The Official HALO 3 thread - Page 2

man fuck this. they wont fix shit until business hours...i am assuming.

im gonna try and get some more sleep.

good luck to you all.

What a complete load of shit.

all i want is some kind of explanation or at least an estimated time that the beta will be up for download.

When they stop playing Halo 3?

Breathe, guys. Don't worry, you'll get through this.

(whew, good thing I didn't take off)

Can someone post when the Crackdown people are able to download? I'm going to call my wife and walk her through the process, so hopefully this will be waiting for me when I get off work.

Its up now.

Yeah I was just kidding....mwha ha ha ha.

(I couldn't resist)

Congrats, man. That's a rare card, I hear.

Between this, Guitar Hero 2 DLC pricing and the Gears of War debacle, I'd have to say that Microsoft has the market cornered on disappointing me right now.

Strike now, Sony. Unleash some bitchin' exclusive and announce a price drop now and fuck over Microsoft while they have all their customers good and pissed at them.

Did anyone imagine this whole thing going smooth as silk? I didn't.

My code to activate the beta download (I got in via the Rule of Three thingie) was sent to my spam folder, which I almost never check before emptying. The beta is downloading now--so no harm, no foul, I guess--but my 360 also has a nasty habit of stopping downloads for no reason, which has me worried. I was at 4% when I left for work, and I won't be surprised if I come home to find everything ground to a halt at 6%.

It's gonna be a long day.

Man... I almost called in today. A Yankee/White Sox double header AND Halo 3? Now I'm kinda glad I didn't because this'll give me something to do tonight when the kid goes down.

If it's up, of course...

. . . and on May 16, 2007, at aproximately 10:40 a.m. CST, the internet was destroyed by rampant overuse of caps lock and bad spelling. It appears that the outbreak began on the Bungie.net and XBOX Live forums, and quickly spread beyond control.

Yeah, the nerd rage is in full effect. Bungie! RARRGH! your free product that you didn't even have to release to the public, which is being released in a complicated multi-pathway manner that's never really been tried before, isn't out when you said it would be! I must complain with all of the INTERNET MALE abilities at my disposal!

Look, it IS a bit of a fuck-up, and I'm disappointed that I can't queue up the download right now, but I can't play until after my kid goes to sleep tonight anyway.

That is, if it even shows up today at all...

You know, I hate to go all 13 year old message board troll over this, but I think its warranted. Maybe it has to do with the fact that Microsoft has screwed me over twice already in the past month (guitar hero 2 DLC prices, dead xbox). This just sort of felt like another slap in my face.

I am sitting here, purposely having planned next to nothing on wednesday without the halo 3 beta. Bungie needs to get there act together. First the newest map packs corrupt your other halo 2 DLC and now this shit?

EDIT: Cant Bungie just look at the XBL logs and send everyone who played crackdown an email invite into the beta? So what if some ppl who just rented the game get beta invites.

How much are you guys paying for this beta again?

based on the amount of time and enjoyment i got out of crackdown...i would approximate 25 bucks.

The thing that really has people's dander up is that the people playing the Halo 3 beta right now paid nothing for the privilege. They just lucked into it, while people who had to jump through hoops and open their wallet up get to sit on the sidelines and go "golly, I wish I could do that. Looks like fun." If it was the freebies sitting on the sidelines, I think the hate would be a bit less tangible.

I can understand the frustration, but it's not like you guys didn't know the pitfalls of buying what might be a medocre full game just to get in on a later beta.

Anyways, that's just the old fart in me going "these kids today". I'm looking forward to reading about your experiences once this thing starts moving.

Scoring the Rule of Three invite wasn't exactly luck. (I put in my three hours of gameplay and then spent most of the day continuously refreshing Bungie's site until the registration opened.) Which is a hell of a lot more work than strolling into Gamestop and dropping sixty bucks on Crackdown.

Which doesn't make me more deserving of the beta, but it sure doesn't make me less deserving either.

"Deserve's got nothin' to do with it."

Then Microsoft shouldn't have advertised the Crackdown + Halo 3 Beta all over the internet and on the Crackdown box. That's like having a big sticker that says '3 hours of bonus footage' on a movie DVD and then not let people actually watch the 3 hours of bonus footage after they buy it.

I'm not mad at the people playing the Beta right now. I say if you can, get that shit and play it. I'm mad at Microsoft for once again not making sure their product would do what they said it would when they said it would do it.

I agree with that, but people are taking things too far with this. Talk of boycotts, petitions, time spent taking off work... shit, there are even some people on the Bungie forums threatening suicide. (it's a funny read, if you have the stomach)

In the end, it's just a game, and you'll all play it and love it when you can get it.

I tried to read it, but I started to get a headache about 2 pages in.

The Xbox.com forums are just as sad/entertaining. Maybe even moreso.

forum trolls do that all at a drop of a hat nowadays. But the general outcry is warranted.

Oh, and the shit still ain't working either.

I remember back when Halo 2 was coming out, Nick wrote something about how Video Game message boards were 1000 times worse than any movie forum was (in terms of the childishness of its users). It was probably in a Steady Leak or something.

At the time i pretty much read the chud forums and that was it, but now with 2.5 years of experience... I couldn't agree with him more.

My favorite so far is the kids who have been threatening a lawsuit since about 5 minutes after it was supposed to come out.

I'm patiently waiting. In the meantime my gamertag is Stuntman Dalyn if anyone wants to add me. I hope there is still room in the CHUD clan.

Well it looks like Major Nelson was the first caualty of the Halo3 Internet Riot. The nerds destroyed his site. What a thankless job he has.

What happened?

To me this almost feels like the LA Riots back in the 90s. Thousands of people losing there minds and attacking the innocent.

I imagine if i turned on CNN i'd see video footage of a horde of nerds pulling Bill Gates out of his Bentley and hitting him with a brick.

Alex-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Nguyen.jpg

Actually, here's the message from the site:

Thanks. Funny how I can access the Bungie forums at work but not Major Nelson. Way to go, Websense©!

Return Of The Old Spice Registration!!!!!

I have no idea why anyone should ever thank Major Nelson for being a PR shill.

Dear God,

Make this happen and I'll believe in you. Pleasepleasepleaseplease.

Sincerely,

Me

Agreed, Major Nelson is just a conduit for Microsoft press releases. He has also been a pretty huge dick about the overpriced downloadable content a lot of the the 360's recent titles have been getting.

But yes I am in total agreement that video game forum kids are massive dongs.

This does suck. Well hopefully bout 1030 tonight when I usually get on we'll all be enjoying it. I do feel bad for my younger brother, he took off school and was sitting there with me at 8am on Crackdown.

On a positive note, if we can get some games half as fun as we had last night going on the beta, we're in for a good three weeks.

I skipped lunch and ran home to play the beta instead, and I managed to get three quick games in. And remember, I'm probably the biggest, most biased Halo apologist/fanboy on these boards. But...

Oh my god.

It's SO fucking good. Even in just thirty minutes of gameplay, it just feels great. Everything has a little more weight, closer to the original game than Halo 2's floaty physics. But it also retains the sequel's frantic pace, so it's the best of both worlds.

Other stuff:

--Dual-wielding is no longer necessary. Thank Christ. I stuck with the assault rifle for the most part, and I already love it.

--The Spartan Laser, gravity lifts, spike grenades and detachable chain guns are all awesome. The laser in particular is great fun...watching players scramble away from the Predator-ish laser-sight while the weapon charges up never gets old.

--The man cannon is cool, even though it doesn't fire you quite as high or as far as I'd hoped. I did manage to drive a Warthog through the cannon though, and corkscrewing wildly above the map while my gunner sprayed bullets in every direction was the high point of my session.

I played Team Slayer on Valhalla and Slayer and Crazy King on Higher Ground. Crazy King is actually kind of fun again, since the ring of icons has been transformed into a circular wall of light...and once you're inside the circle, you can barely see through the light. Which means you're constantly pivoting from side to side, waiting for someone to rush out of the light.

Anyway, it's good. Really good. And I don't want to be at work right now.

Fucker.

Good to see someone was able to play it. How 'bout the Crackdown beta testers? Any word yet? There are going to be some folks who are complete experts at this game long before it is released.

Judging by all this hullaboo, I'm somewhat glad I didn't bother with the Crackdown shenanigans.

Awesome to hear, Slater. Did your games run pretty smoothly? Granted, the bulk of us jolly assholes aren't gumming up the servers yet, but I'm curious if you've encountered any lag or dropped matches.

Graphics hold up pretty well? Quite a few have been bitchin' about H2-level graphics, but this is a beta and all I've seen are screencaps n' stuff. Still, I'd be happy to keep the detail a little lower just to have a few more dudes with guns running around.

I didn't have any lag whatsoever or any trouble connecting to a match. No mic issues either. BUT...there were only 11,000 people online, according to the statistic on the loading screen. When that number jumps to a half-million tonight, things could change in a hurry.

The graphics aren't going to blow anybody away, that's for sure. There are quite a few cool effects and the textures look nice, but it's basically just a slightly-prettier version of the last game. But the framerate never hitched, and honestly, the only times I even noticed the graphics was when I was waiting to respawn.

well lets see.....It's pretty much a level 5 shitstorm at this point.

Major Nelson's site went down hours ago.

Xbox forums were in full blown riot mode but seems to have calmed down a bit.

9 hours since the Crackdown version of the beta was suppose to go up and not only is it not up......But there has been basically no word from anyone at MS or Bungie as to what's going on and when people can expect it to be up and running.

Talk about your super sized clusterfuck......But it is MS and they've mastered the art of pissing off it's customers.

Over/Under on this not being resolved until after midnight?



EDIT.....Just got a message saying that the Beta will not be up until 10pm eastern......I'm definatly taking the over on this.

Seriously. I've been waiting for someone to top "dying in an internet cafe after 48-hour WoW jag".

That doesn't sound very good, particularly considering that Halo 2 wasn't that impressive for the XBox. A consistent framerate is great, but after Gears of War, Oblivion, and Rainbow Six Vegas, I demand The Pretty.

I'd be pissed but honestly they could release a new map pack and weapons every year and I'd still pay full price for it. So long as it has the same feel and fun multiplayer count me in.

Judging by the videos I've seen, it's Halo2 in HD. I don't know shit about game design, but I never really understood why Halo 2/3 took so long to make, considering the minimal graphics and features updates.

I think what I want even more than Halo 3 is the original Halo with Xbox live compatibility. Hell, it would be great to just download a multiplayer version of Hang 'Em High and Blood Gulch from XBLA. I think that would satisfy my Halo desires for the indefinite future. I wasn't a big fan of Halo 2.

Xbox Connect. Anyone ever use that?

I didn't realize Halo 3 had a release date set, 9/25, in case anyone else didn't know.

No Crackdown Beta means I have no excuse to continue neglecting my lawn. I hate mowing with a passion.