It feels like just yesterday we were battling against Bots during our first multiplayer tech preview. Now, as launch approaches, it’s time to look forward to our second - and even bigger - tech preview. This weekend (September 23-26) and next weekend (September 30 - October 3), we’ll be taking things up a notch and testing out full-blown multiplayer. Yes, you read that correctly, we’re doing back-to-back weekends of
Halo Infinite flights.
The first weekend will focus on the Arena (4v4) gameplay experience, and the second weekend is when Big Team Battle (12v12) will come online. We’ll dive into a lot of the specifics in a separate blog on Wednesday, but for now let’s touch on the high-level areas such as the goals, available content, and the schedule.
Tech Preview Goals
Our primary goal for these two tech previews will be to test our online services at a larger scale than ever before. To achieve this goal, all Halo Insiders with eligible accounts as of September 13 will be invited to participate. To help focus our population and test our servers even more, matchmaking will be limited to set periods of time each day. You can find out more about those matchmaking windows below. Jumping on during these play sessions will help us prepare our on online services ahead of launch. We will also be expanding our audience ahead of the second weekend, so you and your friends (who may have forgotten to register as Halo Insiders in time) can join us for some Big Team Battle and push the servers even further. Stay tuned for more information on that within the next week.
Our secondary goals for these two previews will be to receive feedback and find additional bugs around the content in the flights. If you spot anything that feels like it’s a bug, please be sure to submit it on the Halo Support site. The “Insider” version of the Support site will go live when the flight does, allowing all invitees to read up on known issues, submit tickets, and more. To collect feedback, we will be standing up forums posts on Waypoint that focus on key areas and sending out surveys to a portion of Halo Insiders. We will also be keeping an eye on out Twitter, r/Halo, YouTube, Twitch, and other places, but we recommend posting your thoughts here on Waypoint. To reiterate, please share your thoughts on the Waypoint forums and only use the Halo Support site to report bugs or technical issues with the game.
Game Content
During these two technical previews, we will have plenty of new experiences as well as all the content from the first technical preview. Here’s a high-level look at all of the content included the next two weekends:
- Social Arena (including objective modes and a new map on Sunday, September 26)
- Bot Arena (including objective modes)
- Big Team Battle (debuting September 30 - October 3)
- Three modes on Fragmentation
- Training Mode
- Weapon Drills
- Customization
- Battle Pass
- New Halo Waypoint app & web experiences
We’ll have all the details about what is included within each of these aspects in our tech preview blog and
livestream this Wednesday.
Schedule & Play Sessions
As mentioned above, matchmaking will only be up for a set amount of time each day in order to help us test our servers against the highest concurrency possible. While this does mean shorter time for players to go hands on, it’s critical to our primary goal of ensuring that our online services are ready for launch.
The daily matchmaking windows for both weekends will be 10am-2pm PT & 5pm-9pm PT on the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of each flight. Lists that break down what’s happening when are usually more helpful for me, so I made one in case it’s helpful for you too:
Weekend 1 (Arena)
- Thursday evening, September 23:
- Build becomes available for download Thursday night
- Training Mode and Weapon Drills are available
- Friday, September 24 @ 10am-2pm & 5pm-9pm PT: Matchmaking available
- Saturday, September 25 @ 10am-2pm & 5pm-9pm PT: Matchmaking available
- Sunday, September 26 @ 10am-2pm & 5pm-9pm PT: Matchmaking available
- Monday, September 27 @ 10am PT: Flight access closes until Weekend 2
Weekend 2 (Big Team Battle & Arena)
- Thursday evening, September 30:
- Flight access turns on
- Training Mode and Weapon Drills become available
- Friday, October 1 @ 10am-2pm & 5pm-9pm PT: Matchmaking available
- Saturday, October 2 @ 10am-2pm & 5pm-9pm PT: Matchmaking available
- Sunday, October 3 @ 10am-2pm & 5pm-9pm PT: Matchmaking available
- Sunday, October 3 @ 9pm PT: Surveys go out to a portion of Halo Insiders
- Monday, October 4 @ 10am PT: Flight access closes
- Wednesday, October 6 @ 10am PT: Halo Support site closes
When we are outside of these matchmaking windows, the Training Mode, Weapon Drills, Battle Pass, and Customization experiences will remain online and available in-game.
https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/news/inside-infinite-september-2021
