Daniel · @Pupsky
30th Mar 2016 from TwitLonger
Halo in South Africa
Hello guys :)
So basically this message is intended to encourage South African gamers to come and join the Halo community. I will explain why gamers, especially competitive ones, would really enjoy playing Halo. The three most common questions I get are: "what is Halo like?", "how many players are there in South Africa?" and "how often are there local tournaments?" I'll answer these as best as possible and relate it my reasons of why people would enjoy giving Halo a try.
So let's get to answering the first question: Halo is of course an FPS. The main difference between Halo and more generic FPSs like COD and Battlefield is the fact that players have more shields and there are no customisable loadouts, so everybody spawns with the same weapons while power weapons and power ups are picked up. I think the best example would be to compare it to Destiny, but a much more competitive version with competitive gametypes and maps (you can always search for gameplay on Twitch/YouTube). Another big difference, and in my opinion the best thing about Halo, is the fact that their isn't regional searching. While this may sound unattractive at first, the connection in Halo has always been great even on international hosts, especially now that Halo 5 has dedicated servers, the connection and hit detection has never been better. Even better, this allows you to find games very fast and you are able to play against people around the world, which allows you to make friends from a variety of places and allows you to play against the best players in the world and thus learn from them. Halo 5 also has a great and fun ranking system in ranked playlists and there are also social and community playlists as well as the all new and very awesome Warzone.
Onto the second question, there are currently around 60-70 local Halo 5 players that our community is aware of. But more importantly, we are a very friendly and connected community. We have our own whatsapp group to organise custom game lobbies or Warzone lobbies. We also have a Twitter and Facebook for announcements and will soon have a website (thanks to a community member, @Mitch_Sixty6, willing to run it) where people can sign up, use forums and this will also allow us to host our tournaments from the site too.
Lastly, since Halo 5, our competitive community has grown even more than we expected. We have already been given the opportunity to have a team sent over to compete in the European regional qualifiers for the Halo World Championship. Even better, another Halo World Championship had already been announced for next year, for which a South African team will most likely be given another spot because of our sufficient numbers. Furthermore, Halo in South Africa is being given a chance thanks to organisers like Zombiegamer and Mweb who are planning to host online and LAN tournaments throughout this year. Lastly, and the best part, is that myself and Ronan (@iBeIRISH) are starting to host monthly free-to-enter online tournaments usually with donated prizes from generous community members/event organisers. We have already successfully hosted a 4v4 tournament and are hosting a 2v2 tournament on the 9th and 10th of April with a R2000 prize pool (thanks to @Nervo_Zeus and Kenan "Kanine" for donating). We have more prizes available but are keeping them for future tournaments. Also a special mention goes to @Clint1977 for giving our community advice and guidance and giving us more exposure to the local scene.
Halo in South Africa has grown pretty damn fast and positively since Halo 5 and it's awesome to see the community getting some life. Halo has always been a game that has been massive internationally but has never been too popular in South Africa and it seems that we are finally starting to catch on to the hype. Our community leaders, mainly mentioned before, are determined to keep Halo going and ensuring frequent tournaments and instant news. Halo is currently the main global Xbox One competitive game and so we encourage those players on the Xbox One who are looking for something competitive and fun to join us. The South African Halo community welcomes anybody on board!