Roger Wolfson, Bungie's database programmer extraordinaire, reports today that we have officially surged over the four billion games played mark, a little under two years after the game's launch. He also notes that we're close to hitting the four million unique players mark, not too shabby. Read on for some more detailed usage statistics from the past month.

Roger Wolfson and Ninja 0n Fire also gave us this handy little pie chart. It's pumpkin flavored. Click to enlarge. Lick to taste static.

Ghosts of Onyx will be officially released tomorrow, but reports have been trickling in all weekend that it's available at various outlets. You should certainly be able to get it tomorrow if you want to wait a day to read it, but you may be rewarded if you give a call today to see if it's available.

Ghosts of Onyx is Eric Nylund's most recent Halo novel, 383 pages of ooey-gooey Halo goodness.

Major Nelson has announced a Halo Trilogy theme newly released to Xbox Live Marketplace. You can read all the details in Major Nelson's blog, but the basic gist is that you can get it for free with the Xbox 360 Halo faceplate - in stores tomorrow - or you can just grab it with some Microsoft Points.

Credit goes to Dolbex at HBO for the heads up.

On the 18th of November 2006, RDKLeague will be hosting an online Free-For-All event with no eligibility restrictions. Prizes provided by JoystickJunkies . For more information check out RDKLeague.


RDKLeague, known to many as having what is arguably the largest collection of competitive European halo players, is opening its doors fully to allow players from other continents to compete on a level playing field. The event will take place on Saturday the 17th of November at 15:00 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The event will contribute to player's rankings on site through the addition of points based on tournament performance in what is known as the "Marathon System".

The event has also received support from UK Clothing/Lifestyle brand & tournament partners JoystickJunkies, who will be providing the prize of a choice of t-shirt for the winner. The event shall be the first of a new season of competitive gaming spread across Xbox, Xbox 360 & LAN-Based Action.

For more information on the event, check out the Tournament home (that includes a handy F.A.Q.) Here.

Maimum FEAR writes:

What with all the rumours and fuss about Halo 3, Games in Action decided to host a competition allowing people to submit designs for vehicles or weapons they would like to see in the new game.  Of course its all in the name of fun but prizes may be awarded for the best submissions.


So if you want to show off your art skills or have an awesome idea for a weapon or vehicle that you think would be perfect for Halo 3 then head over to www.gamesinaction.com and sign up on the forums for to take part in the competition.  If you are already a member then clicking this link will take you straight to the appropriate thread.

All the rules are in that thread and remember this is all in the name of fun, but prizes may be awarded to the best pieces of art we get.  Oh and we will happily post all winning pieces in a news article on the site and consider making some avatars out of the art work, with permission from the owner of course.

So good luck and hope to see some fantastic art work from you guys.

This is not a Bungie contest, Bungie is in no way affiliated with it and should not be contacted for support in this matter.

It has become apparent that the promised gaming magazines are now hitting the stands (or are at least being mailed to subscribers in some areas).  They do contain much awaited and long-promised Halo 3 content.

A word of advice and another word of warning.

These magazines are copyrighted material and are available to their subscribers and people who purchase the magazine.  Scanning images, posting those images, scanning or posting transcriptions of the articles is a violation of the magazine's copyright and ownership of the material.

Anyone posting scans or text from these magazines will be permanently blacklisted from this site.  No other warnings, no appeals, nothing. 

Members asking (or begging, or encouraging) scans to be posted, IM'ed or PM'ed will likewise be blacklisted for at least a week.  If we are advised to increase that penalty, we gladly will.

Bungie.Net cannot and will not be a part of people intentionally violating copyright and ownership laws.  Anyone who uses this site for that purpose is not a friend nor a fan of Bungie or this community.

Thanks for your time.

Slight Edit; Please bear in mind... having any links to released photos/scans in your signature will warrant a permanent blacklisting as well.

[Updated]: This maintenance is complete.

On Wednesday, October 25th, Bungie.net will be offline from 9am to approximately 10am Pacific time for maintenance.  Bungie.net's forums and account creation will remain offline until approximately 1pm Pacific time.

While most bungie.net upgrades can and do happen without any downtime at all, this particular update involves changing a lot of internal database structures to make them more efficient.  As such, we can't have you guys making changes to the database while we work on it.  The main site will be down for about 1 hour, starting at 9am Pacific time.  The forums and account creation will remain down until around 1pm Pacific, however. 

Everything should be back up and running by 1pm.

We here at Bungie.net have started a process for collecting Bungie fan art in one place. We'll be going through all of the submissions monthly, hosting and featuring the best submissions from you guys. View and submit your own entries in this Gallery forum thread.

A full rundown of the process and its guidelines along with a disclaimer are available in that original Gallery Forum thread as well.

The folks at UNSCDF have interviewed Eric Nylund on several topics including Ghosts of Onyx, fan-fiction, Gears of War, and some of his personal projects.


Head on over to check it out, then drop by their forum to let them know what you think.

Xbox Live is being taken down on October 17th for 24 hours, during which I suspect you'll all lose your minds. Xbox.com has put up a bunch of information on what exactly this means for you and what you can do in the meantime. I suggest lannage.


D:

IGN has taken a moment to sit down with Eric Nylund on the Ghosts of Onyx novel. The interview touches on a variety of topics, from the Halo universe to his writing style to some new details about the book itself. If you're interested in the book(s) at all, it's a good read.


The Ghosts of Onyx is scheduled to come out some time in November.

Spec_Ops_Assault writes:

Marty the Elder posted in The Marty Army a link to the first segment of three podcasts at The Kindlings Muse, the first with the Master of Stereotypes himself. The podcast is dubbed 'Halo: Games as Interactive Storytelling' and is a good listen. Check it.

Mr. O'Donnell himself posted a link to a series of podcasts on The Kindlings Muse, the first of which contains an interview with The Master of Stereotypes himself. The series of segments is based around the concepts of video game storytelling aptly named 'Halo: Games as Interactive Storytelling' and covers a range of issues now pertinent to the media industry in general and how games have and will lead us into the next generation of media.

This is only the first installment of three segments and the next podcast will include CJ Cowan, director of cinematics at Bungie Studios and Matthew Koenig of Seattle Pacific University. The last installment shall contain questions given by the live audience at Hales Ales Brewery and Pub. There is some good info about how the video games industry has and will evolve the media industry and anyone would do well to check it out, if not to hear Lance talk more about his Flintstones Kids jingle.