For those Guardians watching Destiny 2, you’ll notice this week’s news posts on Bungie that keep up to date with the latest in the popular sci-fi MMOFPS. They don’t always bring good news, however, as it was announced in the May 19th issue of TWAB Magazine that the NPC Xur, which provides exotic items and other valuable weapons, is undergoing some changes that, while small, have actually Killed a passionate sub-community Destiny player.
But first, explain how these players play the game. Xur, the squid-faced NPC who has long been a darling in the Destiny series, works once a week. He disappeared for a few days between Tuesday and Thursday, before showing up at a random location on one of the game’s open-world maps over the weekend, with fresh exotic weapons, armor, and legendary gear for sale.
As you might imagine, he’s always worth a visit for every player! Newer Guardians can usually grab a new Exotic to play with, while the more hardcore, stat-focused community occasionally grabs a particularly great piece. But what if Xur doesn’t have what you need? Well, enter the Xur Instances Discord community.
This community will be opening shop next to Xur as he’s going to be leaving instead of leaving, keeping him in an instance and staying open while he’s supposed to settle down for some much-needed R&R. From there, players waiting after the daily reset will see a new set of items in Xur’s inventory. The weapons you’ll see will be the same weapons that are normally displayed over the weekend, but with different stat roles. This basically doubles your chances of getting the “God Roll” – an excellent piece of gear.
This practice, colloquially known in Destiny 2 circles as taking Xur hostage, is clearly not an intended feature and has been written on the wall for some time. Banshee – the gun vendor in The Tower – used to have a similar exploit that was removed from the game some time ago.Still, this news saddens the Xur Instance Discord admins and established Xur hostage takers Ozberix.
“My reaction is a little sad because it’s something I look forward to trying to do every week,” Ozberix wrote on Discord. “I’m active on other servers that publish my Xur instance. [When] I shared this with those servers and most people would reply with a variant of “F”, from members to other mods or admins. In this particular Xur server, the owner made an announcement and decided to have the servers implode each other and throw a server party. I guess all in all, most of us are frustrated, but we expect bungie to patch it at some point. “
“Since the release of The Witch Queen, we’ve had most of the drop bugs [stat scores] With more than 40 in total, and with maintenance almost weekly, demand and availability have slowed. We also noticed that the Banshee Roll was patched a few months ago, and we all thought it was time to patch it permanently. “
This view is shared by the server owner eye drops, who decides to start this Discord farewell party. “I feel a little sad that waiting for the weekly reset in Xur is like a small incident, but I guess it’s inevitable that Bungie will stop it.”
The party kicked off with an announcement in the Xur Instances Discord, giving each member admin access. Almost immediately, Discord was filled with pings, memes, copypastas, and cordial goodbyes. From there, members including Ozberix and Eyelivia have started releasing alternative servers where those wishing to keep in touch with their friends in Xur Instances can gather. The server is currently in Ozberix’s hands, and Ozberix is still figuring out what to do with it.
“I love the game, I love the community that has been built, I love helping people with GM and other PvE activities each season. I want to keep the community that has already gathered in the Xur server, or merge or make it another Destiny 2 servers, although these are still being discussed internally as the future of servers in general is unknown.”
For more on Destiny 2, check out our 2022 Guardian game shooting guide, as well as this report from the Federal Trade Commission investigating Sony’s acquisition of Bungie.
