Destiny 2's Witch Queen Expansion Delayed To 2022; Vault Of Glass Coming Next Season

Bungie has adjusted the timing on the next big expansion for Destiny 2, pushing it back from its previous November release date into next year. The Witch Queen, the next big addition to Destiny 2 after Beyond Light, will now drop sometime in "the early half of 2022."

The change was outlined in a huge post on Bungie's blog, which goes into a lot of detail outlining the future of Destiny 2. Bungie said it had been thinking about pushing back the release of The Witch Queen for a while "primarily for the health of the team," and that elements of the expansion helped to push the decision for the delay.

"Beyond Light built the foundation and allowed us to weave the world-building of Destiny and Destiny 2 together, but The Witch Queen will light the fire on a strongly interconnected narrative across Lightfall and beyond, unlike anything we’ve ever attempted before, with characters, arcs, heroes and villains that persist over multiple future releases," Bungie wrote. "With so much leading to and dependent on what happens in The Witch Queen, we wanted to make sure that we gave ourselves enough time to build out this journey in the right way, starting with an exceptional first chapter in The Witch Queen."

Other reasons for the delay include Bungie's continued work to "upgrade the systemic foundation of Destiny 2 to support everything we want to do in the future" and its attempts to maintain a quality level for Destiny 2 without putting excessive pressure on developers, especially as they work from home during a pandemic.

The blog outlined a whole lot of other information as well. While Bungie previously announced two additional expansions for Destiny 2--The Witch Queen in 2022 and Lightfall to follow, originally slated for Fall 2022 but presumably now in early 2023--the blog mentions another expansion that will follow Lightfall and conclude Destiny 2's current story, which Bungie now calls the "Light and Darkness Saga." It sounds like Destiny 2 will continue on after the current story arcs are concluded, but we have no idea what the game might look like after that point.

Bungie also finally put a timer on the release of the Vault of Glass raid, which is being refreshed from its original release in Destiny 1 and brought into Destiny 2. The Vault of Glass is coming back in Season 14, which is Destiny 2's next content season. Season 13 ends on May 11, so presumably the Vault of Glass will be released shortly after that, since raids typically are added to the game a week or two after a content release.

The blog post included a lot of other Destiny 2 news. Bungie announced it's putting an end to its controversial "gunsetting" loot changes, detailed changes to PvP balancing and the Trials of Osiris, and announced when transmogrification will finally become part of the game.