Marius has released a executable version of the Myth metaserver. For more information click here. It is Windows only

Thanks Marius!

Several major websites reported earlier this month Bungie's revelation that Halo 2 would not be released in time for the 2003 holidays as many had expected. The news even went as far as major mainstream sites such as Reuters and BBC News.

Matt Soell made the original posts at Bungie.net and the HBO forum, and it was soon picked up by Louis Wu in the HBO news. After the news started to reach other sites, poena.dare compiled a list on HBO's forum.

There is no release date other than 2004 at this point.

Major Myth 2 news at PlayMyth.net, Myth II will be updated to 1.3.2 on March 15th. Stop reading this and go read for yourself!

Today is the 20th anniversary of the online emoticon, also known as the smilie - born by Scott Fahlman on a CMU bulletin board.

:-)

Yes, the inevitable has finally happened.

No, not the release of Halo on the Mac and PC, although that will still happen.

We mean the announcement of Halo 2. The official word from Bungie is at Bungie.net (where else?) where the main man, Matt, lays down the sequel smackage. (Turns out, rumors of the announcement to be held in New York were true, despite the comments of a few Doubting Louises (Louii?) The announcement was also accompanied by new Halo 2 desktops and Halo 2 screenshots.

HBO got the drop on it last week when the announcement was first made, pointing out the Bungie.net announcement above as well as a Halo 2 press release at TeamXbox that included this very special quote from Jason Jones:

Halo 2 surpasses its predecessor in graphical beauty and combat intensity. 'Halo 2' is a lot like 'Halo', only it's 'Halo' on fire, going 130 miles per hour through a hospital zone, being chased by helicopters and ninjas, explained Jason Jones, the head of Bungie Studios, and the ninjas are all on fire, too.

HBO used the same quote, but we think that one is pretty irresistible.

Xbox.com has all that, a bag of chips, and two cents from Jaime Case Griesemer on what we can expect from Halo 2:

I don't want to ruin the surprise, but imagine the essential 'Halo' single-player experience: pitched battles between the humans and the Covenant, massive vehicle and infantry engagements. Now imagine that every combatant is an actual person playing over Xbox Live!

Griesemer is listed as the Lead Designer on Halo 2, but it sounds from those two quotes like both he and Jones are looking to change gears and go into marketing.

And if you're interested in getting the corporate line straight from the appropriate animal's orifice, there's a PRNewswire item on Halo 2 and PGR2 from Microsoft tailor made to fulfill that particular need.

Matt eager to ditch this particular albatross Soell at Bungie put in more than a couple of cents' worth into yet another HBO forum thread about whether or not Halo really is being ported, if so when and by whom, and whether the definitive source of such information should be Bungie (doing the work) or Microsoft (footing the bill).

Matt summarized his ideas about why MS rep Chris DiCesar might have not been completely forthcoming or accurate in his recent interview with Loonyboi at Shacknews, and then had this to say:

Those who want tangible proof that Microsoft is serious about this don't have much longer to wait.

The emphasis is ours.

The site that was once MythPortal has now reopened as GamerTalk. Billing itself as a site for serious gamers , it has a much wider focus than the old site, encompassing forums for games on Macs, PCs, and various consoles including the Xbox, the PlayStation, the GameCube and the DreamCast, as well as more general discussion areas. GamerTalk's registration system migrated over all the accounts from the old MythPortal, although you will have to choose a new avatar according to site administrator, powerkills.