Coke points out on IRC that it looks like the Bungie.net forums have been reorganized. Additional Halo 2 forums have been added: Zanzibar for multiplayer discussions, OptiMatch for matchmaking discussions.

Much, much too much stuff out there now that November 9 is finally here (at least in some time zones).

Here's a summary, drawing on sites like HBO, Halo Planet, Halo Babies, The Junkyard, Voodoo Extreme, Sector 7, and of course, Bungie.net.

• Halo Babies forums will be down to give admins a break to play Halo 2 before having to deal with abuse and spoilers.
• CNN asks if Halo 2 is big enough.
• GameRankings compiles Halo 2 review results. Current average: 98%.
• The Junkyard's realism in Halo series covers Keyes. Thanks Mhaddy.
• Mnemesis notes that the Limited Edition of Halo 2 for the Xbox has this Bungie acronym: JNAMSFTFY. He also links to Matt Soell's post about these acronyms, from way back in 1997.
• Major Nelson waves his copy of Halo 2 in our faces.
• Bungie.net assembles all their get ready for Halo 2 content in one place.
• HBO now has separate settings for Halo and Halo 2 spoilers. Editor's Note: we've been working on a viable solution for hiding spoilers on this site, however it isn't ready yet. So until then, we won't be posting any real spoilers on the front page, although we may open a separate forum for them.
• Halo 2 setting up Xbox 2 at Canada.com.
• Want Halo 2? Get in line now! (The IndyChannel). Editor's Note: You'll laugh, you'll cry... you'll kiss $55 goodbye!
• The Toronto Sun thinks Halo 2's M rating will keep it from its fans. Editor's Note: This guy needs a whack with a cluebat. The most rabid Halo 2 fans are Halo 1 fans, and Halo 1 was rated M as well. But they think it will break sales records anyway.
• The Wall Street Journal takes a few hundred words to say Halo 2 comes out today. Editor's Note: Really!?
• This is your last chance to vote in the 343 Guilty Lantern contest.
• The last part of the 30-minute The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter movie is out today.
• poena.dare wants to find out how much you really know about Bungie with his 343-question Penultimate Bungie Giga-Quiz 1.0.
• MLG wonders if XBL will crash due to Halo 2 traffic.
• Joe Staten points out a misquote of him in an article on Halo 2's plot and notes that Halo 2 is not an anti-Bush polemic, despite what has been said. His statement: "Halo2's story is non-partisan. Any meaning you ascribe to it is yours alone. Play the game, and I think you'll see it's just that: a fun game with a good story."
• Bentllama talks trash on his blog, daring you to wrest away a copy of Halo 2 chained to his neck. Those Canadians are odd.
• Watch Halo 2 on HaloTV. Multiplayer only, so no spoilers... I think.
• People are waiting for Halo 2, says the Springfield News-Leader. Editor's Note: This and the many repetetive stories like it just goes to show that online newspapers still cling to their ideas of geographical territoriality, even though it's meaningless on the Internet, and doubly so when talking about an online phenomenon. Oh well.
• Halo 2 fans are cattle being "herded online", according to USA Today's headline. Editor's Note: I wonder what you could call USA Today readers, then.
• The Man Room reviews something to put in your ear. Related to Halo 2. Trust me.
• Halo 2uesday is a holy day, says the Seattle Times. They also note the long hours Bungie put in making it.
• Halo 2 might let the Xbox make money according to gamesindustry.biz. Editor's Note: Who'd have thunk it?
• XA Radio is having a Halo 2 Launch Party.
• Halo 2 is more destructive than the original, says the Boston Globe. Editor's Note: For shame. I'd have thought my hometown paper of choice could come up with something more imaginative. Still, they liked it, which means I can keep reading them.
• The Fresno Bee knows where you'll bee at midnight. Editor's Note: We love bees!
• Penny Arcade wonders why Halo seems to attract Greeks.
• CTRL+ALT+DEL asks the question.. can I touch it?

That is much too long a news post.

Gholsbane over at MBO notes that November 7 marked the 7th anniversary of the release of Myth: The Fallen Lords, released in 1997. All the players who still have the game on their hard drive-- and we know you're out there-- head to PlayMyth or marius.net and get in a game to commemorate.

GameSpy's prelaunch coverage continues with an interview with Tyson "Ferrex" Green about level design and why Halo 2 won't include repetetive levels like Halo 1 did.

The news items are flying fast and furiously in the last few days before Halo 2's launch, so in order to keep up we'll be posting news summary items where necessary. These items were pointed out at various other gaming sites, including HBO, Sector 7, Halo Planet, GameSpy and IGN. This weekend's summary so far:

It looks like one of the features I personally had hoped to see when Bungie.net became integrated with XBL is coming to fruition: RSS feeds for individual stats. Right now an XML button for an RSS feed of "recent games played" is visible on the Stats page of Bungie.net users that have linked their gamertags. It looks like the button only appears on your own Stats page, so to get the feeds for other players you'll have to ask them. As I haven't been able to play any games yet, I don't know what kind of information is in the feed, but still, the idea is pretty sweet.

TeamXbox is the proud home of the honest-to-gosh last Weekly Bungie Update for Halo 2 by Frankie, and among the topics covered is the Stats page at Bungie.net that will be open once people get their mitts on the game and plug into XBL; right now it's showing placeholder stats. If it's showing anything at all; Bungie.net may be up and down still for awhile, and at the moment it seems to be down, taking the final Mister Chief art with it.

For those of you who administrate a 7th Column Group at Bungie.net, you'll notice a new set of links there now that allow you to link up to seven (appropriate number, no?) different clans to your Group. It can be a clan that includes your members, or an allied clan, or even a rival clan. Links to those clans' statistics pages will appear on your Group's pages.

Bungie.net is back up, but Halo 2 stats are, understandably, not yet available. Here's what Bungie.net is displaying right now on the Stats page:

Halo 2 Xbox Live game statistics are not currently available to you or your mom. We hope to have them available soon.

We hope your mom is available soon, too.

Looks like Bungie.net is getting ready to open their Stats section (Editor's Note: Still down as of this writing) in preparation of Halo 2's launch on XBL next week; after a short downtime, today the site is notifying users about their new Privacy Statement,

Twenty lucky Xbox Live subscribers are going to get a change to play Halo 2 this week, as well as get a tour of Bungie Studios and lunch with Pete Parsons this Thursday, November 4. Xbox.com has the complete list of winners.

Continuing their pre-launch coverage, GameSpy has interviewed Joe "Deckard" Staten of Bungie about his CIA career, film school.. and oh yeah, Halo 2.

You all asked for it-- you sent questions to Mat "Shunji" Noguchi, Bungie Tools Programmer. And now you get what you deserve-- his answers.

Our favorite answer? Well, it's a tie between:

What the hell is I LOVE BEES?

and

[Shishka's] like a cross between Tron and the Lawnmower Man.

Although it fails to mention the infinitely more influential Gnop, an article on Lawrence.com tracks the origin of Halo 2 going all the way back to the '70s and Pong. Thanks Louis Wu. Editor's Note: Lawrence.com is the website of the Lawrence Journal-World newspaper in Lawrence, Kansas.