‘Destiny’ 1.2 Patch Delay Shows Wisdom Behind Early Deployment
Destiny players on the PlayStation and Xbox had expected to see the 1.2 update go live on their consoles on Tuesday in preparation for the release of House of Wolves. A funny thing happened on the way to deployment, though, forcing Bungie to delay the update’s release at the last minute. The good news is this shows the wisdom behind the developer deploying expansion updates to everyone well before its release.
“I’ve spoken with the finest minds at Bungie about Update 1.2.0 just moments ago. They’re working to correct a late-breaking technical issue that would have impacted the way the game launches for a large portion of you. Progress is being made,” Community Manager David “Deej” Dague wrote in a Destiny forum post.
New details on Update 1.2.0: https://t.co/YXwaet4JUS
— Bungie (@Bungie) May 13, 2015
Dague went on to promise daily updates on the deployment of the Destiny 1.2 update. Hopefully, this “late-breaking technical issue” can be fixed relatively quickly so that it doesn’t delay the House of Wolves release planned for next Tuesday, May 19 sometime after 1 p.m. ET / 10 a.m. PT. The 1.2.0.1 update will be required to unlock the expansion’s contents.
This incident demonstrates the method behind the madness of Bungie releasing update content to Destiny prior to it going live. It gives the developer time to ferret out issues such as these that would result in a game breaking experience at the same time millions of PlayStation and Xbox console owners were trying to download a multi-gigabyte update. Imagine the public relations disaster if this happened on the day House of Wolves launched.
It would be nice to see Bungie take a cue from other massively multiplayer games like World of WarCraft and The Elder Scrolls Online by instituting a public test server of some sort, as previously written for the Inquisitr. Yes, there’s the risk of content leaking out early, but the risk of game breaking bugs hitting a game with complex systems is likely larger.
For example, there were multiple issues with the launch of The Dark Below from a glitchy and exploit-filled raid to a perk for the Black Hammer sniper rifle cancelling out another perk. The initial launch of the Crota’s End raid was like a test for the release of its Hard Mode a month later, which came only after two updates to fix issues.
The good news is that Bungie and players have avoided a major disaster with the launch of the House of Wolves for Destiny. Now we’ll just have to wait and see what glitches and exploits remain.
[Images via Bungie]
