The shooter series Destiny has been around since 2014, and some are yearning to return to the old days in 2023. A user on reddit recently shared a photo that brings back memories of the past. Day one players are thrilled.
What’s the deal with nostalgia in Destiny?
- When the first Destiny was released for PlayStation 3/4 and Xbox 360/One in 2014, it was uncharted territory for many console gamers. Destiny was the first shooter to merge typical MMO mechanics, as known from WoW, with the shooter elements from Halo. Along with GTA 5 and ESO, Destiny ushered in a new era of MMO on consoles.
- For console gamers, Destiny was a new experience. Things like “lockdowns”, vendors that only come once a week, “gear resets with expansions”, or raids like “The Glass Vault” were known to very few.
- Now a picture on reddit is triggering a flashback to 2014.
Thus began everything in 2014:
Pizza, beer, and the raid in Destiny
What’s that picture about? The reddit user “Loose-Adhesivness” posted a picture on reddit on Saturday, July 1:
- Apparently, in a cozy living room, 6 TVs are wildly scattered across the room in a semicircle. A backpack is also visible, opened.
- On each of the screens, you can make out a Guardian in all their glory. Cables, consoles, and controllers lie all over the room. In the foreground of the picture, something resembling the golden combination of “pizza and beer” is visible.
- Apparently, 5 Guardians have crashed at a friend’s place to complete the 6-man raid in Destiny together at a LAN party. The post is titled, “The good old days”.
How are the comments?
The most praised comment is: “The best part was: You could shout at the guy right next to you because he messed up a mechanic we had done 100 times before.”
One user is a bit sad when seeing this: “I once did a Kings-Fall raid in LFG, where half the group was at a LAN party. I felt so excluded, even though I was in the raid with them.”
A third user simply asks: “Crota-LAN-cable-glitch?”
Because that’s also part of the “golden age” of Destiny: The boss Crota could easily be killed if the raid leader just pulled the LAN cable at the right moment. Then the boss was defenseless.
You never forget the first raid in your MMO
Why does the picture resonate with so many? The early days of an MMO, especially the “first MMO”, when everything is new, are often remembered by many MMO players as the “golden age”: They remember the companions they had back then and the shared experiences for years after. The many bugs, exploits, server downtimes, balance issues, and things like “the loot cave” fade into the background in retrospect and suddenly are not wild anymore.
For many, it is the most intense time of their gaming life when they discover an MMO, its world, and its mechanics for the first time.
Because Destiny was the first of its kind for many shooter players on consoles, the early days of Destiny are wrapped in a “golden glow” in retrospect: Later games like The Division or Anthem didn’t have that because many players already knew the mechanics from Destiny.
If you want to indulge in memories:
Destiny: Highlights and low points – 13 moments from 3 years of Destiny
