Destiny 2 will be down until 5pm today because of The Witch Queen

Destiny 2: The Witch Queen is facing a late start (pic: Bungie)

The Witch Queen is out today but you won’t be able to play until late afternoon, and even then there’s likely to be sign-in issues.

Today is a big day for Destiny 2, with the release of major expansion The Witch Queen – one of the most important in the game’s long history. Unfortunately though, it’s going to be an almost equally long time till you can actually play it.

The release date for The Witch Queen is Tuesday, February 22 but rather than coming online at midnight, or at least the early morning, the whole game has been down since yesterday and no one will be able to log in again until 5pm GMT.

Even after that, developer Bungie is warning that players will be placed in a queue and there’s likely to be sign-in issues as background maintenance continues and everyone tries to get in at once.

Bungie has at least given fair warning of the disruption but reading between the lines it sounds like maybe you should give up any hopes of playing the game today and just log in fresh tomorrow, even if that’s an odd way to treat launch day.

As an extra issue, many PlayStation 4 owners are reporting a problem downloading Required Content files during the downtime, which it looks like they’re now going to have to wait till 5pm to do – which is a pain as they’re around 72GB.

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Saying the expansion is the most anticipated in the franchise’s history isn’t idle hyperbole either, as it’s had over 1 million pre-orders – which is unheard of for a mere add-on.

Most players have been able to preload the expansion and they’ve already been warned that some content will be removed from the game as a result of the update, including a range of Exotic missions, Catalysts, seasonal activities, and The Tangled Shore location.

That means all Gunsmith materials from Banshee-44 will cease to be once you log back in, after the maintenance, but at this point there’s nothing that can be done about that.

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