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March 18, 2016
After a beautiful display of games over the course of last week, CLG has managed to take home the cup for the Halo World Championship and have bagged themselves the biggest single cash prize in all of FPS eSports history. In fact, CLG's $1 million win over Team Allegiance has set them to be the first team outside of Dota 2 to win $1 million in a single event.
Even eSports titles like League of Legends and Counter Strike: Global Offensive haven't seen prize pools as large as the HWC and as you can imagine CLG are pretty chuffed about their win. In the grand finals, CLG (Or Counterlogic Gaming) went against Allegiance and CLG absolutely crushed the competition.
The first game was Capture The Flag on Coliseum, which ended in a tie with CLG's Frosty taking one flag and Allegiance's eL toWin's taking another. Because of the tie, the first game was replayed and this time CLG crushed Allegiance with a 3-0 scoreline. SnakeBite managed to capture 2 flags whilst Royal 2 captured another
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March 09, 2016
So before we get started on the news, it should be noted that recently Team eLevate dropped their Halo team, which previously consisted of Goofy, Nemasisst, Str8 Sick and MuNoZ. After dropping their roster, eLevate still seemed interested in the Halo scene and now it looks as if they have picked up the ex-Noble eSports squad.
The Noble eSports team previously included Rayne, Swift Kill, Penguin and Calm and now this squad of four will be under eLevate's name and logo. Whilst Nobile eSports failed to make it into the regional qualifiers, this roster change means that they will now be able to play in the Halo World Championship. Unfortunately Goofy, Nemasisst, Str8 Sick and MuNoZ will not be able to take part in the HWC despite managing to make their way through the qualifiers before being stripped from the eLevate organization.
We think that this turn of results has been a little weird and as a result, eLevate's offering in the HWC might not be quite as impressive as it would
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March 06, 2016
When you have a huge presence in the eSports team, spanning across multiple games, sometimes the best way to get into a huge World tournament like the upcoming Halo World Championship, is to buy out a team. This is exactly what Cloud 9 has recently done.
After reaching the final 16 in the Halo World Championship, Triggers Pound has confirmed that they have been picked up by Cloud 9. This means that in the future their name and logo will be dropped for Cloud 9's. The newly formed Cloud 9 team features the same four Triggers Pound members that made it into the Halo World Championships after beating OpTic Gaming and the Dream Team in the NA regional qualifiers.
For those unaware, the ex-Triggers Pound team consists of NA players Cloud, Hysteria, Assault and Danoxide. Cloud 9 Cloud might be a bit of a funny one to say going into the future, but either way we're happy to see that Triggers Pound is getting support from such a big organization after proving their worth at the qualifiers.
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March 03, 2016
The final 16 teams qualified for the Halo World Championship have been announced in a recent post over on the Xbox news website. The final 16 includes eight teams from North America, four teams from Europe/Africa, two teams from Australia/New Zealand, one team from Latin America and one team from Asia.
Check out the image above to see the 16 qualified teams, or alternatively take a look at the list provided below.
North America
+ Team Allegiance
+ Counter Logic Gaming
+ Evil Geniuses
+ Team Liquid
+ Noble eSports
+ Renegades
+ Triggers Pound
+ Denial eSportsEMEA (Europe, Africa, Middle East)
+ Epsilon eSports
+ FabE
+ exceL
+ Team InfusedAustralia/NZ
+ Team Immunity
+ Team Exile5Asia
+ SkyfireLatin America
+ Chosen SquadIn other news, it has been revealed that the REQ bundles in Halo 5 have managed to push
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February 22, 2016
The next free update for Halo 5 will be hitting servers later this month and like previous updates before it, it will include some new game modes for multiplayer and a range of new items that can be picked up through REQ packs.
Perhaps the biggest addition to this month's free update is the inclusion of Griffball. Griffball is one of the most popular mini games for Halo and it features two teams as they fight to pick up a ball and place it in the opposing team's goal in a small court room. The reason why Griffball is so special is because players are loaded up with gravity hammers and energy swords.
Speaking of gravity hammers, this weapon will be making a big splash in Warzone this month - available as a rare REQ, the gravity hammer is sure to have a big impact on the playing field. It's hard to say whether there will be any extra REQs for the gravity hammer but the new Hammer Storm update will include a number of extra REQs for the assault rifle and the DMR.
Some
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February 14, 2016
To celebrate the occasion, 343 Industries has added a timed playlist into the Halo 5 arena. The new game mode pitches players against each other in a 2v2 battle. The new 2v2 game mode is called Valentine's Double Date.
The new 2v2 game mode features 2v2 battles on custom maps that have been filled with hearts and other Valentine themed items. The game mode for the Valentine's Double Date mode is limited to Slayer and players will start with the Halo 2 version of the Battle Rifle.
When you first hop into Halo 5 after the latest update, you'll see a pop-up message showing off the new playlist. As you can imagine, the update is unlikely to stay up for long. With that being said, the Valentine's day playlist is still currently live at the time of writing. It's great to see that 343 Industries are active and ready to create all sorts of free content for the Halo community, even if it is something as small as this latest playlist update.
Hopefully this marks the start of
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January 06, 2016
Since the release date of Forge in December, Halo 5 players have been kept busy. All sorts of great Forge maps and custom game modes have been created since the release date of Forge but that has been one issue that many players have already come across.
Previously there was a limit on the number of files each player could upload to the Halo 5 servers. Whilst there still is a limit, it has now been increased so that players have a much larger amount of space to be creative with. Previously save files for custom game modes and Forge maps was set for just 40 slots, but players are now given 100 slots in total.
Forge mode has been an incredibly important part of the Halo franchise ever since Halo 3. A large part of the Halo community has grown around custom games and Forge maps and since Halo Reach, well-built custom Forge maps have even made it into the official matchmaking map rota. The same could happen for Halo 5, but there is still one missing feature.
A file share
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December 18, 2015
A brand new free DLC pack has been added to Halo 5: Guardians and it adds a range of new features. The DLC pack has been named "Cartographer's Gift" and it features a large number of new features and cosmetic items.
The most important addition to the new DLC for Halo 5 is Forge. Forge wasn't added at launch like it was in previous Halo titles. The wait was worth it though because Forge in Halo 5 is the most complex version we've seen of the map builder yet. Players are given a huge range of new tools in the new Forge.
On top of Forge, the Cartographer's Gift DLC has added a large range of new Spartan armor pieces, including two new armor sets, the iconic MARK IV armor set and the Raijin armor set. New emblems, new helmets and a variety of new Warzone REQ rewards have also been added into the latest DLC for December.
The December DLC is just the start of it as well. A brand new free DLC pack will also be released in January and a sneak peak at that has revealed that
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December 17, 2015
To help encourage Halo 5 players to play regularly, 343 Industries has added a new feature that rewards daily playtime in Arena and Warzone.
Starting immediately, players are now able to earn two extra REQ packs every single day so long as they follow a couple of criteria. The first REQ pack can be earned by winning an Arena match, whilst the second REQ pack will be awarded to players for their first Warzone win of the day. If you expect to play Halo 5 daily and manage to have a winning game of both Warzone and Arena, you're essentially able to collect up to 14 free REQ packs each week.
A daily login bonus isn't a new concept - in fact, we've seen countless games offer similar features. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain offers daily login bonuses to players for example, although for this reward players only have to boot up the game. Forcing players to win games in both Arena and Warzone to earn their daily rewards is great because it encourages players to play well, at
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November 26, 2015
It should come as no surprise that Halo is one of the biggest selling franchises on the Xbox. Since the release of Halo 5: Guardians on the Xbox One, a lot of people have been wondering exactly how many sales the game has managed to make.
Now that data is slowly coming in about sales around the world, fairly accurate information on Halo 5's week one sales are being announced. According to VGChartz, a website dedicated to reporting video game sales, Halo 5: Guardians managed to sell approximately 1.46 million copies in its first week.
The exact first week number, according to VGChartz is 1,457,849 copies, although this does not include digital sales, so we could be looking at over 2 million copies at least.
For an Xbox One exclusive title, 1.46 million isn't bad at all, but it is quite small in comparison to previous Halo releases. In fact, Halo 5 Guardians sold less copies than almost every other Halo release. Here's a week one sales rundown of the last eight Halo games.