Below is an excerpt from their posting:

An Xbox LIVE technical issue wiped all Halo Wars Xbox LIVE Leaderboards earlier today. This includes all singleplayer, multiplayer and Trueskill™ leaderboards, as well as all matchmaking data. At this time it’s unknown if the data can be restored, resulting in the Halo Wars Leaderboards being reset to original Launch Day status. The Xbox LIVE team is investigating the cause, and they will provide an update to the situation as soon as possible.

So you mean to tell me that they didn’t have backups of this data? What if this had happened with Halo 3?

Those looking to continue their Halo Wars escapades will be happy to hear that there is a Historic Battle DLC pack on its way

Featured in the Historic Battle pack are 4 new maps for players to wage war on. There will be two 1v1 maps included in the pack entitled Barrend and Blood River, one 2v2 map entitled Memorial Basin, and one 3v3 map called Glacial Ravine.

Additionally, the pack will come bundled with 4 new achievements totaling 100 Gamer Points. Below are said achievements:

• Tour Coming Through: Hot drop 50 squads to your Covenant Leader in a single game on Memorial Basin (30 points)
• Never Leave a Man Behind: Finish a game with 5000 net resources contributed to your teammates on Barrens (15 points)
• Drain Cleaner: Kill 20 enemy squads with a continuous Covenant Leader Power on Memorial Basin (30 points)
• Killjoy: Disrupt 5 active Leader Powers in a single game on Blood River (25 points)

For screenshots of the rest of the maps, hit up the read link below.

Read (Kotaku)

The third Title Update for Halo Wars is due to be released in the next few weeks, and Bungie has released patch notes for the update. Some of the main issues fixed include balance changes and general bug fixes. The full list follows:

Balance Changes:

• UNSC Warthogs Gauss cannon damage against tanks and other heavily armored vehicles reduced by 25%
• UNSC Warthogs build time increased by 3 seconds to 25 seconds
• Anders research time bonus decreased to 25% from 50%. Her Research cost bonus remains unchanged at 50%
• Covenant and UNSC turrets have 5% increased health and 5% increased damage
• UNSC Elephants have a 20% more health
• Grenade damage type now has 25% additonal damage against Warthogs and other medium armor ground vehicles.
• Recycle basic cost return fixed to be 50% for constructed buildings.
• Locked down bases when unlocked will now release units inside very quickly, which means that when under attack a player can now build a fighting force while locked down and then release them much more quickly than before
• UNSC Leader powers disabled at the start of Reinforcement Matches
• Players no longer receive points for team killing.
• Self Destructing/Recycling buildings now gives points to opponents

Bug Fixes:

• Players should now find it much easier to play System Link games
• Fixed Covenant Shield Generator Exploit
• Invisible Units should now have invisible health bars
• Players will no longer be able to scout opposing bases by using the area-select tool

Read (Official Halo Wars Community Site)

It seems that Amazon is following Walmart’s example and holding a sale except this time it’s a bit different, Amazon is discounting games you actually care about.

This is a apparantly a father’s day sale and includes Xbox 360 games and Wii and PS3 accessories. While you won’t be getting these games for $20 a piece they do have Call of Duty 4 for $29.99, CoD: WaW for $41.97 and Halo Wars for $41.99.

While some buyers are sure to purchase one or two of these games for Dad, I think I’ll be picking a couple 2-3 up for myself.

Read (Amazon)

Yeah, the Halo Wars Strategic Options DLC pack wasn’t exactly a steal at 800 Microsoft Points (or $10) but what’s worse is the pack itself is only 2MB. This led gamers to believe that perhaps the content was already included on the original game disc which caused all sorts of an uproar.

Well, Dave Pottinger, lead game designer for Halo Wars, decided to sooth the anger and step in having been quoted the following on the official Halo Wars message boards:

None of the DLC was on the disc when it shipped. The game modes are a small download because they are rules. There is some new content, but it’s obviously a different type of content compared to a map. Also, the recent patch added a bunch of miss support/engine groundwork for both DLCs.

Yeah yeah, nice excuse Pottinger, but what about the price?

It seems the Strategic Options DLC pack for Halo Wars has officially hit Xbox Live for all to have. What’s included in the pack, you say? Well, thanks to Destructoid we have the entire contents listed below.

You’ll get 3 new game modes:

Keepaway: Teams need to capture a free-roaming Sentinel three times to win. Halo War’s version of Capture the Flag.

Tug of War: Victory is determined by the amount of units, buildings and resources that are left at the end of the round.

Reinforcement Mode: Units are provided in waves.

And 4 new achievements totalling 100 Gamerpoints:

One and Done: Score the winning point in a game of Keepaway against Legendary A.I.’s

Pull Hard, Pull Deep: Win and never trail in a Tug of War game

Freak on a Streak: Gain at least 15 population from a single wave in a Reinforcement game

Living Loving Bug: Obtain a Scarab during a Reinforcement game

And best of all it’s only 800 Microsoft Points. Wait, 800 Microsoft Points? That’s $10 dollars, right? And you don’t even get 1 new map? Is this some kind of joke?

Perhaps Microsoft is testing us to see who the real Halo fans are. Then again, probably not.

Microsoft is seeking to keep people on their toes and interested in the console RTS Halo Wars. They’ve just announced a new Xbox 360 exclusive downloadable content pack called “Strategic Options”. It adds three new multiplayer modes to the mix. The first is ‘Keepaway Mode’ which is inspire by classic capture the flag gameplay. Players seek to capture free-roaming Forerunner sentinels, the first to capture three wins. ‘Tug of War Mode’ is a little more straightforward with the decimation of your opponent’s army being the ultimate goal but in the end your remaining units, resources and buildings will all be considered in whether or not you’ve succeeded.

Finally ‘Reinforcement Mode’ provides you with active battle units in successive waves, forcing you to alter your tactics to fit the newest wave of units that have come your way. Thus far there’s no pricing or release date, but it says it’ll be out in the ‘next few weeks’ and for just a few extra gameplay modes and a handful of achievements I certainly hope they won’t try to charge more than $5.

It’s been the “next-gen” of gaming systems for some time now–we’ve had the Xbox 360 out on the market for better than three years now, and the Wii and Playstation 3 have been out for a good number of years too.  The Wii is still hard to find in some places, even–though word on Sony’s bounty of cash for available PS3s has not been seen to surface.  So where, I’m forced to wonder, are the truly next-gen games?  Games like Halo Wars and Bioshock and, once again, Fallout 3.

They’re sure not coming from Sega, I’ll tell you that much.

I got my hands on a copy of Golden Axe: Beast Rider today, and it really makes me sad that the great next-gen revolution has crapped out to THIS.

You take control of early video game hottie Tyris Flare, who’s just come in from fighting a handful of Death Adder’s minions to arrive just in time for the Axirian Priestesses’ ritual summoning of the Dragon Titan.  For reasons that aren’t terribly clear, Death Adder (the main bad guy of the whole Golden Axe series) is pants-wettingly terrified of the Dragon Titan, thus he sends out a legion of troops to capture it and bring it much, much closer to him.  This Dragon Titan that he’s so scared of is apparently sufficiently powerful to terrify him, but either not powerful enough or not smart enough to break a length of iron chain attached to him by a harpoon.  Apparently he’s ALSO forgot that he can breathe, at will, this stuff that’s called FIRE, which in sufficient quantities will turn iron chain into a viscous liquid.  I guess the Dragon Titan missed that session of Physics 101 that described the melting point of iron.

But if he’d have done that, then we couldn’t send Amazon hottie Tyrus Flare off into a rampage of blood across several lands in an attempt to finally jam something pointy and metallic into Death Adder once and for all until the next installment.

To this end, Tyrus will have various magic spells and control of several different beasts (hence the title) and will have to kill a whole bunch of enemies that look vaguely similar.  Apparently Death Adder has mastered cloning technology.

I’m making a lot of fun of Golden Axe: Beast Rider, and for good reason–it’s got it coming, frankly.  This is the kind of game we were playing back on our Super Nintendos, for crying out loud.  Having just played the original three Golden Axe installments thanks to one of Sega’s massive collection games, I’ve discovered that Golden Axe: Beast Rider is just a gigantic pile of more of the same, only prettied up and rendered in ever-popular 3-D instead of put on a flat screen. It’s dull, it’s repetitive, and frankly, if it weren’t for the pretty graphics it would be a total waste of time that I’d expect to have been released for PS2 or earlier.

Yes, it’s an action game–and as an action game it’s fair; there’s more than enough things that need killing, but after a while, your sword arm gets tired.  Not to mention your button thumb.  Golden Axe: Beast Rider is a long, drawn-out and monotonous experience that leaves me cold.

The game was released less than a month ago but the amount of time gamers have put into it is quite impressive. Over one hundred and eighteen years of gameplay have occurred over 2.6 million multiplayer matches. An average of about 200,000 gamers have taken part in online skirmishes every day.

The success of Halo Wars proves that RTS games are a viable option for consoles and probably means we’ll be seeing more of them in the future, especially since the ending of the Legendary difficulty mode hints at the possibility of a sequel, which seems all but inevitable now.

I may have found something really interesting this time around–a Halo game that isn’t just more motion sickness-inducing run-and-gun action.  Brand new out of the pack is the Xbox 360’s newest colossal cash grab, Halo Wars.

On the off chance that you’ve been in a coma for the last ten years and need a quick crash course, here’s the skinny.  There was this MONSTER franchise that came out of Microsoft.  It was like their Doom.  Or maybe their Final Fantasy, if Final Fantasy were a first person shooter.  It was called Halo, and there were three of them, all with that same first person shooter engine.  Now, apparently, Microsoft is beginning to take its cues from Ben Franklin, convinced that shooter games are like fish AND houseguests–after three installments, they start to stink.  Thus, they had to go in a different direction, and they looked to the real-time strategy game for their inspiration.

Thus was Halo Wars born.  And the result was actually better than much of its predecessors, even though I’m probably just a bit biased against first person shooters.

Basically, playing in story mode, you’ll be sent along with a contingent of UNSC troops on board the UNSC Spirit of Fire, to investigate Covenant activity on planet Harvest.  This is all, parenthetically, set about twenty years before Halo.  Anyway, after the UNSC, as led by Sergeant Forge, hits dirtside on Harvest, they find the Covenant is actively engaged in excavating a “holy relic” which is actually a Forerunner facility that’s really a map to another star system.  The star system the Forerunners were trying to point out is Arcadia, home to a small human colony.  The Spirit of Fire immediately heads for Arcadia, only to find the Covenant is ahead of them and ravaging the planet, which is itself the key to the single most destructive force unearthed in the galaxy.  I won’t spoiler on just what it is because it is actually pretty mindblowing.

Indeed, Halo Wars is mindblowing on a whole lot of levels.  Graphically it’s an absolute triumph–this thing looks so sharp and clear that calling it “realistic” is almost an insult. The musical score, meanwhile, sounds as symphonic as it ever did.  And normally about this point I’d start complaining about the gameplay, or how I had to sit through a raftload of cut scenes before I even got to the game–well no sir, not this time.  This time I got action within a few minutes and I got it pretty well at that.  Even the tutorial wasn’t tough to sit through, and that’s something of an achievement in and of itself.  I can’t even complain about the gameplay, because there was just something so invigorating about having a quarter-dozen Warthogs and a collection of various Marine troops under your command to just send in a thoroughly crushing fashion onto any Covenant position you can find.

It’s fun to keep an eye on your resources, and engineer fresh bases as you need them, complete with automated turret defenses.  Every step feels like a victory in a game like this, as you go marching into battle in Covenant-occupied territory, both taking and holding territory.  It’s only your wits that keep you alive in a game like this, not your trigger finger, and that’s an interesting departure from the ordinary, one that I’m all too happy to embrace.

Halo Wars should prove to be plenty of fun for anyone else who takes a run at it.

The game just officially hit shelves today but Joystiq has already got a video of its final credits up.

As you can see from the above video, Ensemble Studios managed to squeeze in a final farewell message thanking all of the fans for their support over the 12 years in the final credits for Halo Wars.

It’s too bad Ensemble Studios had to close right when their flagship game was released. Oh well, let’s just hope Robot Entertainment and Bonfire Studios will continue the once great developers legacy.

If you didn’t already know, the late Ensemble Studios’ Halo Wars has hit North American shelves everywhere.

Don’t know what Halo Wars is? Have you been living under a rock? Only kidding, Halo Wars is the first official real time strategy (think Command & Conquer) title based in Bungie’s hugely popular Halo universe. Better yet, if you got the Limited Edition version, you now have access to Halo 3’s Mythic Map Pack.

Oh yeah, it’s an Xbox 360 exclusive, but did I really have to say that?

Well it was only a matter of time, Halo Wars has been unofficially leaked and spread across the legion of BitTorrent websites.

If you really feel the need to break just about every copyright law there is you could head over to your favorite BitTorrent tracker and snag the ~7GB file which was apparently released by a group called ‘GLoBAL’.

Of course, we don’t recommend or endorse this practice. This is too bad for the late Ensemble Studios, hopefully it won’t hinder sales and Halo Wars recieves the acclaim it deserves.

Read (XboxInsider)

Having already unveiled itself last week, Robot Entertainment today announced that the independent studio is currently working on additional content for Ensemble Studio’s final project – Halo Wars. The new company, founded by Ensemble co-founder Tony Goodman, will also provide multiplayer and community support for Age of Empires and Halo Wars.

Other than Halo Wars, they are currently working on an original property of which no details were provided.

The studio currently employs 45 staffers, all of whom jumped ship from Ensemble, with Goodman serving as CEO.

I don’t know about you guys, but ever since the original Halo hit the shelves I’ve been a huge fan so you can see why I’d get excited over the following media.

Bungie has recently released new screenshots taken from it’s forthcoming Mythic Map Pack. 

Halo 3’s Mythic Map Pack, which includes 3 all new levels, is set to be bundled with Halo Wars with a downloadable version hitting Xbox Live some time after.

Head over to EuroGamer to check out the rest of the screenshots.

I know, I know, I’m a day late, sue me. Anyways, for those of you who haven’t been paying attention, this is for you.

Recently released over Xbox Live is the demo for the late Ensemble Studio’s Halo Wars. Again for those who don’t know, Halo Wars is an all new RTS developed exclusively for the console, set in the Halo universe.

Did you know that Halo was originally designed as an RTS long before the idea of an FPS ever materialized? True story.

The bundle retails for $350 and comes with a 60 gigabyte Xbox 360 Pro unit, a one-month subscription to Xbox Live and copies of both Halo 3 and Halo Wars. Of course debate will rage about whether or not this bundle really constitutes the ultimate in Halo games, with probably a lot of people thinking that a true ‘Best Of’ bundle would include a disc of the original, or a voucher for downloading the original from the Xbox Originals.

The game isn’t even out yet and developer Ensemble Studios is already talking about unleasing DLC after the games release.

This news comes to us from an interview done with the game’s lead producer, Jason Pace. Snippets from the interview include “We are committed to supporting the franchise,” but “there’re no definite plans yet.” However, whether he ment to hint at DLC or not he continued on to say “additional downloadable content is something we’re looking in to.”

Well Ensemble, or whatever your new studio’s name is, let’s just make sure you made a gamer-friendly console RTS. We’ll talk about DLC after that.

The Xbox 360-exclusive strategy game is set for release in North America on March 3. A playable demo will be made available through Xbox Live Marketplace on February 5.

The demo will offer two tutorials – beginner and advanced – and the game’s first two campaign missions. A multiplayer map for offline battles will also be included, letting players take control of either UNSC or Covenant forces.

The release date for the demo of Ensemble Studio’s Halo Wars was not the only thing released at the Microsoft CES keynote. What you see above is all new gameplay footage from the convention.

Featured in the video is basic gameplay, but what it really showcases on is the seemingly easy control scheme. Many thought that when a Halo RTS for the console was announced, it was doomed to fail.

After watching this video, many of the haters may be intrigued to at least try out the demo because it really doesn’t look that painful. I guess we’ll have to wait until it’s March 3rd release date before we pass judgement.