I’ve spent enough time with Destiny 2 over the years to know just how weird it feels to log into a game that’s still technically there and realize so much of what you remember about it isn’t anymore. For years, that has been one of the strangest things about Bungie’s live-service game. Destiny 2 has changed so much since 2017 that anyone jumping in today can’t simply start at the beginning and work their way through everything the rest of us experienced. Entire campaigns, destinations, raids, and pieces of the game’s history were removed along the way, and even though Bungie had good reasons for doing it at the time, that never made losing them feel any better.
Now, Bungie is finally trying to fix that by bringing vaulted content back to Destiny 2. Interestingly, Blizzard is dealing with a very similar problem with World of Warcraft: Forever, but it’s coming at it from almost the complete opposite direction. Rather than letting an old version of Azeroth disappear as WoW continues moving forward, Forever is taking that older world and giving it somewhere else to go. In other words, both games are trying to figure out how a live-service game can keep changing without eventually erasing too much of what made players fall in love with it in the first place.
Destiny 2 Is Trying to Give Players Back What It Already Took Away
I’m not going to pretend Bungie’s original reasoning behind the Destiny Content Vault made no sense. Back in 2020, Destiny 2 was getting enormous, and Bungie said the size and complexity of the game were making it increasingly difficult to maintain. Every new piece of content had to coexist with years of older content, which meant more testing, more opportunities for bugs, and a game that was only going to keep growing as long as Bungie continued supporting it. Something had to give, and instead of moving everything over to a Destiny 3, Bungie decided to start cycling older content out.
Guess the games from the emojis.
Guess the games from the emojis.
Easy (120s)Medium (90s)Hard (60s)
The problem is that “older content” wasn’t just a few activities people had stopped playing. The Red War campaign disappeared, along with Curse of Osiris and Warmind. Destinations like Io, Titan, Mercury, and Mars went with them, as did raids, missions, cinematics, and plenty of other things that helped define different points in Destiny 2‘s life. If you were there when all of that content was current, you still have those memories. If you weren’t, though, there has been no way to go back and experience huge chunks of the journey that got Destiny 2 where it is now.
Back in 2020, Destiny 2 was getting enormous, and Bungie said the size and complexity of the game were making it increasingly difficult to maintain.
I’ve always thought that’s one of the saddest parts of what happened to the game. I can tell someone about the Red War, Leviathan, or the first time my friends and I spent hours trying to beat Calus, but I can’t just tell them to go play those things and see why they mattered. For a live-service game that has always been so heavily built around shared experiences, that’s a pretty significant piece of its history to lose.
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Image via Bungie -
Image via Bungie -
Image by GameRant
Thankfully, Bungie now seems to agree. Recently, the studio acknowledged that removing these experiences had a lasting impact on player trust and enjoyment, and confirmed that it has begun working to restore vaulted Destiny 2 campaigns, destinations, and raids. Bungie also says that returning content will be available to all Destiny 2 players, though it hasn’t yet laid out exactly what will return first or how long the process will take.
I’ll admit that I didn’t expect Bungie to reverse course on this quite so directly, especially after Destiny 2 received what had previously been described as its final planned live-service content update earlier this year. But if Bungie really wants Destiny 2 to stick around as something players can revisit rather than just something they remember, restoring its missing history makes a lot of sense. The game doesn’t need another season or another loot grind nearly as much as it needs to become whole again.
WoW Forever Is Making Sure Its Version of Azeroth Never Has the Same Problem
Long before Destiny 2 took up thousands of hours of my life, though, there was World of Warcraft. My cousin was the one who got me into it, and once he did, I was completely obsessed with the game for years. I played WoW constantly during what I still consider its heyday, to the point that I neglected homework in high school and classes in college soon after. So, while WoW Classic has already given players a chance to go back to that older version of the game, I’ll admit that World of Warcraft: Forever is far more interesting to me, primarily because it isn’t simply giving me a chance to go back and do everything I’ve already done.
Of course, WoW Classic already exists if I just want to go back and play old WoW again, but that’s not really what Forever is doing anyway. It starts with the original level 1–60 version of Azeroth, only Blizzard isn’t going to eventually move that world into The Burning Crusade and continue following the same path WoW already took. Forever exists in its own “time bubble,” as Blizzard puts it, so this version of Azeroth can basically head off in another direction from here. I can go back to the WoW I remember, but I won’t necessarily know everything that’s waiting for me when I get there.
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Image by GameRant -
Image via Blizzard
And I really like the sound of that. There are already more than 1,000 new quests planned for Forever, along with places that weren’t in the original game at all. Blizzard has nine new dungeons planned as well, so this isn’t just old WoW with a handful of new things stuffed into it to make returning players feel like they have something else to do. At least based on what Blizzard has shown and said so far, there should be plenty here that even someone who spent an embarrassing amount of time in WoW years ago hasn’t seen before.
Forever exists in its own “time bubble,” as Blizzard puts it, so this version of Azeroth can basically head off in another direction from here.
I also appreciate that Blizzard doesn’t seem interested in sanding away everything about old WoW that would probably be considered inconvenient by today’s standards. There won’t be flying mounts in Forever, for one thing, nor will there be level scaling. Leveling itself is still supposed to be a major part of the game too, and I hope it stays that way. I remember when leveling was just what I did in WoW. I wasn’t constantly thinking about getting it over with so I could finally reach the part of the game I was apparently supposed to care about. I was playing the game, and getting strong enough to finally move somewhere new was part of what kept me playing it.
Now, maybe WoW Forever eventually runs into the same problem Destiny 2 did. If Blizzard keeps supporting this thing for years and keeps adding more to it, it’s obviously going to get much bigger than it is at launch. Bungie didn’t start cutting pieces out of Destiny 2 just for the fun of it, so I’m not going to pretend Blizzard has somehow found a way around something Bungie couldn’t solve. Still, Forever gets to start with the benefit of hindsight, and after seeing what happened to Destiny 2, I would hope Blizzard understands just how much of a live-service game’s identity can disappear when too much of its past goes with it.
So, as someone who spent years obsessed with WoW and then thousands of hours in Destiny 2, I’m especially curious to see where both of these go from here. Bungie is trying to give Destiny 2 back some of what it lost, whereas WoW Forever is taking an older version of WoW and seeing how far it can go without leaving that version behind. They’re solving the problem differently, but it’s the same problem nonetheless, and I’m glad live-service games are finally starting to treat their own history like something worth keeping around.
