Chronique:BWU 06/06/2008

Posted by lukems at 6/6/2008 6:16 PM PDT

"The World is a Stage...

MLG San Diego - the second tournament of their 2008 season - is approaching and the opportunities to participate are waning (the deadline for registration is June 9th). The tourney will take place from June 13-15 at the Town and Country Resort Hotel - the opening rounds get underway Friday night, with the Championship taking place on Sunday evening (check the schedule here).

Shishka and I will be making a voyage down to San Diego for the weekend with a pretty sweet surprise for MLG attendees. If you live in the San Diego/SoCal area, stop by. When I went to the last MLG tournament, we played an exhibition on Blackout - maybe we'll end up with controllers in our hands and our egos on the floor, yet again.

...Everyone's a Player"

Head to Head returned to Matchmaking this week and there's been a modest amount of chatter about folks having difficulty matching in the playlist. At first glance this seems odd, because it's only two people and matching should be pretty swift, but we've enabled a host check to make sure both accounts are capable of hosting the game. Now, what kind of connection would be unable to host a game? Many Internet connections are stable enough to host a game of 1v1, almost every cable or DLS provider should be fine in this situation, yet people were still having problems. Assuming your NAT is Open, you should match pretty easily in a playlist like Head to Head - unless there's been other chicanery that's resulted in you forfeiting the ability to host.

Odd?

Actually, not really.

Shishka weighed in on why some folks are having issues here and here. It's worth checking out.

Rank and Fair

Doing my part to save Ranked Big Team Battle - a Double EXP playlist for the month of June - I hopped into some games this week. Match times were much faster in our party than they'd been over the past few months, (our listed search parameters were levels 11-27) and we matched within a few minutes each game. It was a far cry from the frustrating matchmaking experience of previous months. We hope that folks take a second look at the RBTB matchmaking experience this month.

Shishka is processing the daily numbers and we're looking at the player counts and games played each morning when we get to work. In his own words he is: "It's too early to say, but I'm feeling strangely optimistic about the growth. My hope is that word of mouth will help and that RBTB will continue to grow though the month."

Like Xerxes showed Ephialtes, maybe you, too, will see that Shishka is kind.

You may have noticed that we're announcing that Double EXP Month for RBTB in our game's Message of the Day (press Start) - that tool clicked on line this week, and we'll be updating it as necessary.

Blog Submissions

With the Bungie Blog becoming a primary outlet for information in the re-tooled Bungie.net (the Weekly Updates and some other features will remain, don't worry), I figured it'd be handy to give an extremely quick submissions guide for folks who want to submit news.

1. Use the submissions tool, don't send me a PM with your news item. 2. Write your submission in English, edit it and make sure it reads the way you want it to read.

After those key steps have been completed, your entries will be reviewed and either published to the front page or banished from the land.

Here are a couple of examples of what not to do:

That's a rad deal on a Gamertag.

We shudder at this guy's truthiness (not a word).

Welcome to the list!

There's been some stuff on the site this week that you may have missed if you aren't subscribing to the blog's RSS feed or if you only came for this week's disappointingly info-free Weekly Update.

• Halo 3 Bloopers Video
• Tied the Leader Ponders Improving Halo 3
• Vehicle-driving Tips courtesy of H3Wheelmen.com
• The "Goostage" empirical evidence of awesome things that happen riding Brokeback
• Fanmade CG of "Armor Testing"
• Informative and Lengthy Interview with Bungie Staffers by Gamasutra

Bungie Day

Since June just began, it might seem a bit premature to talk about July - so we won't.

7/7 approaches.

Whiteboards are blanketed in plans.

LOG: QUERIED ADJACENT FACILITIES LF.Xx.3273 research and containment facility [alpha, beta, gamma, epsilon, zeta, and kappa sites] have all replied [systems normal] within expected constraints. This would tend to signify that the containment failure was purely mechanical in nature; perhaps a manufacturing flaw. As no [outside agent] has accessed [delta site] in the past [874068942 hours, 4 minutes, 46 seconds]—[allowing for a 61360 hour, 54, minute, 2 second margin of error]—sabotage would seem unlikely.

LOG: REQUEST UNANSWERED LF.Xx.3273 research and containment facility; [delta site] is currently being held at [.01 atm] / [184K]. Local maintenance and security hubs have failed to reply within expected constraints. [Bumping maintenance and security request up] to [quadrant oversight].

LOG: REQUEST UNANSWERED LF.Xx.3273 research and containment facility; [delta site] is currently being held at [1 atm] / [278K] as atmospheric seals were showing signs of stress. [Quadrant oversight] has failed to reply within expected constraints. [Bumping maintenance and security request all the way up] to 2401 [PENITENT TANGENT].

LOG: UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO FACILITIES LF.Xx.3273 research and containment facility; [delta site] emergency [slip stream space] transportation conduits have been accessed by unauthorized parties.

LOG: FILED COMPLAINT TO INSTALLATION 00 2401 [PENITENT TANGENT], monitor of Installation 05, has been lax in the areas of maintenance and security. Requests for aid in said areas have gone unanswered by both 2401 and [subservient] systems well beyond expected constraints.