Prize Processing Has Begun

Attention GoW3 Brotherhood Challenge winners: Payment processing has begun! US winners will start receiving checks after the Thanksgiving holiday, and participants from other countries will start receiving them in the weeks following. Please be patient, we have almost everyone's contact info. Congratulations and thank you to all who participated in this great event.

The Bitter End

After thirty days, we have finally arrived at the end of the Gears of War 3 Achievement Challenge. First place goes to Like Taking Candy From A Baby while second place goes to both The Unvanquished and Brothers til the End or until you need 830. We will have information tomorrow regarding how to contact us to claim your share of the prize pool. For now, let's take a moment and reflect on just how much Gears of War 3 all of you have played in the last month. Over 2,000 gamers unlocked over 200,ooo gamerscore in just 30 days. That is a lot of points in a short time. I want to thank each and everyone of you for taking part and helping to make this event a success. Stay tuned for future 360voice challenges, including our annual Holiday Mega Challenge.

World War Gears

We'll up the stakes with under two days to go and instead of talking fellow Xbox 360 community sites and how they're doing (which has now become "Not as well as the 360voice home team"), let's talk sovereign nations. Hollands Glorie, a team comprised solely of Dutch gamers, is far and away the most successful national team. 23 spots behind the Dutch, you can find the Coalition of Ordered South Africans in 27th place. That's not bad for a team that is sporting only 35 members. In addition, there is a large European population spread out over a number of Brotherhoods, meaning that in the top 5 Brotherhoods, we may just have more Euros placing high then we do Americans (or Canadians). Go through the roster of Brotherhoods and a few small New Zealand and Aussie Brotherhoods can be found alongside a Puerto Rican Brotherhood. With no hyperbole needed, the Gears of War 3 Achievement Challenge was a true global event.

A Battle for Site Supremacy

For the curious, I have been mostly sidelined by a battle with the flu this past week. I should have gone and received that flu shot. We have our top two..errr....top three teams locked into place, which means the final stretch of this challenge is no longer about money, but about honor. Oh, and bragging rights. Among the specific community-site teams, it is the AchievementHunter leading the way by 5 points over the 360voice populated Pics or It Didn't Happen. As usual with competitive events, it's the TrueAchievement team coming in behind 360voice. CheapAss Gamer's B team is proving to be tougher then their A team, as the original CheapAss Gamer team is even down behind the second TrueAchievement team and the second 360voice team (Sera's Salvation). The teams from Co-Optimus and Seasoned Gamers are, like some Hollywood starlets stuck in their mid-20's. All told, I expect the 360voice home team to take home the bacon and at least beat out the TrueAchievement teams. That's assuming we don't see a 2011 Red Sox level collapse out of Pics or It Didn't Happen. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go watch my 2004 ALDS DVDs and forget this past year ever happened.

Photo Finish

So both The Unvanquished and Brothers til the End or until you need 830 managed to secure the maximum possible score on the same day last week. Fshguy and myself have concluded that yes, it was an exact tie for 2nd place. We are unsure as to what will happen with the prizes and have conferred with those responsible for the payout. Ultimately the decision will be made within the next few days and everyone will be informed as to the results. Amazingly, with this crazy finish, I am happy to receive quite so many messages about the fun participants had gaming with friends and meeting new people. Such messages are appreciated by everyone that put a lot of time and effort into putting this together. While we've had some bumps along the way, it seems that overall it was a positive experience for many of you. I guess 6 hour long sessions of Horde mode will do that. We will be tracking scores for the next week, so those of you competing with friends should keep at it, and you could also help a certain 360voice staff member get through the campaign on Insane.

Microsoft Data Feed Issues

The last few days have been plagued by incorrect data coming through Microsoft's data feed. This has resulted in incorrect gamerscores and achievement counts for a significant portion of our userbase. Microsoft is working to figure out the root cause of the problem but in the mean time, there is nothing any of the administration or support staff at 360voice can do to correct the issue. We are at the mercy of the data feed. As a result, if your score is incorrect there is nothing that can be done at this time to correct it. We have been manually tracking the top teams to ensure theya re accurate, but from spot 4 on down to the bottom, we are not manually tracking anyone's points. We apologize for the inconvenience, but the issue goes past 360voice and we all must wait on Microsoft for a resolution.

Seriously 3.0 will claim many a turbo controller

Like Taking Candy From A Baby has claimed the number one spot and only had to leave a reasonably sized trail of blood and broken bodies in their wake. Brothers to the End!!! is well on its way to grabbing the second spot, but that's not why we are here today. No, today it's all about Seriously 3.0 and the fact that some people, notable Candian gamer extraordinaire Buckswana, already have 15+ Onyx medals. That is crazy. I understand that by using a turbo controller it's easy to grind out some of the medals, but even then, this is really looking like the longest achievement grind in history. Just remember, stats will be tracked all the way through to October 20th, so it really is a great time to get together and form some boosting parties for those difficult achievements to get on your own, like the 4-player co-op playthrough. See, it's tough to get on your own since it requires 4 players. I'm here all week, don't forget to tip the waitress!