Another Bungie Store update!

Now you can buy all of the joyride Halo series 4 action figures right at Bungie's very own [url=http://www.bungiestore.com/productcart/pc/default.asp]store[/url]! [url=http://www.bungiestore.com/productcart/pc/default.asp]Bungie Store[/url]

Check out this engaging, funny, exciting and very un-boring [url=http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=130619]video interview[/url] with Bungie tools programmer Mat Noguchi! (courtesy of [url=http://channel9.msdn.com/]channel 9[/url])

There's some good information for those of you interested in becoming future game developers and programmers as well as some great shots of Bungies new building and a very interesting "cleaning" lady scene.....So do yourself a favor and watch this [url=http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=130619]video interview![/url] Discuss [url=http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=5179019]here[/url]. Thanks [url=http://www.bungie.net/Account/Profile.aspx?memberID=1312623]Hine![/url]

RSS News feeds for both the front page news and each group are now available via the "XML" link on the news listings in both areas. They'll show the most recent 15 news stories, including the top stories/group annoucements, with the top stories always first.

If you don't know what an RSS feed is, here is a short blurb on it from xml.com: [i]RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the "recent changes" page of a wiki, a changelog of CVS checkins, even the revision history of a book. Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way. RSS-aware programs called news aggregators are popular in the weblogging community. Many weblogs make content available in RSS. A news aggregator can help you keep up with all your favorite weblogs by checking their RSS feeds and displaying new items from each of them.[/i]

godfree writes:

The First Annual Xbox Community Awards 2005 will be happening on Nov 20, 2005 with special guests from the Xbox community. People can vote now at [url]http://www.gamertagradio.com[/url] voting ends on Nov 15, 2005.

The First Annual Xbox Community Awards 2005 will be happening on Nov 20, 2005 with special guests from the Xbox community. People can vote now at [url]http://www.gamertagradio.com[/url] voting ends on Nov 15, 2005. We also nominated Frankie (Bungie) for Community Member Of The Year! You can also vote for Podcast Of The Year, XBL Community Site of The Year, Clan Of The Year, Female/Community Of The Year, International Site of the Year and much more! This show will be all in audio and we have a few surprises... stay tuned and vote now!

Gamertag Linking, the process by which you can link your Gamertag to Bungie.net and Microsoft Passport (so you can see your stats and more) is offline until later this week, thanks to the ongoing process of updating Xbox.com and Xbox Live.

We'll keep you posted on the progress of Gamertag Linking and expect to have it up and running in a few days.

The scheduled Xbox Live downtime today (Monday October 24th) while they enhance and ready the service for Xbox 360, will affect our Halo 2 stat tracking ability. Expect to see oddities until they are finished. [b]Update:[/b] Until everything is back to normal, gamertag linking will be unavailable. We'll update our links as soon as the linking service is working again.

We will continue to update you as the situation evolves.

In objective games there is one way you can assure you don't lose. Just set up a perfect defence. In the [url=http://h2wiki.halowiki.net/wiki/Defence]halowiki.net article "Defence"[/url] Chiggs examines what makes for a successful defense.

Yeah, maybe perfect is hard to achieve, but at least this should highlight how importance the subject of defence is. According to Chiggs these five actions needs focus: [*] Getting Rid of a Nuisance [*] Cutting off Avenues of Attack [*] Closing off Points of Entry [*] Clearing the Base [*] Protecting the Objective And of course the eternal [b]Communication[/b]. Read the article on [url=http://halowiki.net]halowiki.net[/url] to check what Chiggs puts into those important defence actions. Here: [url=http://h2wiki.halowiki.net/wiki/Defence]Defence according to Chiggs[/url]

On Tuesday, there was an issue with our servers that receive the advanced game data from Halo 2. This problem lasted from just before 4:00 pm PDT until about 6:20pm PDT. You may consequently be missing some games in your game list if you played during this time, even though Xbox Live and the XP/Level system were fully functional and recording your games as normal. Read on for the full details.

There are two parts to the data uploaded to us after each game of Halo 2. The first set of data goes to Xbox Live. This is the XP/Level info that notes your win or loss and handles your XP gain/loss. This system operated normally. However, the other part of the data gets uploaded to a set of dedicated severs that are responsible for processing the detailed data - the game viewer and the post game carnage report. This data, normally available under the Games tab on a player's stat page, was lost due a network failure on this hardware. This failure affected both the primary and the backup. The missing games still counted in terms of experience points and level, they just won't have any detailed information or game viewer available. They won't even appear in the list of games played. We apologize for the data loss, and are taking steps to prevent this failure from happening in the future.

Team Hardcore is Live. The toughest, meanest, grimmest playlist of them all is now available. I just tested it myself. Stats are being tracked and there’s a ton of folks playing. And it’s hard. The balance is tipped in favor of objective games, Battle Rifle starts, motion detector off, and lots of precision teamwork.

I just tested it with rumble feedback turned off, and that wasn’t smart. I basically lit up and dropped dead without ever really knowing where I was being shot from. This playlist is not for the faint of heart. The Playlist FAQ and stats [url=http://www.bungie.net/Stats/page.aspx?section=FAQInfo&subsection=playlists&page=1]pages[/url] have been updated with the new info for Team Hardcore. There's additional info on the [url=http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?story=weeklyupdatesept30]new Playlist here.[/url]

Effective immediately, the Halo 2 Xbox Live Leaderboards are no longer being displayed on Bungie.net. Player rankings and stats are untouched and nothing else has changed.

As we first mentioned two weeks ago, the Halo 2 Leaderboards are officially gone from Bungie.net. This is something we've discussed at length for quite a while and ultimately we feel that the Leaderboards are not worth keeping. Unfortunately the leaderboards ended up being a shrine for cheaters and hackers and for the most part did nothing but cause legitimate players pain. We don't have the resources to manually investigate and monitor every single player on the Leaderboards nor do we feel that is warranted. That is time and energy better spent on creating new playlists and making the core online experience better for everyone. Keep in mind that only a tiny percentage of actual players are affected by the Leaderboards - only 1,000 of several hundred thousand ever make the list. The amount of work required to cater to this small minority compared to the overall return for the community just isn't worth it. 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. Your rankings and player stats will remain unchanged and there will be no noticeable difference in Halo 2 other than the absence of the "Top 1000" lists on the Bungie.net stats page.

Psyched writes:

The date for the upcoming [url=/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=4569014]Myth Tournament[/url] has been announced as Saturday 5th November. Check out the details, and be sure to be there!

The date for the upcoming [url=/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=4569014]Myth Tournament[/url] has been announced as Saturday 5th November. Check out the details, and be sure to be there!

Thursday morning at about 10:30am PDT bungie.net will be unavailable for 30 to 60 minutes while we make some database changes and update the site's code.

We'll be updating bungie.net with some stability fixes, some performance fixes, and some other changes. Most of the changes you won't notice, but there are a few major ones: [*]The profanity filter has been altered for performance reasons - the upshot is that if you use a naughty word and try and break it up with formating tag in a vain hope of bypassing the filter, you'll find all of your formatting tags stripped. [*]You'll also see the return of the "Most Popular Forum Thread" sidebar item. [*]Group admins will be happy to know that they'll be able to type in the name of a blacklisted user to jump directly to that user's entry rather than having to find their name in a list. [*]Group admins will also find a new admin tool available for those with the "Group Settings" security bit set - the Group History viewer. The system will keep track of certain important actions, like security role changes and member additions and removals, and display them to you. Veteran users will recognize it as a reincarnation of the old fanclub activity log, but with a focus on group security. [*]Of course, there were a bunch of little bug fixes here and there, such as Internal Server Error from the stat RSS feeds, as well as a fix to the automatic thread locking feature that wasn't completely locking some old threads.

We're still looking for talented, qualified individuals to join our team and help further our goals of World Domination. If you are an Engineer, Artist or Designer (or know someone who is), check out our current [url=http://www.bungie.net/Inside/Page.aspx?section=Jobs&subsection=Main&page=1]job openings.[/url]

Creating kickass games and taking over the world is hard work and we need some help. Bungie Studios is looking for qualified folks to join our team in the areas of Engineering, Design and Art. In addition to being a part of our team and creating amazing things you'll be able to enjoy our new state-of-the-art command center in the quaint town of Kirkland, Washington. Head over to our [url=http://www.bungie.net/Inside/Page.aspx?section=Jobs&subsection=Main&page=1]jobs[/url] page for a full listing of all available positions and requirements.

Steven Loftus over at Halo.Bungie.Org has created a very, very in-depth look at the UNSC Pelican spacecraft You can go check out waaay too much information at this link: [url=http://nikon.bungie.org/misc/sloftus_pelicandropship/]Pelican Overview[/url]

And remember, some of this stuff is Steven's own gap-filling-in, as opposed to technically correct canon, but it's nifty anyway.