Major Nelson is reporting on his blog that massive numbers of people are logging into the service to play Halo 2, but that everything is running smoothly so far.

Xbox365 asks where you will be (or rather, where you were) at midnight on Halo 2uesday. There are some store pics as well.

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.

Shishka has written up the Fall Foliage: Crisp Death HBO LANfest as possibly the "last great Halo LAN," obviously anticipating that Halo 2 will soon assume the mantle of the game of choice for such events. Thanks mnemesis at HBO.

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.

Some have reported that select few attendees at the I Love Bees "training" events have been receiving special items. Some received commemorative DVDs, others got Limited Edition copies of Halo 2 before anybody else. Lucky buggers.

UPDATE: Several attendees at these events have said that although grand prize winners did get a copy of Halo 2, they did not receive it at the event. Some were told the game would be sent later by mail, and others got a voucher to be redeemed at a store. It seems the only legitimate copies of Halo 2 currently in circulation (and there are some) were sold early at some Midwestern stores.

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.

In order to link a clan, you have to be a member of at least one clan (which you need to do in Halo 2, not on Bungie.net) and have your Gamertag linked to your Bungie.net login. Once you've done so, Halo 2 will display a Bungie.net logo behind your gamertag during matchmaking.

Thanks rapture for the heads-up on cookedgamers.

b>John "JCal" Callaham of HomeLAN Fed has done an interview with Wideload Games founder Alexander "The Man" Seropian about Stubbs the Zombie in "Rebel Without a Pulse". Someone finally asked one of the minds behind Bungie one of the age-old burning questions: Why zombies?

There's a primal terror of dead things, even when they're not doing anything. When dead things crawl out of their graves and start gobbling the flesh of the living, you have to consider the possibility that everything you thought you knew is worthless.

For us, part of the appeal was doing something new with a somewhat moribund genre. Part of the reason zombies are popular adversaries is that they're easy to do as long as you adhere to the mythology: they're slow, they're dumb, they only attack by biting, etc. We kept the basic idea of a brain-eating dead guy, but chose to not restrict ourselves based on what other games had done. That made it a lot more interesting.

While admitting that nice people don't go around eating brains, Seropian insists that Stubbs is a character that players will identify with as they understand the motives for his actions.

And, of course, in typical Bungie fashion, Seropian gave a detailed breakdown of how the game is moving toward completion:

Going by the industry-standard completeness scale, which ranges from sandwich to desk lamp, I give Stubbs the Zombie a rating of lizard. It will be released Summer 2005.

Hey Matt-- when do the Weekly Wideload Updates start?

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, Terms of Use, and Code of Conduct. In order to keep using the site, you have to agree to all three.

You can, of course, read all three in detail if you like; but since it's not open to negotiation and I'm sure you all want to see your XBL stats on Bungie.net... looks like it's time to go clicky-clicky on the Yes button.

[image:8460 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Matt Soell of Wideload Games took the time to add a few comments to the release of information last week about Wideload's first game, Stubbs the Zombie in 'Rebel Without a Pulse'. The first addition is that the game is planned for the Xbox, Macs and PCs. Wideload is doing the Xbox version internally, and is working with Aspyr's development teams for the Mac and PC versions. Even so, they are planning (Editor's Note: not promising, let's get that clear right now) to release the game for all three platforms at the same time.

The second tidbit was in answer to my question about why Wideload chose to place so much emphasis on humor, an element that while always part of Bungie games, rarely took center stage. According to Matt:

Most games take themselves too seriously; we decided to go in the opposite direction. It's an outgrowth of an old impulse: to make the games we'd like to play.

You can always find more information here at Rampancy either about Wideload Games or about Stubbs the Zombie.

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.

If you live in the Seattle area and qualify, you could win a pass to play Halo 2 on Thursday, November 4. Check Major Nelson's blog, Random Thoughts for details.

A site called Joystiq is reporting a rumor that both the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 2 may both be using IBM-made PPC chips. Thanks cooked gamers.