Halo2 on XBox Live

Cafe Society
1

I’ve been playing Halo 2 since Christmas and have came to the conclusion that I won’t get any better and so now is the time to use my free 2 month XBox Live trial.

What can I expect of Halo 2 online?
Will I have a completely torrid time of it getting beaten by 8 year old kids?
I’ve only completed the game on Normal but my free trial has a time limit on it so I need to use it soon.

I’ve got a day off work tomorrow and figured it’d be a good time to sign up.

The unfortunate thing is that I do not know anybody with XBox Live.
The instruction booklet for Halo2 mentioned something about joining clans to play online.
Since I don’t know anybody are there any generic clans out there that I can join?
Can you play people of similar skill levels (i.e. state you are a ‘normal’ player)?

Any advice regarding Halo2 online would be greatly appreciated.

2

I’ve played the campaign for maybe 15 to 30 minutes. On h2 live, however, I’ve racked up an ungodly amount of hours since I bought it at Thanksgiving.

Live is totally the way to go with this game. I didn’t know anyone when I started either, but you end up meeting people by just playing the random matchmaking games, especially if you have a headset and can verbally communicate with folks. Although the headset also puts you at the mercy of screaming children, idiotic assholes, and people who like to sing bad Barry Manilow while they play.

People randomly send you friend invites and clan invites. I ended up joining an all-queer clan called “The Other Team”, through an online friend. Girls are a extreme rarity and I’ve only ever encountered one or two besides the other lesbian I play with. Occasionally it makes the boys act like even bigger jackasses than they usually are :smiley: but most of the time it is just plain fun.

So my advice is, just dive in.

3

Oh…and about skill level, when you’re playing in “matchmaking” mode, the system selects the most applicable group of folks in the potential players pool for you.

4

I don’t know about Halo 2, but I got my ass handed to me all the time with Halo 1.
So much so, that I cancelled my subscription to Live out of sheer frustration.
Those damn whippersnappers on their sugar-rush are just too quick for an old man.
:smiley:

5

When you have x box live can you link systems and have say 12 people playing through one connection? My friends have a house with 4 xboxes linked already, but we are thinking of getting a subscription for the fun of it. If only one of us can play at a time though it would be lame.

Are there more maps that you can download online for multiplayer?

6

I’ve found the community to be pretty good at policing itself.

The “waiting room” screen lets everyone see who’s there, what their rank is, and who’s talking. So generally, the kid with the high-pitched voice who yells, “Whazzzzzzzzaaaaaaappppppp pu$$eeZZZ!!! Redd33 to get pwned!!11!!one!!!eleven!!!twenty-five!!!111” or whatever the kids yell these days is met with derision, or just plain ganged up on in-game.

The best example I can give is playing sometime over break, there was a kid with the requisite X’s and zeroes in his name, reciting a rap over his headset about how we were all going to die, through some combination of his “skillz” and our general ineptitude (granted, he didn’t use words like “general ineptitude”), not to mention the fact that we and our mothers were unprintable unprintables, and we all apparently engaged in unprintable with each other.

Silence.

ME: Boy, are you clever. How long did it take you to write that?
(general laughter)
HIM: Shut up, unprintable. You suck.
ME: Nice comeback. You write that one too?
HIM: You suck, unprintable.

Game starts. Entire room turns on Captain Leetspeak. Either that or he just sucked, but he died so much (and it’s better for the story) in the first couple minutes of the game that he quit out.
In the post-game stat-room, there’s generally some good sportsmanship going around, where people will compliment each other on nice moves or good sprees or just playing a good game. It’s a lot better than GameSpy was. I am surprised that I’m two months into it and my corpse has not been skull-raped once yet.

I’m not the best player in the world (I’m ranked 8, playing Rumble Slayer almost exclusively), but I place in the top 3 in my fair share of games. I’ve had nothing but good experiences playing (except for the damn lag-monster, but he’s shifty and unescapable).

Heck, sometimes it’s even good to get ruined in a game or two. I’ve learned some pretty neat strategies by watching them used on my dumb ass a couple of times.

Sign up. Have fun with it.

Maybe we can get a SDMB clan going.

7

Well I finally got my free 2 month sub to work.
I was being an ass with my DNS settings.

Since I don’t have a router and it was a pain to try and get it set up via xbox to ibook ->airport I went down the route of a direct xbox to modem connection.

I don’t know what my ranking is and couldn’t see a waiting room. Is that when you’ve got your PC hooked up too and see it from there?

I done alright, played about 10 games in the rumble pit and only finished last once!

I’d be up for a SDMB clan as assuming I don’t get ritually humilated I’ll probably pony up for a years sub.

My usertag is ‘ArchTrout’.
I don’t have the communicator though but I believe you get that in your store bought yearly sub?