Halo 3 Beta-Delay
Ever wonder how annoying gamers can get? How whiny and self-righteous and just plain stupid people can be? Check out any Halo3 forum right now and you will definately be able to find out.
So the Halo 3 beta for people who own a copy of Crackdown was supposed to be downloadable at around 5am PDT this morning. Apparently something has gone wrong and the download link in Crackdown remains greyed out.
And wow what a complete shit-storm that has turned into. Both the bungie.net Halo 3 forum and the Xbox Live Halo 3 forum has gotten filled up with people talking about how they are ‘entitled’ to a beta code, or how they skipped work or school just to play the beta, or how they spent $60 dollars to buy a game (Crackdown) just so they could play in the Halo 3 beta (which is only going to last 3 weeks). All that on top of the normal juvenile flaming.
Another fun trend, alongside all of the whining, has been the ‘amazing discovery’ that Australia has an EST timezone as well. Several people posted up links to an old post on the xbox.com website mentioning the beta going live at 10pm EST. Unfortunately the people who posted it didn’t understand what the ‘en-AU’ in the links URI meant and were too blind to notice the ‘International * Australia’ header at the very top of the page.
That isn’t to say that Bungie and Microsoft are completely without blame in this, I am admittedly left wondering why this broke now and if this is the result of the beta download being not fully tested. With, thus far, no official announcement of any sort having been made except ‘We are aware of the problem’ there is also a building sense of frustration about how long it will take to be fixed. Albiet, it is far better for them to say nothing right now then to promise a solution by a designated time and then to miss that too.
On a completely unrelated note, the free Aegis Wing game that went up on the Xbox Live Arcade today isn’t bad. Definately looks like it’d be more fun multi-player then single, but for a free side-scrolling shooter it is pretty nice.