Well this is one accessory I’m really looking forward to, a totally wireless headset.

This thing should be available by the holidays this year. Too bad it can’t be sooner, I’ve really been looking forward to a totally wireless Live experience.

The unit has internal rechargeable batts, and comes with an AC adapter for recharging. Volume and mute are on the side.

No adapter on the controller is needed, it communicates directly to your 360 wirelessly. I like the concept, but I’m not sure I want the controls on my ear. I have grown accustomed to having mute and volume at my fingertips on the controller, which doesn’t hinder gameplay. If I have to release the controller to change volume or mute, this might be a bit inconvenient.

Still, this is a good move in the right direction.

I’m getting a bit tired with GameFly’s slower than molasses shipping and return times. I think I’m going to try out the new GotaPlay Game Rentals service. They have 6 shipping centers, including one very close to me.

Has anyone used this service before?

I’ll let you know how it works out for me.

*** UPDATE ***
Well, it has been a week, and no games have shipped. I just canceled this service, and I don’t recommend using them.

I think I’ll give gamerang a try.

While playing Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, I hear a lot of questions about rank. My bud Jimmy888 suggested I make a post about it, and I also got a question in email over the weekend, so here goes.

To rank up in GRAW, win. That’s it.

Most of us play team games in GRAW, so that’s what my focus is.

When playing a team game, it’s all about the win. It doesn’t matter if you got 47 kills and 2 deaths, 44,700 points for seige or domination, or if you won by 1 point. A win is a win is a win.

The win and who is on each team are the only factors in rank scoring for team games.

Here it is straight from the horse’s mouth:

“Q: Does the TrueSkill ranking system reward individual players in a team game?

A: The only information the TrueSkill ranking system will process is

1. Which team won.
2. Who were the members of the participating teams.

The TrueSkill ranking system takes neither the underlying exact scores (flag captures, kills, time etc.) for each team into account nor which particular team member performed how well. As a consequence, the only way players can influence their skill updates is by promoting the probability that their team wins. Hence, “ball &*%@#”, “hill &*%^”, “flag fruits”, “territory twits”, and “bomb &^$$#@” will hurt their individual TrueSkill ranks unless what they are doing helps their team. Obviously, it is difficult to update individual players’ skills from team results only. To understand the difficulty and the solution consider the following analogy: Suppose you have four objects (players), each having an unknown weight (skill). Suppose further that you have a balance scale (game) to measure weight (skill) but are always only allowed to put two objects on each side of the balance. If you always combine the same pair of objects, the only information you can get is which pair of objects is heavier. But if you recombine the players into different pairs you can find out about their individual skills. As a consequence, the TrueSkill ranking system will be able to find out about individual players’ skills from team outcomes given that players not only play in one and the same team all the time but in varying team combinations.”

Microsoft TrueSkill Ranking FAQ

So, in a team game, does it matter if you’re a 3 and you kill a 12? Nope, unless you win. And then it doesn’t matter who you killed or who killed you, it just matters who won. However, a team full of low ranks beating a team full of high ranks will gain much more rank than vice versa.

Ick has updated his GRAW weapons spreadsheet, it now has completed accuracy numbers for Rifleman and Grenadier weapons.

Note, these stats are for using the proper class for each weapon:

“I finished testing the rifleman weapons on single shot, burst and full auto.

I started testing the grenadier weapons AS A GRENADIER. The accuracies of the weapons are much worse. For example,

* At 11 meters a M468SD in a rifleman’s hands has a decent spread on full auto.
* At 11 meters a M468SD/M320 (w/ grenade launcher) in the hands of a grenadier has about double the spread on full auto. Of course you get a grenade launcher with that..but that is another issue.
* But here is the thing, that same M468SD/M320 used by a RIFLEMAN has an absolutely HORRID spread on full auto.”

Check out the full Weapons PDF by Ick

Xbox Live Gold is free this week. Got a silver account? Or you just want to play with a new gamer tag? Here’s your chance, all week.

I’m going to fly with a new handle this week, see if I can find my buds and give them a level 1 GRAW rank surprise.