As of 2:31PM (ET) on Saturday, June 6, the current season of Destiny 2 effectively came to an end. Season of the Worthy wrapped up much the same way as the rest of the Season left its fans: Not with thunderous applause, but with shrugs and sighs. The plan was to end the season today at 1PM (ET) with a live event. Live events in games seem to be all the rage these days, especially for those who pay any attention at all to powerhouses like Fortnite.
Fortnite has had live events that brought about drastic changes to the game world. Catastrophic events have been set off while players are in game that shape the future of the game and the game world for weeks to come. On the lighter side, Fortnite even has more social focused live events that include immersive concerts with artists like Travis Scott. Think what you will about Fortnite, Epic, or even Travis Scott, but you must admit that this event would have been incredible to witness firsthand.
For every Epic Games, there is a Bungie. I am talking about a studio that can see and know what a live event is, but ultimately comes up well short of delivering a great experience for the users. Much like the rest of the Season, the grand finale was anything but. It was delayed, too long, and full of errors.
To those unaware, this Season was set to end in a hopefully epic destruction of a massive ship called The Almighty. To make a long story short: The Almighty was on a crash course with Earth and a good chunk of the current Season was spent getting weapons ready to take down the ship before it could make impact. These weapons were fired from Mars, Earth, and potentially elsewhere in the Solar System. I apologize if I do not know the full details as I opted to sit this Season out. Today's event was to be the finale from all the work that Guardians put in over the past couple of months.
Bungie urged players to load into the Tower social space before 1PM today. It was then that the live event was slated to start. Immediately, the problems showed up. First, nothing began at 1PM when it was supposed to. Instead, we find out from a third-party that Bungie was delaying the event "to get people in."
Instead, the event began at 1:30PM, a full 30 minutes later than expected. For some of us, we have been waiting around for at least 40 minutes by this point as we got in 10 minutes before the original time. A silhouette of The Almighty could be seen in front of the Sun, its imposing size quite evident given how far away the ship still was from Earth's surface. As the minutes ticked on, gathered players saw more and more red streaks in the sky, first to the upper-right of The Almighty and then from the bottom-left. They lines were the missiles that Guardians have been powering up over the months prior. They were coming from Mars and from Earth and zeroing in on their target.
The problem is that they were taking forever. Around 2PM, a full 30 minutes after the red streaks first appeared, white sparkly lights appeared around The Almighty. Was this to signify that some of the weapons were making impacts on the ship? Was it a defense mechanism of The Almighty? Were they impacts on a shield around The Almighty? It was not particularly clear.
Keep in mind that during all of this, players were basically just standing still in a group watching everything slowly unfold. Destiny has a system that will kick you for being AFK, so you would occasionally see some players moving around just to avoid being kicked. On top of that, players would randomly encounter various connection errors. My friends encountered countless errors at random times during the event. I was fine up until the grand finale where I encountered connection error after connection error.
Even still, I managed to see most of what happened during the grand finale. Around 2:30PM, a full hour and a half after the event was supposed to start, it was quickly coming to an end. The central core of The Almighty blew up, followed shortly by a massive explosion that lit up the sky. The Almighty was still set to impact Earth, but its current state meant that The Last City on Earth would be saved. The sky was ablaze with wreckage, streaks of debris streaking through the atmosphere. The main wreckage of The Almighty was on a crash course for the landscape behind the Tower.
It struck the ground with a mighty impact, sending a huge fireball into the air. A visible shockwave from the point of impact could be seen expanding outward rapidly. As it washed over the tower, the blast impacted the hearing of every Guardian and Tower denizen. As the fire and the flash slowly faded away, what was left was the smoldering, smoking wreckage of The Almighty far off in the distance. The only impact on the Tower proper was a small chunk that was removed near Zavala's typical haunt near the edge.
Despite my constant connection errors right as the major action was happening, I still saw enough to say that the very end was quite cool. The problem is the fact that I had connection errors at all for something that you could experience one time and only one time in the game. This was a real "you had to be there" moment but being there was difficult due to technical issues.
Not only that, but the fact that Bungie said to be there at 1PM and then pushed it back by a full half-hour was a major misstep for the studio. Again, this was their first live event of this scale so I can perhaps excuse it to a certain degree. No, the real problem is the fact that this event went on for over an hour with next to nothing happening for about 98% of it. It was too long, too drawn out, and for a lot of us, it was roughly two hours of standing around and sometimes tapping a button to avoid being kicked for inactivity.
I hope that Bungie takes this as a learning experience. I would like to see more live events that have meaningful impacts on the game world. In the here and now though, I just could not help but feel incredibly disappointed with this one. I reinstalled Destiny 2 the night prior just to experience it, but even the brief time spent downloading it felt like a waste of time. One of the biggest changes they could make would be to start closer to the indicated time. Beyond that, I would suggest not making these events take over an hour once they begin. Something closer to 30 minutes or even better, 15 minutes would be strongly preferred.
The real cherry on top of it all is the fact that you were promised an emblem if you witnessed this Season ending finale. It turns out, you did not even have to be there and witness the live event in order to get the emblem. Instead, all you need to do is "examine" the impact site of debris at the Tower and you are granted the exclusive emblem. A buddy of mine who was not able to be there in person was able to get the emblem later without issue. In a way, I envy them because they did not waste their time standing around in a game for almost two full hours fighting not aliens but disconnection errors. However, much like the rest of the season, this was an event that was full of boredom and severe disappointment.
A shortened 15 minute user video shows off the important bits of the event. In fact, you can probably skip ahead to around the 4 minute mark to see the core of The Almighty explode. From there, you can skip ahead to around 9:15 for the major explosion. The impact on Earth happens around the 11:30 mark. This is not my video.
Still.
Waiting...
Any day now.