After 4 damn months, MCC is finally in good shape in terms of multiplayer. I rarely encounter lags, and I can find matches quickly, even for Halo 4, despite it being one of the unpopular playlists. Factor in that I live in Georgia, a small country next to Russia, so location doesn't seem to be a huge issue.

That said, there are still occasional hiccups where the game reverts to long gaps between matches, but it's relatively rare now. Also, due to the fact that MCC probably has a small population, it's highly likely that we won't see ranking for a while, which can lead to frustrating matches since players are sort of unfairly matched. This needs to be fixed, because the more unskilled players get a shot at the game, the more they'll be discouraged and frustrated by the fact that pros will walk all over them, which will unfortunately lead to people quitting more.

343i needs to do something because MCC completely dies out. The population needs to increase so that the ranking can be integrated for more fair matches.

So far, what are you're impressions on the latest patch?

They're packing a copy of the game in with new Xboxes, at least in NA, so the player population ought to get a nice bump from that.

I was actually going to ask how the game was doing since the latest patch. Most of the impressions I've heard so far have been positive, for once, so that's great. I'll have to renew my Gold since it's almost out and get some games going with friends.

Yeah, though they should really make it free for everyone, not just the guys who played MCC up until december 19th, since the multiplayer has been broken for 4 months.

I somehow don't believe you. Not you specifically, just, this game has been such a mess that I'll have to wait and see if more people say this. Glad to hear at least one person is able to play it now, though.

yup got in BTB H2A matches zero lag and matched up quick. (I use to have terrible lag in H2A specifically). Quick Team Slayer matching too.

Im curious how much of the MCC hateathon was spurred on by the bandwagoners that haven't even played it. Still good news that there's improvements. Still think it was the rush to push this out for the holidays and not necessarily 343 that's to blame here.

Thanks for the heads-up, duder; that's good to hear. It's about damn time. It's appalling that the multiplayer was broken for so long, but I'll give it another chance. I hope others do the same and it becomes some of what it was supposed to be, but I fear this b.s. may have run off nearly everyone except people like me who absolutely love Halo, to where the only people playing it will be pretty beastly at it and make the game basically impossible for casual players to enjoy. Here's hoping the patch holds and the community manages to show up and find some balance.

I think this whole MCC situation is one of the most ridiculous things I've heard this whole generation. People were so busy trashing AC: Unity and only a sparse article or two on how patches for the MCC are on the way but man... MCC was royally messed up for a long ass time.

@dudeglove: from what i personally saw (though admittedly it was the myopia of this site) it was pretty vocal, lumped in with the likes of ac unity and driveclub, and made it seem the thing was entirely on fire. I can understand it having issues but it just felt like the hate was conflated to a ridiculous extreme. Currently my 'bone is on loan, but my time with it i played through most of CE's campaing and a decent chunk of multi with little issue, couple disconnects. This was around release date. Wasn't playing like nightly multi and was only doing non-group matchmaking. It may be more that i got kinda sick of the everything's broken and horrible rhetoric making the rounds late 2014; im not trying to shoot down legit complaints.

Hope everyone who had issues can enjoy it now regardless.

Can't blame you for being skeptical man. I didn't either, not until I tried it out for myself.

It's about damn time.

I still have problems with menus freezing and games crashing or sending me back the menu screen after attempting to load the map.

Yeah, it's pretty bad. From a value point of view, the MCC has never been a bad deal (even without MP) given all its content, especially after all the apology freebies. Perhaps that's part of the reason why it maybe didn't get that much hate. Also, gaming sites were probably reticent to acknowledge its issues after giving it stellar reviews (as most did before it was clear how broken the MP was). None of which makes the lengthy MP issues acceptable. I love my Xbox One, but that shit is(was?) pretty indefensible. I wonder where the console would be perception-wise right now if the MCC had been what it should have been from the start. Microsoft screwing up their flagship franchise deservedly didn't do them any PR favors (sadly, awful PR is a common theme with the Xbox One), and it's not like they can come out now and publicize how the MP is "now not broken!" because that just draws attention to the fact that it's been broken this long. So, I'm glad to hear something good about it for once. I'm away from my house this week, but will report back next week with my personal experience. After all this time, it had better be a good experience.

Which was crazier, the BF4 debacle OR the MCC shit?

Personally its the MCC, that's your flagship IP, don't shit it out and ruin it for the fans. The BF4 at least has the excuse if being on 5 platforms at the time...both sucked for months on end.

Feels like the damage has been done. I might give it another spin in the future, but all the previous frustration trying to get an online game going makes me hesitant.

Not much. It was well-and-truly busted beyond reason. The vocal response was predominantly from older fans looking to return to the older games' multiplayer with friends. Which was mostly impossible until only very recently.

Unfortunately it's a little too late for me. I still have my xbox, and I know some friends who consistently do custom matches, but I wanted Halo 2 more than anything, and it's been so long that now I just sort of don't care. Shame on me for thinking this was a good reason to grab an Xbone, I barely use it.

Glad to hear it's fixed I guess.

I played the hell out of MCC for several months, despite the occasional long wait. I eventually reverted back to Battlefield 4 because it works super well now.

Good to know that if I go back to Halo, I'll be having a great time. Once I was in a group, MCC was a dream come true.

I'm happy to report that the MCC multiplayer finally does, in fact, work. My first match wasn't ideal, though. I just wanted to play Halo:CE, so I hopped right into a Battle Creek CTF match. I was paired with two guys playing on one console who promptly quit after they got killed a few times to leave me 1 on 3 CTF. Fantastic. That of course didn't go all that well. Then I had a few decent matches on Damnation, except for one where lag straight-up booted a few guys, two more quit rather than dealing with the lag, and the one guy left just kind of camped the same back corner picking me off with the sniper rifle (in fairness, he was damn good with it).

My last match on Chill Out was the best, though it didn't start that way. I was paired again with the same two guys that bailed on me in the Battle Creek CTF. Guess what they did. Yep, they got killed several times and bailed again to leave me all by my lonesome. I was pissed, but Chill Out is a map where one guy can hold their own if they use the portals and know what they're doing. The opposing team had a pair of newbies, and they couldn't keep up with where I was. I just started wrecking them, to the point of whacking them in the back while they were busy throwing grenades at where they thought I was. Normally I take it a bit easy on guys if I know they're new because I want everyone to have a good time, but this was 1 on 3 and I was taking out a little frustration from my dipshit teammates bailing on me again.

Anyway, I basically made those two guys rage quit (again, not normally my goal, but I was out for blood), and the third guy was trying to camp the rocket launcher. So I just started sniping him in the head. Again and again. Finally he abandoned that strategy and then started trying to go for cloak and overshield. So I gave him a taste of his own medicine and started raining rockets down on him. So then he started trying to go for the rocket launcher again and I kept killing him before he could get to it. It was glorious. Towards the end of the match after I'd gotten about ten straight kills on him, he finally got a kill on me and then humped my carcass. I laughed out loud, and it took me back to the early 00s.

I wish they'd up the "only Halo: CE" playlist to 4 v 4 instead of 3 v 3 to lessen the chances of being left completely by yourself. (I actually reported those two guys, which I typically never do, but they dicked me over twice, so fuck them.) It's worth noting that the game has other playlists for bigger matches, but they span multiple Halo games, and I don't really feel like bouncing around from Halo 2 to Halo: CE. I might try to do custom matches going forward. The Xbox One controller feels weird on Halo: CE, though. Controllers have come a long way since 2001, and I'm still getting used to the hyper-responsiveness on a game that really didn't used to play that way. I may have to actually lower the sensitivity a bit, which is the opposite of what I usually want to do. Overall, though, I'm pleased the MCC multiplayer finally works and I can get my nostagia fix. It's still fun this many years later.

@notnert427: You're post kind of reaffirms my fears for MCC. Sure, I can get a lot of matches, but due to the small population and the skill gap, more and more people are quitting. Like the fact that you were owning unskilled players shows what kind of effect it has on MCC. More and more people will eventually quit since we all know how frustrating it is to get slaughtered by someone who's a lot tougher and generally more well-versed in the Halo games.

I wish 343i would publicly announce that they've basically fixed the game so that more people would come back, and maybe then we'd finally get ranking and ensure that old vets don't walk all over everyone else. Problem is, announcing it would basically draw to much fucking attention to the fact that MCC was a catastrophe. Don't get me wrong, Halo 5 is my most anticipated game of the year, but 343i messed up big time on this one. Hopefully, the new maps and ODST will bring enough players back to give the game that one final boost.

I'm not proud of doing that to those two newbies; they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and bore the brunt of my anger towards shitty teammates. That's not typically my style, and going forward, I won't do that in an effort not to needlessly discourage new players. And for what it's worth, I'm not that good at Halo (though I was once). The guy I mentioned on Damnation with the sniper rifle was giving me the business earlier, and it didn't bother me much. Still, we'd clearly both played the game before, and that's way different than jumping in and not really standing a chance. I have no interest in actively contributing to the MCC multiplayer having no middle ground, but sadly, it seems that the lengthy broken-ness has already made that kind of happen. I think some of the folks who only had some interest in it lost that interest long ago, leaving mostly the people who loved Halo enough to wait this long and people just trying it for the first time, which isn't ideal.

That being said, the quitting thing appears more pronounced these days in general. Not to get all "good ol' days" here, but I just don't recall everyone bailing the moment things didn't go well back in the 00s. I like the CoD games, but that entire series having zero penalty for quitting mid-match (aside from your "team win%" stat no one cares about) has exacerbated this issue, IMO. I mean, we were actually winning at the time in both of the Halo games when those same two assholes bailed on me; it's just that they personally weren't doing great (though not terribly), so they fucking quit. That's bullshit, and it's why I'd really like to see the player counts upped a bit to at least 4v4 so players don't get stranded.

Ultimately, the combination of the lengthy busted MP, small team sizes, and skill gap seriously damaged the MCC's community, both presently and going forward. I'm still holding out some hope that some newbies will stick with it through the learning curve. Now that they're giving it away with new X1s, the potential is there. I personally will enjoy the game no matter what because I can generally hang, but it will be a shame if the multiplayer gets to a point where it's basically competition-level and turns off people who could have loved it the way I did (and do). I'm going to make a real effort to play to the opponent's difficulty, and I hope other vets do the same to help give the community some balance.

343 can still do some things to help the MCC as well. As mentioned, they can't exactly shout "now NOT broken!" from the treetops, but giving it away with new X1s is a good move that quietly kind of does that. Increasing the match player counts would help as well. If the player base can support a "big team battles" playlist, it can support 4v4 instead of 3v3. I mean, I did run into repeat players once, but that was in the middle of the day on a Tuesday because I was legitimately sick yesterday and took the day off. I imagine there are eight people in most regions at most times, and in theory, having 1/4 fewer games that are better games seems like a smarter idea to build up the community anyway.

(As an aside, if you have an X1, have never played Halo: CE multiplayer, and find that you keep getting slaughtered by vets, I'll volunteer myself as an experienced player who will play to your ability. I know my tales from earlier suggest otherwise, but I really don't care about kill ratios or any of that crap these days. I'd rather a game be competitive and fun for everyone than to just win big myself, and I've got a real soft spot for Halo: CE and would like others to appreciate it. We can custom game it and make it fun, and I'll teach you some nifty little tricks newbies might not be aware of like grenading the rocket launcher to yourself on levels (Hang 'em High is an especially cool one), dropping on the overshield on Damnation, crouching to reduce fall damage, etc. Gamertag is the same as my username here, so just send me a message and we'll schedule a time if interested.)

@notnert427: I agree 100% on the whole quitting thing. It's a damn shame that most people would rather bail rather than keep persisting in order to learn and get a handle on the game. I have nothing against CODs style of gameplay, but because of the small skill gap and the lack of an incentive to actually win a match, more people care about empty points rather than earned rewards. Rank doesn't matter in Call of Duty, but in Halo, not including Reach and Halo 4, it means that you've been actually doing something to warrant such a rank.

This is why I liked the Halo 5 BETA so much. Sure it needs tweaks and changes, but essentially it made the game all the more competitive, despite the new additions. Your team actually mattered, so you had to do your best to pull of a win. If you lost, it was simply due to the fact that the enemy team was just more skilled. I can't recall the last time I was so actively involved and absorbed in a multiplayer match. Hope Halo 5 keeps the ranking system.

As for how to improve MCC, I agree that giving the game away with a new Xbox does help, but they need to go a bit beyond that, you know? I think the ODST should be made available to everyone, for starters, since the game wasn't really functional until march. Nothing brings people back like free stuff.