Sorry, gamers. Everyone who's been enjoying the beta period of Destiny on PlayStation 3 or PlayStation 4, you're taking a mandatory break from the sci-fi action. For all those PlayStation owners, this also marks the end of their exclusive access to the beta.
Coming off a successful "Iron Banner" player-versus-player event on Saturday, Bungie has announced that the Destiny beta is going to be offline for 48 hours, across all of July 21 and July 22, 2014. The beta will be back up and running again on Wednesday, July 23, starting around midnight Pacific. That date of return happens to coincide with the launch of the beta on Xbox 360 and Xbox One.
The announcement was made on Bungie's Twitter account, where the company stated that the downtime is maintenance-related. Translated, that means the company is working overtime to get its servers ready for the Xbox beta launch. Bungie also said that this is expected to be the beta's one and only service interruption.
The beta launched for PlayStation gamers on Thursday, July 17. It's scheduled to end just before midnight Pacific on Sunday, July 27. A special "Beta Rally" event is set for 8:00pm Pacific on Saturday, July 26, for all users. Essentially an in-game social for all beta players, gamers who attend the Rally will be given an exclusive emblem that they can import into the retail version of the game.
Xbox 360 and Xbox One players may be entering the game on Wednesday, but PlayStation gamers need not worry about a massive influx of new Guardians. The four versions of the beta run on separate servers, so there's no crossover possible. That said, characters can be imported between PS3 and PS4, or between Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Players will be able to import all Guardian characters created during the beta to their copy of the retail game when it launches.
Destiny will be available starting September 9, 2014. Set 700 years in the future, gamers play as Guardians, protectors of the last city on Earth following "the Collapse," the mysterious downfall of humanity and its colonies throughout our solar system. "The Traveller," an enormous white orb, hangs above the city, giving it shelter and enabling Guardians to wield a strange power called "the Light." Alien races have taken custody of those lost colonies and now they're bearing down on Earth, trying to extinguish mankind once and for all. It's up to the Guardians to hold them back while trying to awaken the Traveller to tip the scales in our favor.
