Sometimes, you’ve got to take the good with the bad. So first, watch KP take on random jerks you don’t know who are doing what you can’t right now: playing Halo 3. Nobody else showed up for the Humpday this week, so you don’t get specific jerks, just random ones.

After you’ve downed that nasty medicine, you get the candy. Although you can’t play Halo 3 right now, there’s a chance you might be doing so sometime soon if you’re one of the lucky ones in the Halo 3 Multiplayer Public Beta. If you are, or merely hope you will be, check out the Halo 3 Beta FAQ.

We’re crankin’ out the episodes on the new schedule: around Thursday every week is the plan. I figured I’d give you guys plenty of time to get stuff in for next week’s show.

I almost respect your mom!

Got a decent Halo joke? Yo momma Halo jokes are my favorite. Send ’em in! We’re also looking for funny gamertags you run across.

Join us and we shall rule the galaxy

Did you know you can get your voice heard on the show? Just call 206-888-HALO and leave a Halo-related message. If it’s good, we’ll play it back.

This one time…

This is a great segment: Tales from the foxhole! Send in your Halo stories or even stories from other games now. If it’s good and we have time we’ll read it off!

Deadline is Thursday night the 22nd

at 5:30pm EST. To send something in, just click submit news and tips on the right side and write it up with your gamertag included. The earlier you get it in, the more likely it will be on the show.

Download | Shownotes

This episode we talk all about girls in gaming: their reputation and stereotypes, how they deal with idiots on Xbox Live, the crazy messages they get, how they handle all-girl gaming clans and organizations, and JVB being banned from the “house of hotness.” This show was a lot of fun and has some sweet outtakes at the end. Thanks to our guest hosts: PMS Kitty from Gamerchix, Talli from LOA and Cavegirls, and TheDonWan who is a cohost at the Loading Reality podcast and a game tester at Bungie. Ladies, take it away!

For most of the past few years the bulk of my attention has been on Halo’s campaign play: story, characters, and settings. Partly it’s my choice, since it is where my interest in Halo lies, but partly due to circumstances. For most of the past seven years, the Internet connections I had access to were unsuitable for online play.

Recent events, however, have conspired to bring my attention back to online play. The first is the upcoming Halo 3 multiplayer public beta. True to form, it appears that Bungie will have multiplayer ready to show the world before the campaign is finished; so between now and when the beta test ends, most Halo 3 discussion will probably focus on multiplayer aspects.

The second thing is that I finally have a reasonably priced Internet connection that makes it possible to participate in Halo 2 matches. While I still have more latency and less skill than a below-average Halo 2 player, for me, participation is the thing. I’ve already missed out on far too much.

The last thing was that during a discussion of an entirely different subject, my attention was drawn to Halo2sucks.com.

This is not normally a site I would pay much attention to. There’s something incongruous about reading a site that labels Bungie “sellouts” and proudly (if largely incoherently) claims that Halo 1 is better than Halo 2 and this inevitably leads to the conclusion that Halo 2 sucks.

However, then I began to feel that simply dismissing all the points the site tries to make simply because of the presentation was prejudicial; and despite the fear of directing attention somewhere it’s not warranted, I felt a need to address some of the points the site raised. Then I discovered what really bothered those who have contributed to that site. More on that near the end.

Click “read more” from the front page for the entire text.

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It is confirmed by Microsoft Game Studios in an interview with Game Informer. The purpose of the HALO 3 beta will be to put stress on their systems. “You want to make sure that you know where your bottlenecks are and you attack those bottlenecks prior to going live with the retail version”. “It will scale over time” said Phil Spenscer of MGS. Microsoft also suggests that “hundreds of thousands of people” will play the beta.

Recall that Bungie did the same thing with HALO 2, except the public didn’t test. Rooms full of XBOXen running in loops did the stress testing.

Since this is a scaled test, I assume that the order of public testing will be:

Alpha testers
Bungie friends and family
Microsoft Connect testers
HALO Rule of 3 testers
Initial Crackdowner purchases
Possibly downloaders via a public download on the XBLM

I’m not so sure we’ll be filing detailed bug reports. I would guess that if we get to file anything, it will be network related (laggy game, issues with XBOX Live, etc.). I doubt we’ll be reporting exploits found in the maps, geometry, weapons, or gameplay. With a few 100,000 people testing, I would think that it would be impossible to respond to all the feedback that the community would report. I’m guessing that exploits in the maps and gameplay features are to be found by the official play testers, not the mass public.

Except from the interview about the HALO 3 beta:

“It’s actually going to grow over time. It is a production milestone for us to make sure the Live systems are in place and that they work. There’s certain people playing on the Alpha right now and online and testing out systems and we want to be ready when we go bigger with the beta. It will scale over time and we need thousands of people from all around the world playing to make sure that all the systems are in place. In the end hundreds of thousands of people playing to make sure we’re ready to go live.”