This week’s Bungie update details what is going to happen with the monthly playlist update and the date that Auto Update 2 will be released – both the playlist update and AU2 should be released on the 16th of September. EDIT: a later bungie weekly update suggests that it will be delayed and will be nearer to the 1-year anniversary of Halo 3 on the 27th of September — now confirmed for the 23rd.
You can read about Auto Update 2 and what it does to Halo 3 here.

September’s matchmaking playlist update does make a few more changes than normal; as promised by Bungie a couple of weeks ago. A summary of the changes appears below:
• Rocket Race is being removed 😦 😦 😦
• Both Ranked and Social Big Team Battle are being removed
• Head to Head is being removed
• Team Doubles now requires all DLC – Heroic & Legendary packs and Cold Storage
• Default Team Slayer games will now have the Magnum as secondary weapon
• Squad Battle – a new ranked playlist will be introduced; it’s 6v6 and will be Slayer / Capture the Flag
• DLC Free For All (new) – 8v8 – Slayer, Objective and Infection!
• DLC Big Team; another new playlist – 8v8 Social Slayer and Objective (just like Social BTB)

Some of the playlists will see Bungie-forged map variants of Sandtrap (they’ll be no elephant), Epitaph (without shield doors), Snowbound (with some shield doors removed) and The Pit (with “with inaccessible spawn hives.” — That sounds annoying). The normal versions of these maps will also appear.

You can read the Bungie update containing all this information and much more here. It offers some consolation in the fact that the Rocket Race gametype will be added to the Multi Team playlist as well as the fact that there will be less objective, SWATGuns and Magnums in SWAT – and the fact that there will be Carbines on the map!

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Also, they confirmed that they’ll be no bots / campaign characters in H3 multiplayer – just to hush those rumours after the thanks video’s.