The perhaps most famous merchant in video game history, Xur, hardly plays a role in Destiny 2 anymore. Now, the most popular YouTuber of the game announces that he will ignore him in the future.
At the beginning of Destiny, Xûr was the most important NPC in the game, and his importance extended beyond the boundaries of the game: an NPC who was only in the game for hours and sold randomly selected, special items when you had the right currency.
It was somewhat like the Yeti.
Xur became a cult
Soon, rituals and legends surrounded the merchant:
- There were websites and Facebook accounts that exclusively reported about Xur.
- National and international gaming magazines published regular reports about his inventory.
- In the early days at Mein-MMO, the servers crashed every Friday under the weight of curious fans until we scraped together money for new servers with a donation campaign
- Guardians discussed for hours what he might have next Friday.
- As with any religion, there was even a prophet who could predict what Xur would bring.
- And other games like The Elder Scrolls Online integrated their own version of Xur into their games.
- There was even a reference to him in WoW:
A reason to log into Destiny every week
For Bungie, Xur was a great catch: It became a weekly ritual for players to check what the tentacle-faced character had on offer this time and whether it might be one of the few exotic items they still needed.
Players logged in or checked Xur’s offerings even if they hadn’t played Destiny that week.
Guardians waited for months for certain items like the Thunderlord, the Transversive Steps, or the Gjallarhorn. Xur was also the opportunity for casual players to get their hands on some of the rarest and most sought-after items, items that made players powerful.
In Destiny 2, however, Xur seems to be becoming a thing of the past. After last Friday, the Destiny YouTuber Datto announced: He would stop making videos about Xur for a while.
Datto had, like many others, reported on Xur’s location and inventory since his first appearance. It was a cornerstone of his channel. But in Destiny 2, hardly anyone seems to care about what Datto has to say about Xur anymore.
From 312,000 viewers to 70,000 in 4 months
The view counts for Datto’s Xur videos have plummeted. The first one had 312,000 views, but the numbers normalized within a month to 200,000 views.
But they didn’t hold, rather they fell over the next two months to a plateau of around 140,000. Since 2018, the numbers have dropped further, falling below the 100,000 mark. The last videos only reached 70,000 viewers.
Why is Xûr not as important anymore?
There are several reasons why people are no longer as interested in videos about Xur:
- Overall, interest in Destiny is declining – this is partly due to time and a normal decline in interest, and partly due to specific problems of the game: some of the people who announce they are quitting really do quit.
- Then Bungie now shows in the game where to find Xur. Xur is also around much longer than in Destiny 1 – the event character is gradually fading: the urgency is missing.
- Exotics are not as important as they were during the times of Destiny 1. There are hardly any iconic items that players absolutely want. If there is one, like the Prometheus Lens, it gets nerfed two minutes later.
- And a special engram from Xur, the Fateful Engram, which he always has, guarantees players to find missing Exotics. This eliminates the luck factor and Exotics have become more frequent. After that, no one asked: Bungie provided the Fateful Engram along with the Three of Coins as a little extra.
Xûr in free fall since September 2015
Mein MMO believes: Overall, it seems that Bungie has changed things with the Exotics and Xur that no one asked for. And until a change comes, Xur will likely continue to quietly fade away in Destiny 2.
It is all the more surprising because Bungie has repeatedly emphasized during Destiny 1 how important “weekly rituals” like Xur are for player retention. Even under the shine of special exotic weapons like Icebreaker, Thunderlord, or Gjallarhorn, one still basked in Destiny 1.
Back in 2014, it seemed like Bungie had stumbled upon a goldmine and had accidentally found a super-formula for “player retention”: weekly and monthly rituals, along with powerful items that everyone wanted and everyone talked about.
Clearly, the powerful role of the Exotics has been sacrificed on the altar of balance, taking Xur down with it. A direction Bungie already took with TTK. Since September 2015, the importance of Xûr has been gradually diminishing. Apparently, it reached a low point in January 2018.
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