Ignore the fact that I'm still in the thread, but this is the thing I'm just not getting.
Halo 3 was the peak of the Halo franchise for me. Halo 2 was great, but Halo 3 brought in Forge, and Forge was amazing.
The recent Halo games have tried to do too much.
The Halo: Online I want to play is Halo 3 on PC, and that's what the community is creating. We don't want armor abilities, sprinting, etc...
Saber Interactive however, is creating "Halo 4 with content from Halo 3: Free to Play Edition".
If and when Halo: Online is completed and released in the U.S., it will likely not have Forge, theater, or much customization at all. It will be matchmaking, and matchmaking only, with a very strict set of playlists unlikely to strip out the features of Halo 4 that many do not want at all.
I couldn't care less about weapon skins and other various features that weren't even present in Halo 3 to begin with being locked behind microtransactions. That doesn't bother me at all.
But the version of the game that I currently have access to is more player-friendly than any official version we're going to receive, and that's the version that I want to support, whether or not it's considered piracy.
I bought an Xbox One for MCC. I bought MCC. I paid Microsoft for those things, and Live. I bought Halo: CE for PC, and the disaster that was Halo 2 Vista. They've promised over and over again that they would support PC gamers, and they haven't. They gave us the worst DRM we've ever had instead, and a Fable game to top it all off, as if that's a big deal. They've shown us just how easy it is for them to port Xbox games to PC with Forza.
And like I said before, I would be more than willing to pay Microsoft for this game. I don't consider myself a pirate for playing something Microsoft has shown absolutely no interest in actually giving us. Do I think I deserve this? No. But I've wanted it for 8 years, so of course I'm going to take up any opportunity to have it, whether it's official or not. I don't think that makes me a pirate, because I'm sitting here right now, wallet at the ready, willing to give every last dime in it to Microsoft for even the slightest interest in supporting the PC gamers they mistreated and abandoned.
Instead, I'm giving my money to those actually willing to give me what I want. The Evolve servers aren't as good as the real thing, but they're the only thing I can give my money to at the moment, and I appreciate them taking in all of this traffic.
Edit: The difference between Microsoft and Sony in this case, is that Sony has never shown an interest in PC gamers. Microsoft teases us, gave us Halo: CE and 2, and locked and ruined a lot of games with GFWL. Don't take this entire comment as a reply to what you said. I think only like the first couple parts apply to what you said. Just saying in general regarding the posters in this thread.