Today, November 15, 2004, marks the third anniversary of the release of Halo for the Xbox. Happy birthday Halo!

Kitt at Evil Avatar pointed out a comparison between the number of users on Valve's Steam service to those playing Halo 2 on XBL. At the moment, they are about equal: around 75,000 players currently online.

For awhile now, registered users of Rampancy could enter in their XBL GamerTags in their profiles, by clicking the my account link under the lefthand menu for their username, and editing their personal information. Now, we have a way to actually use that information. First, you can see a list of our registered users, and if you like, you can see only those who have entered GamerTags.

Gaming rumor sheet SPoNG has another of its items about infighting between nVidia, ATI and Microsoft over the possibility of making the Xbox 2 backwards compatible with the first iteration. Please pass the salt.

[image:8734 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] HaloMods is carrying news of one of the first mods made with a legitimately owned copy of Halo 2; Iron Forge has created a dual plasma swords mod. Don't know how effective it is, but it looks damn cool. Thanks to synide for the heads-up.

Mat "Shunji" Noguchi responds in his blog to some of Halo and Halo 2's critics by pointing out how Halo 2's game experience is optimized for average, not "hardcore" players.

GameSpy has a two-page feature up called The Numbers Never Lie about the Halo 2 statistics system.

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.