[Bond]

Here's some information on cheating if anyone is interested:

"There's a lot of talk on Bungie's own forums, and in other places about various glitching and cheats being used online in Halo 2, and how these glitches and cheats are being used more and more by people to win.

One glitch Bungie has somewhat addressed, and that is the being able to reach through walls and celings to grab things, such as flags and/or weapons. It has only been somewhat addressed, though, as instead of fixing the problems with a new patch, Bungie has removed the maps with the most abuses of this glitch from the matchmaking playlist. Great, even less maps and game types to play in ranked games...

Another way people have learned how to cheat is by using newer cable or DSL modems with the standby feature on them. Apparently, by turning the modem to standby, cheating players can run around the maps, unhindered. This is most often used in CTF maps, and the cheating player then runs and grabs the flag, and returns to close by where he needs to capture it, and then turns the modem back to active. At this time, their Xbox then sends new info to the server, which then updates the rest of the players by stating the flag has been taken and then almost immediately captured. Players will know this has happened when their flag just disappears, even if they are watching it (or camping it, if you want to call it that), and then in a matter of seconds they hear that the flag was captured, in far less time than it would take to run the flag back to the capture point.

This particular glitch seems to work the most if the person perfoming it somehow figures out that they are the one hosting the game. If the host tries to perform this glitch, then other errors can occur, as well, such as multiple plasma swords or rocket launchers spawning on the map at the same time. However, one does not need to be the host in order to perform the glitch.

From the sound of it, this glitch uses a bug in the netcode for Halo 2, which forces the other Xboxes in the match to update to the input given from the cheater's Xbox; instead of forcing the cheater's Xbox to catch up with the rest of the game, the rest of the game is forced to catch up with the cheater's Xbox.

It is sometimes easy to catch this cheat, though, as the lag on the game should become higher while the cheater(s) is (are) cheating.

One glitch, which is hard to do, but possible, in matches involves the plasma sword. As those of us who have played Halo 2 know, when the reticule turns red while you are holding the sword, you may perform a rushing one hit kill attack. Apparently, it is possible to use another weapon, with a longer range, get that weapon's reticule to turn red, and the quickly switch to the plasma sword and hit the attack button, and fly accorss the map and kill them. It is hard to do in game situations, but not impossible. As of now, Bungie has stated (second to last letter) that they do not see this glitch as a problem, yet.

It also seems that certain levels have glitches in them that allow bomb carriers to hide with the bomb, especially when their team is losing, and forcing the "sudden death" part of the game to go on for a long time, in hopes that the opposing team will simply quit in frustration. One such game that has been brought up went on for 1 hour 27 minutes.

Another cheat, which has just started to pop up involves being able to grab the flag in CTF matches from a great distance away. Looking at pics on Bungie.net, which records information from the game servers while playing matched games, which follow the route the flag takes, it is clear that the flag is somehow being picked up from far away. It is currently not well known how this cheat works, but it is different than the modem standby cheat, as the game screens show that the flag simply started moving from a position other than where it sits in the base."