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:
This week's Weekly What's Update by Frankie has decorating tips mixed in with serious news. To summarize:
Bungie's Humpday Challenge is back after a long hiatus. The boys from Kirkland took on some random misfortunates in the new Team Snipers playlist and took two games out of three. The story is accompanied by the best animated GIF ever.
HBO pointed us to what the guys at TeamXbox have done to the Origen site-- namely, they found the XML file that contains the dialog between the two rabbits. It also reveals the first three of the four contests that will determine who gets to go to Origen. Places 5 and 6 will go to the top eligible Double Team playlist player and his or her usual partner. Unless you live in Portugal or Greece, apparently.
Rapture has relaunched a temporary version of the old COERCE.net website to announce that the redoubtable Halo PC server will be back for a few months' stint.
Over in MBO's Asulym forum, there's details from Psyched, including rules and brackets, for Myth Tournament 2005 (which is actually being played with Myth II). Thanks Gholsbane for the heads-up.
The Houston Chronicle's Entertainment section this past weekend was has a feature on Halo champion Matt "Zyos" Leto. Thanks Louis Wu.
Stuntmutt's ridiculously long Suffer This LAN event writeup from a few days ago is over in the HBO forum, where such things rightfully belong. If I can find a British slang translator I'll link it here, too.
Louis Wu at HBO called 1UP's Broken Halo article a broken record by a whiny writer, but myself I find it hard to shrug off all of it's criticisms, even if they are old hat by this time.
As noted by Major Nelson and many, many others, the five maps in Bungie's second, or "maptacular" pack of new maps for Halo 2, comprising Gemini, Relic, Elongation, Terminal, and Backwash, are now available for free to all Xbox Live subscribers.
Psyched has announced that MariusNet and The Myth Jumpers will soon be holding a Myth 2 tournament called MAJORMATT 2005. Read about all the details in Bungie's Underground forum. Thanks MBO.
[image:9674 align=left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] First Major Nelson will be attending, now the Frag Dolls will be at this year's Penny Arcade Expo-- and looking to add a new member, according to eToyChest.