Fans are getting loud – I guess they want to be heard. A couple of days ago, Hawaiian Pig kicked off a large thread on our forum, asking how many people were still playing Halo 3: ODST? Various arms of the thread debated the replayability of the game, the weaknesses of certain choices Bungie made, or the unreasonableness of the fanbase. Lots of different opinions. (Over on NeoGAF, GhaleonEB wrote up his own thoughts about the game; they’re a fascinating read. He put some real time into thinking about WHY he felt certain ways about things… it’s interesting to see a seriously pro-Bungie Halo fan explain why a Bungie-created Halo product disappointed him. There are several followups to his post that are worth reading; hit the ‘thread’ link at the top to see it in context.) This is clearly important to a lot of people; last night, Cody Miller started up a thread he called ‘Tips for Reach’; it’s full of suggestions he’d like to see in Bungie’s next game. What’s really interesting is how fast that thread has grown, and how many different opinions have been expressed in that short time. (It’s likely that it’s WAY too late for a lot of the suggestions that have popped up there; Reach will be going gold sometime next summer, so most of the basic design decisions are probably pretty fixed at this point. The passion of the fans, though, and the strength with which they’re expressing their opinions, is remarkable.)(Louis Wu 15:34:48 UTC)

Out all afternoon, here’s a quick roundup of the new stuff on Bungie.net’s Comm Chatter:

• Crazy Fish Productions released a splatter montage. I can’t tell you about it, because YouTube seems to be down at the moment.
• Today’s Tag and Release feature spotlights images taken on the Lost Platoon Firefight map. ‘Epic’ comes to mind.
• HaloCharts’ Sticktoberfest contest is over – and results are up. The winner played 977 games over the course of October (that’s an AVERAGE of more than 30/night), and AVERAGED 6.4 sticks per game. That’s rather insane, if you ask me.

Go read it all!(Louis Wu 22:11:33 UTC)

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the release of Halo 2 – go play a round on Sanctuary to celebrate! (Avateur kicked off a thread in our forum, if you feel like sharing your views…)(Louis Wu 17:41:24 UTC)

Halo Waypoint continues to churn out new content – today a video interview with Frank O’Connor went live, explaining how he found himself in his current position as ‘King of Halo’ (I made that up). The rest of the week will see a new PSA from Red vs Blue, a collection of Screenshots, a strategy piece explaining your enemies in ODST, a Behind the Scenes video of the making of ‘The Babysitter’, and more! It’s free for all Gold and Silver LIVE members right now; there’s no better time to check it out!(Louis Wu 17:38:10 UTC)