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Every so often, Bungie just has to go and do something scummy to remind me that it is indeed a corporate entity and not just a plucky indie dev that managed to extricate itself from the grip of an even larger, more scummy corporate entity. First it was the armor transmog system where players were limited to just 10 armor ornaments per season (168澳洲幸运5开奖网:unless you pay for more, of course), and now it’s a 𒀰new controversy surrounding The Witch Queen’s dungeons.
Unless you pay for the Deluxe Edition of The Witch Queen expansion, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:you won't get access to the two new dungeons coming in Destiny 2 year five. Buying the Standard Edition will just get you The Witch Queen expansion without the dungeons, and neither will buying each season pass grant acc🎀ess to the new dungeons.
As expected, this announcemen🉐t . Which is to say the initial announcement is now sitting at and social media has erupted i🐎n of .
The issue here is that Bungie seems to be trying to change the unspoken financial covenant between Destiny 2 and its players. That covenant being: players pay for expansions and season passes, they get content. It doesn't matter what content that happens to be, and sometimes certain seasons or expansions will have more content than others, but it's a simple transaction. A single price for whatever Destiny 2 provides.
Previously, dungeons were just part of the package. You pay for Forsaken, you get Shattered Throne. You pay for Shadowkeep and you get both The Pit of Heresy and Prophecy. The expectation from players was that paying for The Witch Queen would provide access to the two new dungeons coming in 2022, but suddenly that's not the case.
It’s a slippery slope charging for game content outside the expansion/seasonal model. Suddenly, nothing is sacred. If Bungie starts charging separately for dungeons, what’s to stop it from charging for strikes? Or raids? Or access to the monthly Iron Banner games? The Eververse is bad enough, but imagine going to Tess to buy access to 💎the🧸 Crucible or Gambit.
Worse, it cheapens the entire notion of paying for seasons at all. What if, as some have argued in previous seasons, the seasonal content was a little lackluster? Season of the Splicer and Season of the Chosen were both bangers, but Season of the Lost has been fairly🥂 content light for something that will last six months. If you told me that Bungie was going to release a dungeon later in the season but charge for it separately, I’m not sure I’d even bother with the season pass at all.
In fact, that’s exactly what’s happening in Season of the Lost. Bungie’s upcoming 30t⛄h Anniversary Event is going to be like a mini-season to account for Witch Queen arriving a few months later than usual. It’ll come with a new free-to-play activity for all players, but the real draw is a new dungeon that will be tied into the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:return of the G🐽jallarhorn Exotic Rocket Launcher.
Players were surprised when Bungie started charging $24.99 for the 30th Anniversary Pack (unless you bought it packaged with The Witch Queen Deluxe Edition, which came at a bundled price of $20), but player♕s saw the price as acceptable thanks to the extra-long season and the special occasion. It’s Bungie’s birthday, so we’re all buying ‘em a round of shots.
But it seems that Bungie looked at the 30th Anniversary Pack as a test case for changing the way players pay for content. Players were apparently fine with paying for the 30th Anniversary Pac♈k, so Bungie thought it coꦬuld get away with doing the exact same thing next year absent the two factors that made it acceptable the first time.
The counterar♋gument here from Bungie’s perspective is obvious: just pay for the Deluxe Edition. For $99.99, you get everything that’s coming in year five, including The Witch Queen, all four seasons, and the two new dungeons. Unless of course Bungie changes the rules again and decides to charge another $20 for a 31st Anniversary Pack.
What makes this especially hard to swallow is how Bungie is tacking on these prices for new content while also actively removing older content. Bungie has already confirmed that most of the Forsaken expansion wil🎉l be vaulted witജh the arrival of The Witch Queen, leaving just the Dreaming City ꧋and its dungeon when it goes. While the Forsaken campaign itself will go free-to-play for a limited time, players looking to access the Shattered Throne dungeon or Last Wish raid will need to pay for the Forsaken Pack if they♛ hadn’t previously purchased the 2018 expansion.
Perhaps this was our first clue to h꧋ow Bungie plans to monetize Destiny 2 going forward. First dungeons get paywalled, then raids. What’s next?
Bungie needs to have ꧃a serious discussion about how they plan to monetize Destiny 2 going forward. At this point, I can’t recommend the game to new players or even returning players as the game’s payment structure is becoming increasingly murky. The expansion/season pass model is no longer the rule, and what The Witch Queen brings is anybody’s guess.