On January 1, 2001 at 1201 a.m. PT, the Diablo II Standard and Hardcore Ladders will be reset signifying the start of the new season. All characters created before January 1, 2001 will no longer appear on the Ladder. If you wish to be on the Diablo II Ladder after this date you will have to create a new character following the reset. The Diablo II Ladder reset will not otherwise affect any existing characters and no characters will be deleted. The Battle.net site will list the top 10 Ladder players on each ladder for each Realm. The new Ladder season does not have a final ending date however it is probable that the next Ladder reset will occur when the Diablo II Expansion is released. [Thanks: ant]
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Halo Hq has created 3 new backgrounds, named HaloBasic, HaloMesh and HaloSides. HaloBasic is exactly that, it consists of a simple pic and title. HaloMesh has 16 pics spread across the page with the Halo logo centered, and HaloSides has 6 pics and the Halo logo centered with a cyborg sniper and Covenant warrior at either side. [Download: Halo HQ]
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qmass.net has just released a sound pack available for Quake2 which replaces the effects for the male model with comical ones. Some are original works of the QMass.net crew, and others sampled from movies. Either way, they're hilarious, and spice up DM quite a bit! [Source: qmass]
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Croatian game development team Croteam and game publisher On Deck Interactive spread some holiday cheer this year with the release of Serious Sam "Santa Stuff" for gaming buffs. A variety of holiday downloads are available, including an MP3 with jingle bell music combined with sounds from Serious Sam including explosions, kamikazes and bulls (download); a desktop picture of the game's bomb logo wearing a Santa hat (download); and Santa Sam as an extra model to play in single and coop modes.
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This is actually Hunt for the Red Baron but that title had to be redrawn due to that the name "Red Baron" was copyrighted. So instead of getting into a big lawsuit Small Rockets (former Fiendish Games) has released it under a new name Master of the Skies The Red Ace.

A propeller. Two machine guns. Squadrons of enemy fighters. Jolly good luck, Captain! 1917, the Western Front - high above the trenches, courageous fliers are locked in a duel to the death. Jonathan Small (founder of Small Rockets) says that this version features not only changed name but also a couple of bug fixes and tweaks. [Download: DemoNews]
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