Unpopular Guess of the Raid Release Date & Time

Now I know there has been a lot of speculation on when Bungie may release Destiny 2's first raid. From the looks of it, many people are hoping they release it well after the release of Destiny 2, with some people wishing for a week and others hoping for up to 2 weeks, and some want even longer. Here is my guess, and then I'll explain my reasons.

Saturday, September 9th at 10 AM Pacific Time

Destiny 2 was originally supposed to release on September 8th, a Friday, but the release date was pushed forward to September 6th - a Wednesday. It is kind of an odd day to release a major sequel to their video game, so my guess is the push ahead had to do with the raid release timing. Let's look at how Destiny raids have released in the past, relative to their respective content release.

Destiny 1 had a midnight rolling release on September 9th, 2014 and Vault of Glass was available on September 16, 2014 at reset time (2 AM Pacific). That gave players approximately one week to level up to the recommended level range of 26-28. It took Primeguard 14 hours to get the world first completion.

Crota's End was made available at the same time as The Dark Below expansion, releasing at reset time (2 AM Pacific) on December 9, 2014. Many teams full of level 30 players entered the raid immediately, but it was Invigorate that captured world first about 6 hours after reset. While most teams struggled to overcome the level 32 delta scaling of the Crota encounter, Invigorate was able to substitute in a player who had spent the morning grinding to level 31.

The Taken King expansion released September 15, 2015 at reset time (2 AM Pacific) and King's Fall released September 18, 2015 at 10 AM Pacific, leaving players with 80 hours to go from ~140 light to ~290 recommended light. It took The Wobblers around 7 hours for world first.

Rise of Iron released September 20, 2016 at reset time (2 AM Pacific) and Wrath of the Machine released September 23, 2016 at 10 AM Pacific, once again leaving players with 80 hours to from ~335 light to ~385 "max" light. It took Redeem 2 hours for world first.

The only hint we have about Bungie's plans for the release date of the raid come from a Luke Smith interview with Italian magazine, Multiplayer. Translated, the statements were:

Will it be in the base game? Yes, it will be in the game and will be available during the launch period but I can not give you a precise date at the moment ... But it will not be available on the day of the game's release, right? ... look, what I can tell you is that the first incursion has a release date very similar to that of King's Fall and Wrath of the Machine. We will announce this date later and will be a date that will allow players to be powerful enough and equipped to face their challenge. We just have to wait this summer and make it known.

An additional note that not many people are talking about is the change in Destiny 2's release date, from a Friday to a Wednesday. Luke Smith explained the reason for the change:

"We were looking at a bunch of logistics; the technical diligence," he explains. "Our games at Bungie historically have their highest concurrency on the Saturday of their first week. And so, by [originally] going out on a Friday, I think we were putting our technical teams at a risk." As he puts it, the small change in days was "an opportunity for us to say, ‘if we can pull the data in for a couple of days [we can] ease some of the tension on the server teams and give our fans a win'". That new Wednesday release date "gives us some time to adjust the scalability on the servers if we need to, if the game is bigger than we anticipated."

There is one more piece of information that's hinted at in the recent Edge magazine article. In speaking about content and progression, Luke Smith mentions that at one point, he set out one weekend to play the game for 60 hours straight. What he found was that, at hour 55, his progression "fell off a cliff" even though he still had content to play. You may interpret that how you want, but in my opinion, that means he basically hit max level, or close enough that he had reached diminishing returns. The article mentions that they "fixed" this, so it is likely that they stretched out the progression/grind a little bit longer to more closely match the length of content. How much longer is anybody's guess, but I would guess it's close to 60 hours. See, I don't think that 60 hour straight playthrough by Luke was just some random number, I think that's what he believes is the appropriate amount of time required to reach raid-ready status.

If the 60-hour grind assumption is true, where does that put us for my suspected raid release date and time? Well, since it's a rolling midnight release, the range of playtime varies. The location with the earliest availability is New Zealand. The time between New Zealand's release and my suspected raid release date and time is 101 hours. On the other end of the spectrum, the last timezone to play D2 would be 23 hours later, so they would have 78 available hours to grind. The 78 - 101 hours of available playing time to reach raid-ready level/status fits with what Luke said in regards to the time frames of KF and WoTM, both of which released 80 hours after their expansion.

If it takes approximately 60 hours of play time out of an available 78-101 hours, that "allows players to be powerful enough and equipped to face their challenge".

It also fits with Bungie saying that Saturday of launch week is their most popular day.

I think Saturday, September 9th at 10 AM Pacific Time is the date and time world-first raiders should be expecting.