Halo: Reach continues its Xbox Live dominance, and Campaign Matchmaking is on the way. Bungie has posted some incredible numbers, despite what their own "Players Online" counter will tell you. Anyone who has played Reach lately has probably seen the online players number in the triple digits. This number might be slightly off, since the online player counter seems to have a half-million point swing. That's a heckuva swing. Never mind that now, here comes the co-op news.
Co-op Campaign Matchmaking will be going live on October 15th. Here's the kicker. You have to have attained the rank of Corporal to access it. That means you will need to have earned around 17500 credits. So you will need to have invested some time with the game before you can just jump in and start betraying people. I'm looking at you, Rocket fighters. Here is the list of the upcoming additions and changes.
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Playlist Changes
SWAT Playlist added (SWAT removed from Big Team Battle and Team Slayer)
Team Slayer rebalanced to highlight default Slayer game variants and include new offerings
Classic Slayer removed
Removed “Pro” game variants from the Arena Playlist
Removed Boardwalk from Arena Team Doubles Playlist
Added “Return to Battlefield” volume to Space on Zealot in the Arena Playlist
Game Variants Additions
King of the Hill (multiple Playlists, including Arena*)
Rocket Race
Juggernaut (Rumble Pit Playlist)
*King of the Hill not included in Arena
General Housekeeping
Sudden Death will be added to all Assault game variants, including Invasion
Team Objective will now feature the map Powerhouse
Replacing Drop Shield with Evade for King of the Hill, Territories, and Oddball
Replacing Hologram with Evade in Oddball, Capture the Flag, Assault, and Stockpile
Replacing the Scorpion on Hemorrhage with Wraiths (Hemorrhage Heavies variant, TBD)
And here is Bungie's weekly round up of NNBB numbers, or for the uninitiated, the 'Nana Nana Boo Boo' numbers.
70 Million+ Games have been played
235 Million+ Player-Games have been played
2 Million+ Files have been uploaded to File Shares
5,901 man-years have been spent in online Reach games (sorry, Corporate America!)
20 Million Daily challenges have been completed
709,840 Weekly challenges have been completed
165 Billion Credits have been earned
Keep it up, Bungie. Because when I see this:
Cell phone journalism at its finest.
It makes me cry a little inside. Then I realize that math can be hard for computers. Even when it is just counting.