On December 18, 2020, 343 Industries announced that the online servers for all of the classic Halo games on the Xbox 360 were going to be shutdown in December 2021. This has rightfully angered many Halo fans, and for many reasons, including (but not limited to) the reasons listed below:

• The classic Halo servers are still populated - Many people still play on classic Halo, and for a variety of reasons. Some for nostalgia, some for the many things the classic games do better than the Master Chief Collection... there are plenty of reasons to play the original games over the Master Chief Collection.
• The Master Chief Collection is inferior - The Master Chief Collection has notably worse servers than the original games, as well as an inferior progression system, an inferior matchmaking system, and vastly inferior social features. 
• Classic Halo is very important to the community - The classic Halo games are very important to the Halo community as a whole. Taking them away would be doing a disservice to the people who have stuck around since the beginning, and it would also prevent new players from experiencing what Halo multiplayer was like in the 360 era.

In short, classic Halo, while it is quite old, is still not old enough to warrant a complete server shutdown. Shutting down the servers now is simply too early. The servers are clearly still populated, and as many Halo fans have pointed out, they are even better than the ones provided in the Master Chief Collection. Until 343 Industries implements the features that the classic Halo games do better, and unless 343 Industries upgrades their servers to be at least on par with their older counterparts, it is simply too early to kill the servers off now. This feels less like the natural end of an era, and more like a move made to forcefully migrate classic Halo players to a knowingly inferior platform. It feels more financially-driven than anything else.

343 Industries, please do not shut down the servers for the classic Halo games. They still mean a lot to many people, and shutting them down this early while providing no better alternative is absolutely doing an injustice to the classic Halo games, and its fanbase. 

Sincerely,

a concerned Halo fan.