14 DAY TRIAL // There's a lot of tension in the air, related mainly to the ever-growing hype bubble surrounding the upcoming Destiny beta test, scheduled to debut tomorrow, July 17, for eligible PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 owners and later on, on July 23, for Xbox One and Xbox 360 owners.
If you want to maximize your time with the game, you would do well to clear your schedule for the next days and visit the Destiny Beta FAQ on the revamped Bungie.netwebsite in order to learn everything you need to know about creating your first Guardian.
Also, be aware of the fact that the beta does not take off at midnight, but at 10:00 AM PDT / 5:00 PM GMT, on both July 17 and July 23.
There are also two days of maintenance scheduled before the debut of the Xbox beta, and the game's servers will be down on July 21 and July 22.
The beta test will come to a close on July 26, at midnight PDT / July 27, 7 AM GMT, and Bungie asked all participants to log in on July 26, during the last four hours of the beta, from 8:00 PM PDT / 3:00 AM GMT, for a final, massive stress test.
In order to assist their players in the beta, Bungie also released a free companion app for Destiny, which can be downloaded from either iTunes or Google Play.
The app allows you to monitor your inventory, check out the loot you've acquired on mission, enables you to change your gear on the fly and also doubles as a compendium of Destiny's gargantuan lore, providing helpful info on the game's characters, locations and events, sort of like a tour guide during your trek through the game world.
The Destiny companion app will also allow you to visit online forums and groups and to view and send private messages, so you can easily keep in touch with your mates. It will also act as the go-to source for the latest Destiny news and updates.
If you want to take part in the beta test, you'll need to preorder a copy of the game. In addition to this, an Xbox Live Gold account is needed in order to play. Furthermore, a PlayStation Plus account is required to access some of the features in the beta. Fortunately, trial accounts also make the cut.
There are some hurdles to be expected, as Bungie advised players taking part in the beta that they will be laboratory mice, so the company is likely to experiment with the game's systems and put its network assets to the test.
Although Bungie has not yet revealed what players can expect from the beta, some online leaks point to it containing four story missions, four multiplayer maps, a cooperative Strike, and much more.
For now, it is unclear whether any progress you make in the beta will be saved and transferred over to the full edition of the game.
Destiny is scheduled to come out on September 9, for the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One consoles.