The second expansion to Destiny 2 has been officially unveiled as Warmind, and it's scheduled to go live with new places, new heroes, and new enemies on May 8. There's no trailer yet, but Destiny 2 community manager David "Deej" Dague said that it's on the way. He even committed to a date.
We will give trailer on April 24. We'll do it live.April 11, 2018
Bungie also dug deeper into the Destiny 2 development roadmap today, laying out its plans for season 3 and beyond. Step one will be the 1.2.0 update that's coming with the Warmind release, which will incorporate seasonal Crucible rankings, private matches, increased vault space, Exotic Weapon masterworks, and other new features.
The start of season 3 will also bring good news for PvP fans. All Crucible maps being developed for the Warmind expansion will be made available to all players, as will all of the Curse of Osiris maps. They will not be universally accessible in private matches, however: Expansion maps in private matches will only be available to players who actually own the expansions.
Following that, over the course of the vaguely-defined "summer," Bungie deliver a new seasonal event, improvements to Faction Rallies, bounties, clan chat on PC, and—if possible—Exotic Armor sandbox changes. And then comes season 4, slated to start in September, with gear collections, records (likely those achievement books from the first game), weapon slot changes, weapon randomization, and other features.
"Our goals for these [season 4] features are to give you more control over how you configure your loadouts in Destiny 2 and give you more reasons to play the game over time," Bungie said. "We also want to bring back those exciting moments when you acquire the perfect weapon. To make this happen, updates like Weapon Randomization, Weapon Slot Changes, Gear Collections, and Records will be delivered to all players."
Randomized weapon drops, a feature in Destiny that for some inexplicable reason was eliminated in the sequel, would be a big and welcome change to Destiny 2, because under the current system of fixed weapons stats, there's not a whole lot of point to grinding once your character has been properly kitted out. But the problem is obvious: September is five months away, and Warmind aside, there's really not a hell of a lot happening between now and then. Nightfall challenge cards and more storage space are nice updates, but are they enough to carry a limping game through an entire summer? And that's assuming that none of the new features suffer delays, which is always a possibility.
I'm excited for new expansion, and very much looking forward to the trailer. Beyond that, though, my optimism runs a little cooler. Weapon randomization and slot changes are still a long way off, and so no matter how good Warmind is, the big question facing Bungie is whether anyone will be left to care about season 4 when it finally rolls around.
The updated Destiny 2 development roadmap, and the new post-launch content schedule, are below.
