SOTA at a Cubs game

Some minor ARG developments yesterday. Things are definitely slower now than they were. I think this is because we discovered the Circuit City ad too early – which opened the door to finding other websites.

The Society of the Ancients were busy yesterday rallying in other cities. They were spotted at a Chicago Cubs game, in San Francisco, and Vancouver B.C. There are unconfirmed reports that they were rallying in Boston (believable) and Mobile, Alabama (not so believable). Check below for YouTube footage of rallies in San Fran and Vancouver.

San Francisco Street Performer backed by SOTA protesters:

Vancouver, CAN posted by Avery Fane on YouTube

This last video was posted by Avery Fane. This is the guy with the mysterious MySpace profile and blog entries. He’s actually got a blog entry dated before we discovered the Society of the Ancients website. However, blog posts on MySpace can be back dated. Still, he offers up cryptic information that seems legit. Then again, he has posted a MySpace blog stating "I am not your messaih [sic]". As of right now, there’s no way to tell if he is a legit player or not. Since he posted that "messiah" blog and since he has said that he is not official in comments, I don’t think we should consider him a character in the ARG – regardless of the Iris, wings, and Occam’s Razor references. But, you may recall that an I Love Bees character used Blogspot to update us on her life.

Next, it was confirmed that the countdown time will reach "zero" on the Summer Solstice. This year the Solstice will take place at 18:06 on June 21. It should be noted that there are usually celebrations held at Stonehenge on the day of the Solstice. The Society of the Ancients have a portion of their website dedicated to Stonehenge.

So what happens with the countdown reaches "zero"? Will SOTA hava presence at Stonehenge. Will we see them rallying at other places? Will SOTA begin accepting applications via email?

By the way , the Circuity City ad that reveals the link to the HALO 3 comic is landing on doorsteps around the U.S.

currently playing: Shadowrun
on the back burner: Catan, HALO 3 beta, Guitar Hero II, HALO 2 (PC)
rest in peace: GoW, CoD3,
Shadowrun rocks!

On Friday, a MTV camera crew managed to catch a “protest” by the Society of the Ancients in Times Square, NYC. Apparently, there were several people on the street carrying signs, handing out flyers and getting their message out to the people.

And today, the Circuit City/Best Buy ad that really started the ball rolling (and was discovered early) is now a reality. The ad is primarily encouraging pre-orders of Halo 3, but the URL for the comic is shown with the message:

In the heart of Africa,
at the dawn of time,
They built it.
Learn the truth…

Currently, these are the latest solid developments that I’ve found. There’s plenty of speculation and investigation going on regarding SOTA, but for now, expect more this coming week, especially on the 21st. And don’t forget to join the Adjutant Reflex group to add to the discussion here at Podtacular.com!

UPDATE: New video found of SOTA rally in Vancouver and San Francisco after the jump…

Vancouver:

San Francisco:

On Friday, a MTV camera crew managed to catch a “protest” by the Society of the Ancients in Times Square, NYC. Apparently, there were several people on the street carrying signs, handing out flyers and getting their message out to the people.

And today, the Circuit City/Best Buy ad that really started the ball rolling (and was discovered early) is now a reality. The ad is primarily encouraging pre-orders of Halo 3, but the URL for the comic is shown with the message:

In the heart of Africa,
at the dawn of time,
They built it.
Learn the truth…

Currently, these are the latest solid developments that I’ve found. There’s plenty of speculation and investigation going on regarding SOTA, but for now, expect more this coming week, especially on the 21st. And don’t forget to join the Adjutant Reflex group to add to the discussion here at Podtacular.com!

UPDATE: New video found of SOTA rally in Vancouver and San Francisco after the jump…

Vancouver:

San Francisco:

On Friday, a MTV camera crew managed to catch a “protest” by the Society of the Ancients in Times Square, NYC. Apparently, there were several people on the street carrying signs, handing out flyers and getting their message out to the people.

And today, the Circuit City/Best Buy ad that really started the ball rolling (and was discovered early) is now a reality. The ad is primarily encouraging pre-orders of Halo 3, but the URL for the comic is shown with the message:

In the heart of Africa,
at the dawn of time,
They built it.
Learn the truth…

Currently, these are the latest solid developments that I’ve found. There’s plenty of speculation and investigation going on regarding SOTA, but for now, expect more this coming week, especially on the 21st. And don’t forget to join the Adjutant Reflex group to add to the discussion here at Podtacular.com!

The following images were sent from “Keeper of Flame” to rapture via my person website this morning. It simply had a link to a Flickr account.

The body of the email was:

The Society of the Ancients have a presence in London. We know that they’ve hit Times Square in New York. MTV has new coverage here. I wonder if we’ll see them in other cities?
__________________________
currently playing: Shadowrun
on the back burner: Catan, HALO 3 beta, Guitar Hero II, HALO 2 (PC)
rest in peace: GoW, CoD3,
Shadowrun rocks!

It seems that HALO fans and ARG fans are ahead of the game. Literally. We discovered the totally cool HALO 3 comic via someone that got glimpse of a Circuit City ad that is supposed to run this weekend. That ad leads us to the comic that leads us to some numbers that lead us to an IP address: http://206.16.223.65/.

That IP address is owned by Microsoft. Actually, there’s a whole block of IP addresses owned by Microsoft. For instance http://206.16.223.11/ is for the game Conker. http://206.16.223.26 is for Games for Windows. http://206.16.223.45/ is for HALO 3.

So, it would make sense that there could be one or more sites related to the ARG in that IP range.

http://206.16.223.63 is in the range and is mysterious. It’s the homepage for the Society of the Ancients (SOTA). You can tell that it is related to the ARG if you go to the “evidence” page and see the “sign”. The sign is a glyph that we’ve now seen in several places.

But discovering another page by brute force is kind of lame. We weren’t supposed to know that site as an IP address.

It appears that we were supposed to learn of SOTA today via Flyers handed out in Times Square by people wearing yellow shirts. Below is a copy of the flyer posted by a user on the Neogaf forums.

It’s the URL “societyoftheancients.com” that we were supposed to discover. Not the IP address.

SOTA today. HALO3.com/comic/ tomorrow. And we are already ahead of the game.

What’s next?

It seems that the countdown timer on http://206.16.223.65/ will end sometime on June 21st (thanks for breaking the code, Nathan). Perhaps something will happen then. As for Adjutant Reflex. That user has not posted since yesterday. We aren’t used to going this long without a post.

However, Adjutant Reflex did join a Seventh Column Chapter at Bungie.net. The chapter is called “Brute Ghostbusters” and was founded by new Bungie employee Luke Smith. Membership is by application only at this point in time. The motto of the group is:

"Daily(ish) notes from Bungie's Luke Smith about what's going on: at Bungie; with Halo; and other nefarious, mildly- interesting nonsense. Also, there will be shenanigans."

Have we found too much too soon? Does MSBungie have enough in store to keep us busy between now and the 21st? I’m betting that they do. This ARG is getting complex. Just look at the HALO3.com/comic. The artwork is deep. The story is deep. The animations are deep. A lot of time when into that. A lot of time has gone into hidding the “glyphs” on different websites. I bet we’ll be busy this weekend looking for more “glyphs”.

If you think about it, we might can look at this ARG from the perspective of us (the fans) being inside the HALO story. Forget about what we know about HALO and its future. If we were a part of the HALO story (being just ordinary humans on Earth), we might find mysterious artifacts and think of them as “alien” or “unknown”. I think that MSBungie wants us to believe that they were “Forerunner” or “Covenant” technology and that we are in the HALO timeline right now.
__________________________
currently playing: Shadowrun
on the back burner: Catan, HALO 3 beta, Guitar Hero II, HALO 2 (PC)
rest in peace: GoW, CoD3,
Shadowrun rocks!

On Tuesday, June 12, 2007, I got a chance to hangout with some Xbox Community members form various websites, to take a look at NCAA Football 2008. I went there, thanks to Tony Hynes from Gamerscoreblog.com, to see how far EA has come with their involvement in the “Gaming” community”. I was impressed with the things they did, and didn’t do. Michael Johnson, EA Online Marketing Manager, was there along with his staff member’s, to greet everyone that was there.

Tiburon was nice enough to fly a bunch of people down to their office in Orlando Fl, so that they can give them an honest opinion on what they saw with the beta version of the game. I met a lot of gamers from sport-based websites. These guys were truly dedicated to the whole franchise, and didn’t lose focus on why they were there. I saw guys with pen and pads, writing every nook and cranny down. It was all business for those guys.

Tony Hynes, Vicious696 and Feelz_Good were there to play the game too. Vicious and me had a great game going. I won by the skin of my teeth, and then lost to Feelz. There was a tournament for an Xbox Elite. I lost in the first round though. During the later rounds, they approached the ‘eliminated’, and took us to pick out 2 games from the EA library, nice.

I was also there to meet new people, and to take a look at a trend I see forming. EA, and Tiburon are starting to realize that the gaming community can help them tremendously. Mike J had told me that this was by no means; Flavor of the month. The community will be a key asset when it comes to getting a good feel for how a title is doing, during its early stages of development. This strategy worked out for them during our day there, everyone left happy.

I enjoyed the fact that this wasn’t a public relations blabber fest. MJ sat us in front of some consoles, and let us play our hearts out. This allowed everyone to get deep into everything NCAA 08 had to offer, and that was a key move. Not once did anyone come to us, with restrictions in hand. In my opinion, it’s a bold move, because most of the time some developers have something to hide. I did notice that some of the “Money” plays were still in the game, but the title is still in beta form, so I’ll hold judgment until the full retail version is released.

I was satisfied with my visit there. At the end of the day, Tony took everyone out to eat. The funny thing was, the restaurant was a block away from Foo Mo Jives house. I called him to come down, and he finally got a chance to meet someone from Microsoft. I can’t wait to see how many companies jump on the “bandwagon”. As gamers, we are valuable consumers too. We know what does, and doesn’t work, and that is starting be become evident. This is a great time to be a gamer, because our words finally mean something.

On Tuesday, June 12, 2007, I got a chance to hangout with some Xbox Community members form various websites, to take a look at NCAA Football 2008. I went there, thanks to Tony Hynes from Gamerscoreblog.com, to see how far EA has come with their involvement in the “Gaming” community”. I was impressed with the things they did, and didn’t do. Michael Johnson, EA Online Marketing Manager, was there along with his staff member’s, to greet everyone that was there.

Tiburon was nice enough to fly a bunch of people down to their office in Orlando Fl, so that they can give them an honest opinion on what they saw with the beta version of the game. I met a lot of gamers from sport-based websites. These guys were truly dedicated to the whole franchise, and didn’t lose focus on why they were there. I saw guys with pen and pads, writing every nook and cranny down. It was all business for those guys.

Tony Hynes, Vicious696 and Feelz_Good were there to play the game too. Vicious and me had a great game going. I won by the skin of my teeth, and then lost to Feelz. There was a tournament for an Xbox Elite. I lost in the first round though. During the later rounds, they approached the ‘eliminated’, and took us to pick out 2 games from the EA library, nice.

I was also there to meet new people, and to take a look at a trend I see forming. EA, and Tiburon are starting to realize that the gaming community can help them tremendously. Mike J had told me that this was by no means; Flavor of the month. The community will be a key asset when it comes to getting a good feel for how a title is doing, during its early stages of development. This strategy worked out for them during our day there, everyone left happy.

I enjoyed the fact that this wasn’t a public relations blabber fest. MJ sat us in front of some consoles, and let us play our hearts out. This allowed everyone to get deep into everything NCAA 08 had to offer, and that was a key move. Not once did anyone come to us, with restrictions in hand. In my opinion, it’s a bold move, because most of the time some developers have something to hide. I did notice that some of the “Money” plays were still in the game, but the title is still in beta form, so I’ll hold judgment until the full retail version is released.

I was satisfied with my visit there. At the end of the day, Tony took everyone out to eat. The funny thing was, the restaurant was a block away from Foo Mo Jives house. I called him to come down, and he finally got a chance to meet someone from Microsoft. I can’t wait to see how many companies jump on the “bandwagon”. As gamers, we are valuable consumers too. We know what does, and doesn’t work, and that is starting be become evident. This is a great time to be a gamer, because our words finally mean something.