Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

Leave a comment here if you have a specific campaign you would like to play.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

After last week's let down with Xbox Live being broken, I'm expecting tons of folks logging on this week with fervid anticipation. As usual, first come, first served. Will try my best to accommodate everyone.

Clan night canceled

Xbox Live is still down, clan night is canceled for this week. Sorry for the inconvenience. Take this opportunity to play some campaign on your own and get intimate with the maps.

Clan night postponed to 9pm PT

Xbox Live is currently still down. Will try to start L4D again at 9pm PT. Thanks for your patience.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

Clan night as usual tonight, first come, first served. As a reminder, Xbox Live is supposed to be undergoing maintenance today and I don't know when it will be back up. If it's down at 8pm PT, I'll try again once more at 9pm PT.

Xbox Live Downtime

On Tuesday, June 16th from 7:01AM UTC (12:01 AM PST) for up to 24 hours, Xbox Live will be offline for maintenance. As a result, Xbox LIVE and the ‘My Xbox’ section of Xbox.com will be unavailable, and the Xbox forums will be in read only mode (you won’t be able to post.) This service maintenance is to prepare for some of the recently announced features that will be available later this year.

This could potentially interfere with clan night, but we won't know until then. For now, keep planning on clan night next Tuesday.

First Come, First Served

Just a gentle reminder that clan night operates on a first come, first served basis. Both the Xbox Live party and the L4D game have a party size limit of 8, so the first 8 players logged in get to play. This also means that if we are full, I can not add you into the party to discuss why you are late and what to do about it. And if we are in the middle of a campaign, I also will not stop the game to answer your messages or chat requests. Sending me a chat request every 5 minutes will not get me to respond to it either. As players drop, I will add players waiting in the order that they got in the queue. If there is more than 1 player waiting, I may pause the game to connect them in a Survivor lobby on their own, but don't count on it.

To date, there have never been 8 players all on right at 8pm. So if you want to play, it is in your best interest to show up on time.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

Wishing a very happy birthday to MEAN MR MONKEY tonight. Hopefully he gets some delicious brains to go with his Kindle and birthday cake. Word.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

Who will win tonight? The Zombies? Or the food?

Left 4 Dead 2 : November 17, 2009

L4D2 has been announced with a slated released date of November 17. It comes with new melee options like the chainsaw, frying pan, axe, baseball bat, and additional blunt-force objects. Valve has also detailed the new AI Director 2.0, which will not only affect how many of the undead you'll be tackling at any given time, but will also dictate weather effects, world objects, and pathways provided to the players.

Facebook and Twitter Coming to XBL

Submitted by OmniscientDeath:

Facebook and Twitter will be coming to the Xbox Live service. Microsoft's press event included short demonstrations of what are effectively Facebook and Twitter clients for the gaming console, aesthetically adapted to the Xbox Live interface. Facebook Connect standard--which was rolled out first to Web developers, and then to iPhone developers--is coming to the Xbox this fall. This means that players will be able to log in with their Facebook accounts and broadcast their gaming activities on their social-network profiles.

H3 ODST: September 22, 2009

Just announced at E3 - Halo 3: ODST will be released to the public on September 22, 2009. Mark your calendars now! Additionally, buying H3 ODST will invite you into the just announced Halo Reach, which sounds like the next big title in the Halo franchise.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

Braaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnns.

Plants vs Zombies

In somewhat of a departure from our usual programming, I wanted to point out a cool PC game that's out now. A friend of mine works at PopCap as a developer and hooked me up as a Beta tester for the latest game he's been working on. It's a fairly straightforward idea where you buy plants to kill zombies (of course, right?) but the game is ridiculously deep. The single player campaign is probably worth 40 hours of gameplay, but then there's a ton more game modes to keep the fun going. It's surprisingly addicting, and easily my favorite activity during boring conference calls at work. Totally pwns Minesweeper. You can buy it at GameStop or download the free trial directly.

Good Times

Thanks to everyone who logged in for clan night tonight. Was an awesome reminder of just how fun Left 4 Dead can be. There's a lot of play left in the game with the new Survival Mode and the two new Multi-Player maps that are still new to most everyone. Please keep me honest in balancing teams, as it can become unbalanced pretty quickly. If you're feeling picked on, speak up and I'll try my best to equalize things.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

The first clan night blog post with e-mail push enabled. Nobody should have a technological reason not to show up.

Halo Wars Title Update

The Halo Wars title update should be out in the wild in the next day or two.   Here is what's coming:

General

• Flaming Warthog and Honor Guard Wraith skins now available in multiplayer to players who have those skulls.
• The option to show Unit Hit Point bars above units is now available.

Balance

• The number of points to reach all ranks has been reduced. General now requires 2.4 million, down from 3.2 million, and other ranks have been reduced accordingly.
• The max number of points you can get in a single match has been capped.
• The Prophet of Regret’s land speed is now reduced to match other leaders.
• Vampire Tech Upgrades now increase damage done by 15% in addition to their other effects.
• Anders Cryo Bomb Upgrades now cost 50% more supplies.
• Anders Hawk Upgrade now costs 50% more supplies.

Bug Fixes

• Multiplayer Matchmaking and Connection improvements have been put in. Players should find that their 2v2 and 3v3 teams no longer split up.
• 'Ready for the Sequel' Achievement should now be rewarded properly.
• Units on Exile and Crevice should find it easier to traverse the map.

Clan night tonight. 9pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

The new maps and Survival mode are super duper fun. Get your butts on-line! OmniscientDeath will be hosting games this week, look for his party on-line. If he's not in your friends list, you can either add him manually, or find him in my friends list.

Xbox Live Activity

With last week's XBL activity update, Halo Wars has now dropped out of the top 10 list. This is the final nail in the coffin for Halo Wars, officially removing it from clan night consideration. OmniscientDeath, BeerMonkeee and I are still playing it pretty regularly, but I definitely could not tell anybody to go out and spend $60 on this game when you could just borrow it from us later. Left 4 Dead continues to be strong in the #7 spot and will continue to our primary clan game for the near future. Survival Mode has been a lot of fun on the weeks with only a few players, and Versus mode should be tons of fun on the new maps. Halo 3 and Halo 2 continue to reign at #1 on top of the overall and orignal Xbox lists. If folks are interested in trying either one for a clan night or two, I am happy to consider it, just leave a comment here.

Braaaaaiiiinnnsssss

There's not going to be clan night on Tuesday due to a Cinqo de Mayo poker conflict locally. But I'll probably be on XBL tonight starting around 8pm PT if folks would like to play some zombies. Leave a comment below if you're interested.