Bungie has killed the Halo 2 leaderboards to discourage cheaters, as well as added the Team Hardcore playlist. Thanks SketchFactor.

What's interesting in Sketch's post is the admission that the top-ranked Halo 2 players online are cheaters:

We sincerely apologize to the few players out there who have played hundreds of legitimate games to work your way up the leaderboards. You will still keep your rankings and your stats as a token of your l337 skillz. Unfortunately the reality is that the vast majority of people who do appear on the leaderboards have only got there through some form of cheating.

To be honest, I wonder how effective this change will be. With so few players appearing on the leaderboards, even most cheaters must have known they wouldn't make it, and so were doing it just to gain a high rank. Since ranks are still in, there's still that much incentive to cheat; just not incentive to cheat so much more than the other cheaters that you get a leaderboard spot-- which was probably achieved through sheer volume of play.

So maybe there won't be fewer cheaters, but perhaps the worst cheaters will just play less often.