Demonstrating they are not sleeping on the job, Bungie has issued another update for Halo 2. The main changes are to the Playlists - Team Slayer and and Rumble Training are added to the choice of games. A number of other little things have been adjusted like removing the Banshee from the Head to Head matches on Ascension, removing the glitched "Sudden Death" from some Assault games that could cause the match to last forever and we even added a CTF variant featuring Wraiths and turrets on Coagulation...

From the Bungie Dev Team
We've been gathering a lot of feedback since Halo 2 was released and today we're happy to announce that we've released some significant updates to the Xbox Live Matchmaking Playlists. Read on for the full scoop!

We've had a great first few weeks playing Halo 2 on Xbox Live but over the course of our day to day play we found a few things that needed to be tweaked and improved upon. Our own experiences, along with tons of feedback from you, resulted in todays large Playlist Update.

Here's a quick overview of what has changed:

1. Two brand new playlists - "TEAM SLAYER" - You wanted it, now you've got it. All team slayer, all the time. This is a new ranked playlist so everyone will be able to battle their way to the top of the leaderboards all over again.

"RUMBLE TRAINING" - This is a new unranked playlist that shares the Rumble Pit playlists. The best part about this new playlist is that you can enter into it with guests and even as a party of up to 8 players.


2. Freshening Existing Playlists - The various gametypes and maps for the existing gametypes have been freshened up and the various weights have been adjusted to create more variety and take advantage of more of what's available. Foundation has also been added where applicable.

3. Big Team Battle - You can now enter this playlist with a party of up to 8 players. However, please note that entering into playlists witih large parties may result in longer wait times as the game tries to find another party of 8. We'll be monitoring this.

4. Major Clan Match - This playlist now supports parties as small as 5 and the team imbalance has been changed to 1. So, no more 6 vs. 8 matches.

5. Game Times - The match time limit for nearly every gametype has been extended to allow for more carnage.

6. Miscellaneous Tweaks - A number of other little things have been adjusted like removing the Banshee from the Head to Head matches on Ascension, removing the glitched "Sudden Death" from some Assault games that could cause the match to last forever and we even added a CTF variant featuring Wraiths and turrets on Coagulation...