Microsoft appears to be putting a dagger into the heart of Halo Wars with their announcement that they will be killing off the online forums, as well as the stat tracking, on December 15th. This will include the dismantling of the halowars.com web site as well as the leaderboards for the title. While the forums will be killed off, users will instead be directed to the Halo Waypoint going forward.

While the title has not been very popular for a while now, since its release in March of 2009 and despite the fact that fans of the Ensemble Studios-developed title are unhappy, Microsoft appears to be poised to go forward with their plan.

The biggest complaint from the diehards in the community still playing the title is that without the stats tracking and leaderboards the game’s ranked mode will be unplayable. While it will still be possible to play games over Xbox Live, many fans of the title are seeing little point in playing one of the best RTS titles to be released for the system.

Microsoft has not been very clear as to why they are making this move, but it could have a lot to do with the fact that Ensemble Studios (who was responsible for the development of the title) is no longer around. While some of the spin-off studios from Ensemble Studios do exist, it was likely decided that due to a lack of players there was little point in continuing to support the community and leaderboards any longer. Sources we have spoken with claim it is unlikely that Microsoft will revisit this decision, and it seems even with over a million copies sold a partial end is near.