SnprTw is putting together a ceramic Master Chief sculpture for his art class – it’s not fired or glazed yet, but it’s already looking pretty amazing!(Louis Wu 20:38:00 UTC)

Major League Gaming has announced the rules/gametypes that will be used during the Halo 3 2008 Pro Circuit – you can grab them from their FileShare on Bungie.net. Thanks to GotFrag eSports for the heads-up.(Louis Wu 20:28:15 UTC)

Heh – Kotaku.au got hold of a screen from Halo 3 matchmaking that suggests that the algorithm that counts online players might have… some problems. (Remember that Xbox LIVE just passed 8 million total subscribers a few weeks ago.)(Louis Wu 19:47:03 UTC)

Hawty McBloggy found a video called ‘Halo 3 Mythbusters’ – it looks at burning Halo multiplayer questions, and does its best to answer them. (Okay, maybe they’re not actually burning. But some of them might make you curious!)(Louis Wu 12:21:43 UTC)

HaloGrid.com has kicked off a new contest – create a music video using one of three songs by the band broken Iris, win some cool schwag (mostly involving the band itself). Full details can be found at HaloGrid. (Louis Wu 12:05:38 UTC)

Yesterday was a bit light, newswise – blame Bioshock. I’ll do my best to clean up the queue this morning. Sigafoos wrote to us about The Riot 81, almost half an hour (11 mb) of community news, with discussion about their Community Awards, along with other fun stuff. Full details at Second Foundation.(Louis Wu 11:56:30 UTC)

Mr. Titan’s call for a server browser generated some pretty interesting discussion – but there are two posts, in specific, that you should read. One is from Narcogen – it gives a decent fans-eye view of why a server browser might be a bad thing in the Haloverse… and one is from Achronos, who makes it clear that Bungie has thought about this quite a lot, and the lack of a browser is NOT because they forgot – it’s because they decided it didn’t make sense. I still think the ability to advertise your partially-full custom game to people outside your friends list (and your friends-of-friends list) would be a cool feature – but I’m starting to see the other side of it, too.(Louis Wu 18:16:58 UTC)

Hawty McBloggy found a pretty slick Halo-themed case for your Xbox360 – it glows! Check it out.(Louis Wu 18:12:46 UTC)

Over at Rampancy.net, OldNick has posted a new blog entry, this one looking at what can be learned from Bungie’s bold move of splitting the Halo 2 narrative between two opposing sides, and how the community reacted to it. What, exactly, are we looking for from our video games? Interesting subject, interesting blog post. Go read!(Louis Wu 19:39:13 UTC)

ZZoMBiE13 takes a look at the Halo 3 machinima scene in the latest installment of Another Halo Comic Strip. We feel for ya, guys!(Louis Wu 19:33:47 UTC)

Last March, we reported a story about Zach Wigal, who tried to set up a Halo tournament at his high school – but got shut down at the last minute by people who misunderstood what he was trying to do. There was a followup in April, in which Zach had turned those negative feelings around and was starting a non-profit group to raise awareness and money, and another one when that group’s website went live. He’s back – with a huge tournament planned for late February. It’s not Halo-only, but there will be a 2v2 Halo 3 tourney with a $1000 grand prize, and all the money raised will go to a local branch of the Autism Society of America. You can read about the event on their site, and register for the event at MPCon, a LAN group that’s been putting on big LANs for a while. Congrats to Zach for following through with this! (If you’re a company that’s looking to sponsor worthy gaming causes, they’re looking for corporate sponsorship, so that the money they raise from players can go straight to the charity. Contact info is on the website.)(Louis Wu 19:28:35 UTC)

A couple of days ago, we mentioned a blog entry over at Rampancy.net that talked about game AI and what happens when low-level rules are overriden with scripting. Alex Champandard, of AIGameDev.com, has written a follow-up piece which looks at WHY this sort of thing happens, and how it might be avoided in the future. Interesting read! (Louis Wu 19:18:54 UTC)

Wow. Brian Curry found a bunch of Halo 3 paper giclée prints (Wikipedia can help if you don’t know what giclée is) over at Entertainment Earth – they’re gorgeous. Check out Jolly Green ($89, in stock), Prisoner ($89, in stock), Dismount ($110, preorder only), and Chief and Arbiter ($89, out of stock, but orderable). Just… wow. (Louis Wu 19:11:11 UTC)

Hawty McBloggy has posted a list of New Year’s Resolutions related to Halo gaffes she’s made in the past year – complete with film clips. Awesome. Go read, go download. Funny stuff!(Louis Wu 18:59:57 UTC)

Wow, very cool. Gilbert Arenas, the sponsor of MLG superstars Final Boss, has announced that he’s sponsoring the first online tournament that will determine seeding for the MLG 2008 Pro Circuit – he’s paying registration fees for all teams who enter. That’s right – you can enter for free, and have a shot at gaining a free slot in the MLG 2008 Pro Circuit. Now THAT’S a nice move! There’s more info about Arenas and his Halo-related activities at MLGPro.com. Thanks to GotFrag eSports for the story.(Louis Wu 18:56:51 UTC)

Yahoo Games has posted their list of the 10 Most Anticipated Games of 2008 – and Halo Wars is smack-dab in the middle of the list. Nice going! Thanks, vshields ash.(Louis Wu 17:58:09 UTC)

Major Nelson has posted a summary of the top LIVE titles of 2007 – and Halo tops two of the three lists. Halo 3 is the top Xbox 360 title of the year (not bad, given that it only had 3 months to build up the largest number of Unique Users), and Halo 2 is on the top of the Original Xbox list. Thanks, Ross Mills.(Louis Wu 17:56:10 UTC)

Over at Planet Halo, Mr. Titan is unhappy with the choices he’s got for playing Halo 3 online; he wants a server browser, so that he can pick and choose the game he wants to play, rather than be thrown into a randomly-chosen game in matchmaking, or have to work to put together a full complement of players for a custom game. I’m not sure where his claim that Bungie “promised that a public server browser would be implemented in Halo 3 to fill the gap” comes from – I’ve never heard this promise before – but he’s certainly not alone in his desires; this has come up before from players who come from other FPS communities. Go read it – and see if you agree with him.(Louis Wu 17:48:41 UTC)