss gave tickets that could be traded in for useful materials, Skells, or equipment. It's a really good addition to single player games when it's done right, and it added to the overall story in this game.

@swoose It basically proves this service cost very little to actually run. If Nintendo's reasons were to save money on this service, everyone should have been forcefully booted the day it shut down.

@Dr_Corndog There was but it was not needed, specially for completing a quest or main mission. They had something kinda like Monster Hunter/ Xenoblade Challenges. You select a quest and you team up with random players to beat the boss, enemies and so on and so on. I wasn't bad but it was really forgettable. I think I only did it like 5-10 times after that I really didn't care about it. Can't even remember if some items were only available through those online quests....

@Ryu_Niiyama As far as I know, the matchmaking is done through the official servers, but the actual gameplay in most of these games is all peer-to-peer, meaning the players are directly connected to each other, without a "middle man". The server crews can shut everything down and go home right at the announced time, and they aren't involved after that.

But even if the gameplay itself was hosted via the servers, those could (and would!) be shut down in the middle of a match if necessary, and it'd simply drop the connection and kick everyone off.

At some point the servers should boot people out, right? I guess I’m not understanding how people are able to hang in there if the servers are supposedly down.

@tobsesta99 - that is exactly what happened to me about 3~4 hours and a bit post the Splatoon 1 online "going down". I couldn't have stayed much longer as I had work the next day it was late locally but it was a sad way to leave.

@Waluigi451 in the case of MK7 those 2 that are still online used a hack so they didn't get booted automatically from the server when it shut down, plus another hack so a CPU controls them during a race so they don't get kicked for inactivity.

That plus the fact you can comfortably not press anything while when selecting a course since the game automatically picks Random if you don't pick anything.

So basically, those 2 literally can stay connected to each other indefinitely granted their systems are charging, without ever needing to press a button. You could argue them being listed is "cheating" by needing to use hacks, but most seem to not care I guess.

If you're curious they've been live streaming the lobby this whole past month: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drKCf9wUGVs

I stayed on doing wonder trades in Pokemon omega ruby for like an extra hour or two, without really knowing it was supposed to be over by then.

I don’t think I would’ve had the heart to keep the 2DS turned on and online for several weeks though. The poor screens and battery.

Since when were Halo 2 a gaming console?

Well...14 years...is a LOT..

That's a picture of a 2DS, not a 3DS not a Wii U. And yes I'm fun at parties.