Well, that's it folks. Cataclysm has amassed over one billion XP on the leaderboard. There's no beating him now. Time to shut this all down.

The reality of the situation is that the second round of testing was scheduled to end today regardless, but Cataclysm's accomplishment serves as an impressive (and daunting) scapegoat.

Now if you'll excuse us, we have science to do. But before we go...

Fun Fact: During the first BTest, players earned an average $144.98 of in-game currency per hour. The US Federal minimum wage? $7.25.

The numbers from BTest - that Borderlands stat-tracking experiment we ran to help us improve our games -- are in. They're quite enlightening.

For example, some of you had clearly a hard time making up your mind, as character color was changed over 96,000 times. What else? More than 137 million lootables opened, over 54 million weapons picked up, and just over 104 billion experience points earned - all between September 9 and October 31, 2011. Fascinating!

But encouraging as those snippets are, it's not enough. As scientists, we want to know more. We need to know more.

That's why we're kicking this puppy into second gear with BTest2. It's available now.

BTest2 takes everything we you loved about the original BTest and adds more science to make it even better. And just like the first BTest, all you need to participate (and thus, help improve the future) is a copy of Borderlands on Steam and an active internet connection.

This time around, we're focusing on newly created characters so that we can get a better idea of how characters advance and progress through the game. We've also updated the leaderboards to reflect that, so now they only show characters made since the start of BTest2.

Got questions? Check out the FAQ.

Otherwise, get out there, create a new character (maybe one you haven't played before?), explore the Borderlands and do your part to make the future a better place. Who knows, maybe some of you will even end up with a lab coat...

Testing has ceased. Pencils down, everyone.

You are excused while we process the results. Please use this time to perform any necessary behaviors that may have lapsed during testing, such as sleeping, bathing, and actually leaving the house.

Check back for a look at the results, once they're ready.

So that we can properly process all this wonderful information we've harvested you've provided for us, data collection and the leaderboards will be halted on October 31, 2011.

Please note this has absolutely nothing to do with us needing to free up hard drive space for more episodes of Terra Nova and its interesting blend of science, fiction and dinosaurs.

If you haven't started yet, there's still time to get in on the science action. All you need is a copy of Borderlands on Steam (full details here) and wouldn't you know it, everything Borderlands is 75% off on Steam through October 31!

In an unprecedented scientific breakthrough, Gearbox Labs has made contact with a highly-evolved race of super-beings, the abilities of which surpass anything one could consider human.

Their existence was first detected when we began receiving player data that can only be described as inhuman, such as earning 1.5 billion XP within 57 milliseconds.

While the implications are staggering, the most exciting part about this discovery is that we had a bet going in the lab and now the technician who declared "oh that could never happen" has to buy everyone to lunch. We're not going to let him off cheap. It's not like we don't know what he makes in a year, and it's not like his kid really needs another year of braces anyways.

Oh, by the way, our End User License Agreement regretfully doesn't cover super-beings due to a certain someone's lack of forward thinking, so their abnormally high stats have been removed from the leaderboards.

We haven't been able to collect any data to back this up -- apparently monitoring everything picked up by that microphone you always leave plugged in is a gross breach of ethics without express notification and approval, at least according to our lawyers -- but we're pretty confident in this theory.

Let's take a closer look at what the leaderboard champions are using to stay ahead of everyone else and how they compare to each other. Maybe we can even the odds a bit by letting everyone else in on their methods?

The chart was individually calculated and scaled for each weapon to show proficiency relative to other players, not other weapons.

Fun Fact: Combined, these five champions have picked up over 30,000 weapons in their travels!

As scientists, we (sometimes) put ourselves and (more often) our research "participants" at great risk. We often struggle with the morality of letting the natural order play out versus intervening, saving the day, and invalidating all our data. But after a while, we get tired of debating what to do and opt to go get lunch instead, so we're just going to put this out there and let you decide.

You, yes, you, are killing far too many Bandits and Skags. Nearly four million in the past week! If you keep this up, all you'll have left is Crawmerax. Is that what you want? A nigh-unstoppable killing machine roaming the countryside?

In fact, going by our data, at the current rate, Bandits and Skags will be extinct about ...fourteen minutes ago.

...Nevermind. Carry on. And good luck.

Greetings Gearbox lab coat wearers that don't have actual lab coats! We are pleased to announce that the Gearbox Labs servers are back online! We tracked the problem down to an annoying Claptrap who decided that knocking over server racks was clearly the best way to fix our problems. Thankfully we have "handled" that situation and have installed a brand new yellow and white dancing trash can in our break room. We are also now able to monitor more of your life enhancing opportunities as you venture through Pandora!

In fact, within our first 24 hours, 20,000 of you scientists brought 40,000 hours of game playing data for us to sift through. Outstanding!

Now go play more.

Good news fellow scientists! The Gearbox Labs collective has decided to spend the weekend examining the true depths of what it means to watch paint dry. We will share our results as time permits. A sad result of this is that we are unable to monitor the life enhancing opportunities provided by the Borderlands data collection initiative.

Also, we turned the servers off for the weekend to fix some stuff.