14 DAY TRIAL // Video game developer Bungie is announcing that it is taking down Destiny for a maintenance period today, Thursday, November 12, to work on the core infrastructure that powers the social shooter, although limited details about potential changes have been offered so far.
The offline period for gamers will start at 8 AM Pacific Time, which is the equivalent of 4 PM Greenwich Mean Time, when the login system for the title will be taken down for all players who are trying to access their accounts.
A 9 AM Pacific Time, the Destiny players who are already in the shooter will be removed from the activities they are taking part in so that the maintenance can be performed.
On Twitter, the company explains that it is moving to end the downtime as quickly as possible and plans to bring everything back online around 11 AM Pacific Time, which is 7 PM GMT.
Bungie says that gamers will be able to sign into the official site and use the companion app, but access to them might also be restricted at certain points, so fans should simply wait for the three-hour period to be over.
All those who are still playing will be warned via message that they should complete their activities as quickly as possible in order not to lose progress.
The development team has not talked about the possible changes that will be made to Destiny, although it's very likely that improvements will only be linked to the infrastructure and will not include anything linked to gameplay.
Destiny might get new content before the end of the year
The fact that a solid maintenance period is taking place is usually a sign that the developers are getting ready to deliver a major update for the social shooter or even some entirely new content.
Bungie has explained that in November it plans to tweak some of the core mechanics and to eliminate a lot of bugs that the player base has been mentioning since the launch of The Taken King.
As always, balance tweaks linked to the weapons are also a possibility, although no clear details are available at the moment.
The addition of microtransactions to Destiny means that Bungie can divert more resources to the live team supporting the game, which is expected to deliver free missions and quests that can keep the fans engaged.
The Halloween event and the introduction of new weapons that require special quest lines to obtain represent two ways in which the game will evolve in the coming months.
Activision has suggested that it is experimenting with new business models for the title, but it seems that the company is not ready to entirely drop paid expansions, with a new one probably set to arrive before the middle point of 2016.
Rumors are also saying that an entirely new installment in the Destiny series is under development right now and that the plan is to launch it on the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 before the end of next year.
As a reminder Destiny will be offline for maintenance starting at 8 AM PST. Expected completion is 11 AM PST - https://t.co/Ocy0lEVMfq …
— Bungie Help (@BungieHelp) November 12, 2015