Halo 3 Planet

I think pretty much everyone has been suffering from this Xbox Live hiccup, and at this point, I don’t believe there is a cure-all solution to the situation (it seems to be a server capacity issue on Microsofts part).  It’s caused a lot of commotion across the internet, a lot of people to at least pretend to cancel their account, and has even caused a class action lawsuit against Xbox Live (don’t see that going anywhere though).

However, we have found a few things that have helped us play [tag]Halo 3[/tag] (among other titles such as Call of Duty 4) during the holiday season. You may want to at least TRY some of these things before you give up hope of playing online.

• Clear your [tag]Xbox 360 Cache[/tag] – It’s really simple to do. In the Xbox 360 Dashboard, go to the System Blade, and then go to memory. While hovering over the Hard drive, press “Y”. When brought to the next screen, DO NOT SELECT EITHER OPTION, but instead enter in the following combination: X, X, Left Bumper, Right Bumper, X, X. If entered correctly, you should be able to clear your 360’s cache.
• If you’re being disconnected from games, or if you’re unable to join games and invite players to your games, you might want to try a real simple fix that has worked a few times for us. While in Halo 3 (lobby/menu/anywhere…) Click your Guide button, and Press X to sign out. Once signed out, sign back in. Give it a moment to load your settings and friends list. For some reason this seems to cure problems with not being able to invite friends 1 out of 3 times.
• Call 1-800-4-MyXbox. I’d use this one as a last resort. All of Xbox support representatives seem to actually have very little knowledge about the 360, or [tag]Xbox Live[/tag]. Instead, they sound like they’re just reading standard responses from a script 99.9% of the time. That said, they usually can help you with some basic problems you might be encountering. I personally haven’t been helped by them, but who knows… maybe you’ll find out that your NAT settings aren’t set to Open or something…
• Speaking of NAT, make sure your [tag]NAT[/tag] is set to OPEN! You can find out if your NAT is set to open by running a network test from the System blade. If its status is set otherwise, you’ll need to find out how to properly configure your network (or you’ll need to check to see if you’re even running on compatible hardware).

Other than that, you’re basically just going to have to wait it out. If you’ve found that anything else has worked for you, please be sure to post your findings here!

Yesterday, Bungie released their first Matchmaking update to [tag]Halo 3[/tag] (already — the game has only been out for about 2 weeks).  They’ve made a few notable changes, most of which make us very happy:

• Big Team Battle matches are now 16-player affairs.
• In the Team Slayer playlist, the appearance of Shotty Snipers has been greatly reduced.
• Now, when players veto Shotty Snipers, the game that results from the veto will not be Shotty Snipers.
• In one-sided VIP matches, the attacking team will now see a waypoint for the VIP they are hunting.
• In Lone Wolves, Slayer gametypes will appear more frequently.

Looks like Bungie heard the cry of fans on their forums and took action on their requests.  Aside from reducing Shotty Sniper game variants, they have also souped up Big Team Battle matches again, which will make for some intense games in the coming weeks.

I wonder if we’ll ever have a BTB Rocket Race…

Saw this over at HBO this morning:

During the ramp-up to [tag]Halo 3[/tag], Bungie was, for the most part, VERY careful about what they said about the game. This bothered a lot of fans; I mean, why all the secrecy? Why so vague with details? Just say what you mean, man! Well, there’s a piece over at Advanced Media Network (thanks, Avateur) that describes a segment of the Bungie community that is ‘outraged’ that a feature discussed a year ago by one of the UI designers didn’t make it into the final game…

That feature (for those who don’t want to read the entire article) was going to be called “[tag]Xbox[/tag] Live Public“, a way to create and search for custom games (similar to matchmaking, only with user made games).

I personally don’t really mind the absence of such a feature.  When I look at how Online games such as Halo have developed over the years, “Xbox Live Public” is actually a step backware from where we are at now.  Before we had a matchmaking system in Halo 2, all of our games were essentially “Xbox Live Public”.

Of course, the addition of a feature wouldn’t be a bad thing, as it would be easy to find any game you want immediately.  But with the additional features such as Forge and what not, who is to complain about the lack of something we upgraded several years ago?

As mentioned earlier, the [tag]Halo[/tag] [tag]Wars[/tag] E3 Demo is now available for download on the [tag]Xbox[/tag] Live Marketplace!  You can start downloading it immediately if you have [tag]Xbox Live[/tag], or you can also download it directly from the [tag]Halo Wars[/tag] Official Website.

Halo Wars E3 Demo

This guided tour through 10 minutes of play time really gives us an excellent look at what Ensemble Studios has in store for us come 2008.  With the end of the Halo Trilogy so close at hand, this is some refreshing news for the Halo Nation!

According to ComputerandVideoGames.com, a [tag]Halo Wars[/tag] Video Demonstration will be available on the [tag]Xbox[/tag] Live Marketplace sometime today.  For those of you looking to get a glimpse of the [tag]RTS[/tag] due for release next year, here is your chance!

The video demonstration will consist of gameplay from the recent E3 and Leipzig demos, complete with commentary from the dev team. If you haven’t seen it, the short preview consists of a massive UNSC base and a skirmish with an army of Covenant forces – complete with hulking Scarab walker.

Looks juicy!  We’re looking forward to this video!  Chances are, it will be on the internetz sometime soon if you can’t get onto the XBL Marketplace.