You may be thinking, “didn’t you already released a Pup and Friends video this month?”. We did, yes, but that was the special edition created specifically for PAX to be shown during the grifball discussion panel. If you haven’t already seen it yet, perhaps you should.

Anywho, I’ll have to admit I didn’t receive quite as many really excellent clips this month as I usually do, but what I did receive was clips from some new faces again. As I’ve mentioned before, getting new faces into the highlights makes me a happy camper. This month there are quite a few. Thanks a lot to everyone who takes the time to submit each month and also for your patience. This season I’ll be handling grifball league highlights as well, so the Pup and Friends video may take a week or so to be released after each double XP weekend.

Music for this month’s highlight reel was graciously provided to us by Second Impulse, another of the great bands out of Baltimore our own HighlndHellrazr shmoozes with.

GrifballHub was a part of that panel. Our own HighlndHellrazr and I CITI were there to represent us as speakers on behalf of not only the Hub but the grifball league as well. Goosechecka was also there proving panel support in the audience.

So there are some things we can tell and some we can’t unfortunately. For now, let’s start with the things I can tell you.

Special Edition of Pup and Friends
During the GrifballHub segment of the panel, HighlndHellrazr showed off an edition of Pup and Friends (which you can see below) created exclusively for PAX on a large projection screen in high definition, which hopefully went a long way in convincing those in attendance that grifball is an exciting and fun game to play. The video included prominent members of the grifball community as well as members of the GrifballHub staff.

Ranked Grifball Now Has a Set Date
It wasn’t that long ago that Shishka let the cat out of the bag about ranked grifball on Bungie.net. This was originally meant to be something that would be kept quiet until PAX. I’m guessing Shishka got tired of listening to all the bickering. Regardless what wasn’t released by Shishka was exactly when our beloved grifball playlist would be ranked. I can now tell you that it will be the first week of December.

I know you’re probably thinking, “that sucks, we have to wait three more months.” While it is a bit of bummer that it’s not until December, I think it makes sense. December will of course be the second anniversary of the grifball Winter league. It’s hard to believe grifball is already almost two years old.

Grifball Has an Official Fan Site
I am proud to announce that after several discussions with BurnieBurns and those at Rooster Teeth, it has been decided that GrifballHub will become the official fan site of Grifball.com. I won’t go into all the exact details of it yet, but I can say that I’m very happy about this announcement. It’s something we as a staff here at the Hub have worked very hard to achieve.

What We Can’t Say Just Yet
I can tell that there’s at least one more very big nugget which unfortunately couldn’t be announced just yet. The grifball administration worked very hard to make it happen in time for the panel but unfortunately the timing was just too soon for it. Do I know what it is? Yes I do. Obviously I can’t tell you but what I can say is that it’s quite fantastic and will be VERY good for the league. I promise you that.

I know many are sick and tired of hearing about all the secret projects that Moocow and others have in the works. Many believe that there’s no reason he needs to keep things secret. I can tell you that it’s not something he’s doing just to irritate you. Things have to be kept quiet because Moocow has been specifically asked not to make anything public until the folks he’s working with are ready to go live. Rest assured that as soon as he’s able to, I know he absolutely can’t wait to tell everyone.

Hang in the folks, more is coming. Perhaps sooner rather later.

By the way, in case you’re wondering, yes there will be a regular edition of Pup and Friends this month as well. Don’t forget to save and send me your highlights!

What that of course means is that this month’s highlights were encoded in glorious 720p HD. I could have done them at 1080 but that seemed a bit overkill to me.

A couple notes about the reel. First of all I did my best to include as many people as possible. This month many of the clips I received were much longer, so while some made the cut, some unfortunately had to be left out. It’s not because I don’t like you or didn’t think your highlight was that good, it’s simply because I only have so much room.

Second, some of you deleted your clips before I even had a chance to download them. If you submit clips to me, please try to leave them in your fileshare for at least 2 weeks after the double XP weekend has ended. Considering the amount of clips I receive, that gives me plenty of time to get through them all.

Finally, the music used this month was created by a composer named Grant Mohrman, which I purchased as part of a CD/DVD compilation from Position Music. The name of Grant’s original track is Essentially Dead.

Using the looped files provided on the DVD, I remixed, rearranged and created some additional melodies and percussion.

Thanks everyone who submitted highlights this month. Look for something special next month!

Next month I may have to set a limit on the number of clips each person can submit. Several people decided to fill out nearly their entire fileshare with highlights and send each one to me. I’d prefer that folks pick a highlight or two from their weekend that is their most favorite and send those to me instead. It makes things a little easier on my end ;)

Regardless of the time it took going through submissions this time around, I’d just like to thank everyone for continuing to send me highlights each month. It’s hugely appreciated.

The music in this month’s video comes from Of Broken, a great band local to HighlndHellrazr. Thanks to his efforts, Of Broken have granted us exclusive rights to use their songs in our videos here on the Hub.

This month features three, yes three female players in the highlights, which is cool since there’s seriously an overload of testosterone in grifball. Here’s the thing though. I played with all three of them this weekend and I’m pretty sure two of them had their gender confused. One of them featured a bio which read “Super Happy Fan Girl” yet she sounded more like your typical laid-back college guy. The other had a tendancy to giggle a lot in a deep and rather sexy Scottish accent. As for the third, well she was legit and quite the Hawty. Ahh well, females or not, enjoy this month’s highlights!

Anywho, thanks to everyone who submitted clips this month. Unfortunately there were a few which I received late that ended up on the cutting room floor. I did capture them, however, and it’s certainly a very good chance that they will be used in next month’s edition of Pup and Friends.

Enough, chit chat. Let’s go watch some highlights, shall we?

Edit: I’ve updated the video with a newer color filtered version. Decided to try something a little different.

I’m happy to say after collecting clips during and after the grifball weekend and spending a couple days on putting it together, the latest edition of Pup and Friends is ready for your consumption!

Considering the brief outage we had here on the hub the last time we made the front page of Bungie, showcasing Nokyard’s latest map, I will have to find a safe alternative to featuring the highlights there. The amount of traffic received from Bungie when hitting the front page is amazing, if not a little scary. Fear not though, where there’s a will, there’s a way. We’ll find our way up on Bungie once again and give grifball another moment in the spotlight.

By the way, the music used in the clip is by Coheed and Cambria. The name of the song is Devil in Jersey City.

That’s right, I’ll be the first admit I suck with a battle rifle. Give me a hammer and sword though and I’m right at home. Dominating generals in grifball is probably the equivalent of how it feels for them to rape my face in the MLG playlist.

Perhaps the best part about double XP is the fun we get to have doing silly things we may not normally do in league games against players who are helpless to defend against our antics. Is it mean? Probably. Is it fun? Oh yes. This weekend I decided to save some clips of my shenanigans and collect a few clips from friends as well to put them together into a little montage called “Pup and Friends”.

In case you’re curious, the music is by Lacuna Coil. The name of the song is “To the Edge”.