Bungie sent out a major press release today discussing their future plans and it looks pretty exciting. "Bungie Prepares for Future Growth in 2021 with Studio Expansion, Key Talent Investments, and New Board Members" All the details can be found on their website, and the speculation and conversation can be found on our forum.
The Week of Warmind, Part 5 (Developer Warmind Insights)
The Week of Warmind continues with some details about the campaign and PvE activities in Warmind and what their design ideas were. There are some really interesting tidbits in there, including some information about who the Big Bad is going to be (quite literally)! Watch it below!
The Rise of Iron has officially been announced, and there is a lot to get excited about! New Raid, new Strike, new zone, and cyborg Fallen enemies! Watch the trailer below, or visit the official site for more details. Oh did I mention Gjallahorn is coming back?
Destiny's second expansion, House of Wolves, launches today at 10 AM Pacific/1 PM Eastern. Players will gain access to new weapons and armor, a new social space in The Reef, new missions, a new Strike, the Trials of Osiris Crucible playlist (on weekends), and The Prison of Elders end-game arena combat. See you in The Reef!
After a slight delay, Bungie has released Destiny Update 1.2.0 this morning. Here are the patch notes from Bungie.net (which also include preview notes for next week's hot fix to activate House of Wolves):
1.2.0 : The one to pre-load House of Wolves
Weapons
Fixed an issue in which Vex Mythoclast was not respawning with primary ammunition
Fixed an issue with the Hive Disruptor perk, which now appears in the Black Hammer perk set again
Fixed an issue in which the Phantom Gift and White Nail perks would become interrupted when non-precision damage occurred from other perks
Bonus damage from other perks (e.g., Explosive Rounds, Hive Disruptor) no longer interrupts the count
Three precision hits within the time window will trigger the intended refund bonus
Fixed an issue in which the Hive Disruptor perk did not work correctly with sustained damage events (auto rifles, pulse, etc.)
Oracle Disruptor perk now triggers more often
Hive Disruptor perk now triggers more often, but does less damage per event
PVP
Salvage: Moved the first Relic to more consistently appear in a centralized position on the map
Fixed an issue that caused players to wait an excessively long time to respawn
Tower
Faction reward packages will no longer produce Shards
The Speaker will now exchange Ascendant and Radiant Materials for Glimmer and Motes of Light
Xûr will now exchange Strange Coins for Motes of Light
Commendations are no longer required to purchase gear
Commendations can now be converted to receive +250 gains in Vanguard, Crucible, or Faction reputation
Note: Etheric Light will not be made available for ascending gear until the release of House of Wolves
User Interface
Vendor Interaction Panel has been updated to support Quest chains
Vendor Interaction Panel now has better animations and fewer popping issues
Number of buffs that can be displayed on the Character screen has been increased
Inventory item stacks that have reached their highest possible count will now display gold numbers along with an alert in the tooltip that maximum quantities have been acquired
Audio
Added improved feedback for players who take damage from energy weapons
Companion
Fixed an issue in which the Mercury Grimoire card was not being awarded
Retroactively awarded the Mercury Grimoire card to players who have found the "Mercury Memory Fragment" Dead Ghost
Vendor items, damage types, and perks will now be visible on Bungie.net and the Mobile App
Technical
Addressed a crash on Xbox One that was induced when too many explosions/projectiles were generated
Fixed an issue that affected the network quality user interface
Indicators will no longer display persistently bad ("red") quality after a user's connection recovers from a temporary quality issue
The quality indicators should now always correctly reflect a user's live connection quality
*Addendum
We have discovered that Legendary Engrams will drop in 1.2.0 that the Cryptarchs will not recognize
Hold on to all newly-acquired purple Engrams until May 19th to benefit from their upgraded decryption skillset
Destiny Hot Fix - 05/19/2015
1.2.0.1 : The one with House of Wolves
Along with the release of Destiny Expansion II, we are delivering some new investment and upgrade paths. The following are changes that will have an impact on every player of Destiny.
PVP
General
Added a new Daily Reward package upon completion of the first game in the Daily Featured Crucible playlist
Added Passage Coins to reward streams across all playlists, including the Daily reward package
Increased Crucible Mark drop rate across all playlists by 100%
Increased Crucible Reputation earnings across all playlists by 100%
Increased Rare Weapons and Gear drop chance for completing games across all playlists by 100%
Added Legendary Weapon drops into the Crucible reward stream across all playlists
Added Dark Below maps into all Crucible playlists for all players to enjoy (Pantheon, The Cauldron, Skyshock)
Iron Banner
Adjusted the power curve for Iron Banner playlists to accommodate the competitive range of power in House of Wolves
Across one Iron Banner event, players competing in Iron Banner with more than one character on the same account will receive a reputation boost for the lower-ranked characters to reach parity with the higher-ranked character more quickly
Six additional Iron Banner bounties have been added to the bounty rotation
Removed an errant buff from Iron Banner Control playlist
Etheric Light will now be available at Ranks 3 and 5 in Iron Banner
Tower
The Cryptarch will no longer convert newly acquired Legendary Engrams to Shards (possibilities include gear/weapons or exotics)
Daily Heroics will produce Motes of Light in lieu of Shards
Ascending: Year 1 Legendary and Exotic gear can be upgraded to the highest power levels available in Year 1
User Interface
The Control UI above the mini scoreboard has been fixed & returned to the players HUD
Technical
Added a new “Connection Recovery†System
Specific player networking problems will now be fixed instead of kicking affected players to orbit
This will be enabled first for Trials of Osiris and rolled out to other activities over time
Bungie has posted a teaser for the House of Wolves Twitch stream happening tomorrow at 11 am PDT:
There's also a shot-by-shot breakdown over at Planet Destiny with some interesting analysis. We're going to find out a lot more tomorrow, though! (Thanks, CyberKN) [Edit: Beorn doesn't like to check, but we have a local copy, as well, if you need it.]
CruelLEGACY let us know that the latest podcast of Ready Up Live spends a lot of time talking Destiny. "We cover the new expansion, the nature of Raids in the game, and Bungie's approach to storytelling."Go listen!
If we're inept in our duties at the moment, it's quite possibly due to the whole 'being sucked into The Dark Below' thing. If you're unable to take the fight to Crota's various bodyparts at the moment, there's always discussion on the forum (which is a fine place to link up with folks for a Raid if you're in need!) and Twitch streams to watch. I'll see you soon with more news! Now which direction is the Hellmouth again...
A lot of this footage has already been glimpsed if you've been keeping up with the latest trailers, but there's still some new stuff in Bungie's newest preview - not to mention plenty of bwwaaaaaaw sounds!
Bungie's Dev Team just released a list of some of the upcoming changes happening to Destiny's gameplay and loot/upgrade systems - some of which happened in last patch, some of which will be happening when the Dark Below hits next week. Go read - our forum is standing by to receive any freakouts! :)
If you didn't see the trailer/vidoc from Game Informer yesterday, you can catch it from us now, too, in our Video Library. Then go and join in on the thread analyzing all the little details shown off!
GameInformer just unleashed a pretty tasty glimpse at The Dark Below in a video with Jason Jones, Lars Bakken, M. E. Chung, Ryan Ellis, Luke Smith... okay, half of Bungie apparently. There's a lot crammed into those four minutes! Go watch the video here.
I missed this originally, but Bungie posted the cinematic trailer for Destiny's first expansion: The Dark Below (it had been discovered in the 1.0.3 patch update, but now Bungie has officially published it). Narrated by the new Tower character, Eris, the prologue sets the stage for December 9th. Can't wait!
Before he was DBO-fied, Xenos let us know that Joystiq posted a little interchange with Bungie's Jonty Barnes, Director of Production, mostly concerning the first Destiny expansion, The Dark Below. There's also a few other details about the Beta, and how Bungie will keep upgrading and growing Destiny consistently as opposed to just releasing it, a few DLC, and moving onto the next project.
We're going to change the game after launch in a frequency that we think makes sense, and that isn't going to be dependent on The Dark Below."
The man who's stealing our jobs, Xenos, dropped us a note about TotalXbox.com (a.k.a Official Xbox Magazine)'s talk with Bungie at Gamescom regarding Destiny expansions. Bungie seems to have high ambitions to keep this world living and breathing, from free upgrades to paid-for heaps of content. Go read!
PackLeader89 informed the board that GameStop has begun pre-selling an expansion pass for Destiny which covers The Dark Below (Hive-themed) and House of Wolves (Fallen-focused). I hope they post-sell it, too.
The site continues to grow, and evolve - just yesterday, we settled on a logo, and today, we launch the first of what will hopefully be a myriad of galleries (artwork, screenshots, fan creations, you name it). This time out, it's material you've seen before - we're putting up our copy of the announce assets. (You may not have seen these SIZES before; Fireteam is nearly 10,000 pixels across in its full glory.) Keep an eye on that new link in the header - we hope to add more content there shortly!
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