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[Spyxos]

Two years after its release, it seemed like Ubisoft was throwing in the towel when it came to The Division 2, as players got seasonal re-runs rather than new content. Well, it seems that was exactly what was planned originally, as Ubisoft intended for The Division 2 support to end in 2020.

Speaking to MP1st, The Division 2 Creative Director Yannick Banchereau mentioned that the original plan was for The Division 2 support to end in 2020. However, it wasn’t because it was a bad game, but rather, the studio was busy with its in-development Star Wars game and there simply wasn’t enough cooks in the kitchen back then.

It seems the game (The Division 2) was more successful than what Ubisoft expected from it after the release of its major expansion Warlords of New York that it became feasible for Massive to resume development of it alongside Ubisoft Bucharest which seems to be the main studio handling content for The Division 2.

Banchereau : It’s crazy when you think about it, huh? That’s the beauty of it. It’s been quite a real rollercoaster because Yes, the plan was after Update 12, at the end of 2020, the plan was to stop supporting the game. Because as the question mentions, we started working on the Star Wars game, we have the Avatar game. Everybody’s very busy at Massive and the idea was that we just need the people on those projects.

It wasn’t because The Division 2 was bad just we need the people on the other projects. You know what happened is the game remained successful and probably more successful than we had anticipated after the release of Warlords of New York, and the different seasons. So that allowed us to kind of resume the conversation internally of maybe we should keep going.

Really, everybody wanted to, but the main challenge was that we need people. The people we had on the project have moved on to our projects and we can’t just recall them and say, “come back to The Division.” That was the main challenge for us, was finding a team and we did that in Ubisoft Bucharest.

Since then it’s been a great collaboration between Massive (and) Ubisoft Bucharest. What we’re seeing in Year 5 now, it is the real result of it. The time we took to Ubisoft Bucharest for them to learn the engine, learn the game, us learning to work together in a way where we are flexing our muscles of running a live game.

We learned a lot with Year 4, which was our first real year of content after we started, we resumed production. And I think Year 5 is where you’re going to see the real results of, now we have a full team, but is experienced but knows how to build things in The Division 2.

This is the full year — the real full year — of content that we’re going to be doing on The Division 2. It’s really exciting to see where we are today, compared to what could have been.

https://mp1st.com/news/ubisoft-the-...020-game-was-more-successful-than-anticipated

Bonus:

 

[NickFire]

I'm a little bit skeptical as to the why. Something about 2020 in particular makes me suspicious. Tovid? Covbird? Something like that.

 

[a multicultural team of v]

The Division reskinned with Star Wars would be insanely cool and good, hell even the dark zone could easily be made to fit thematically.

 

[YuLY]

Ye right, it was so successful that they literally said they dont have plans for The Division 3 but instead they will focus on the extraction spinoff Heartland.

 

[Mikado]

I know it's popular to crap on Ubisoft, and more often than not they deserve it. But I thought the Division series really was something special. Even in the weird broken state that the skeleton team is maintaining it in, there's nothing really like it.

 

[March Climber]

I'm a little bit skeptical as to the why. Something about 2020 in particular makes me suspicious. Tovid? Covbird? Something like that.

Could be this. Could also be that New York expansion, because most casual division fans just wanted more New York.

 

[STARSBarry]

I wrote off the Division 2 as soon as I saw it didn't have snow...

It's a simple reason but it was good enough to never engage with it.

 

[Feel Like I'm On 42]

I think it's bullshit that any "live service" style game would ever be shut down in only 2 years or less after launch. The worst ever example of this being Anthem. These companies suck and only care about their profits though.

Anthem shouldve had its "2.0" if for no other reason than the people who paid $60 got screwed

 

[Nankatsu]

Probably the best franchise coming out of Ubisoft in recent years. Assassins creed was nice...until they started milking the heck out of it.

Division 2 is right there with Destiny as best last-gen co-op experience for me.

 

[BennyBlanco]

I liked the Division 2. Great game to your brain off and shoot the bad guys while you listen to podcasts.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Division 2 deserved more sales it was a complete game.

 

[delfrickintree]

I loved division 1 & 2 but have no interest in this upcoming free to play thing. And thats based purely on intuition, no hard evidence. I could be wrong, but I trust myself more than Ubisoft

 

[March Climber]

I loved division 1 & 2 but have no interest in this upcoming free to play thing. And thats based purely on intuition, no hard evidence. I could be wrong, but I trust myself more than Ubisoft

The problem for me is that the shooter MMO market is still very tiny. I think there’s potential sales and competition in there being more Shooter MMOs, but whenever we get a tiny hint of a new one releasing, they just want to copy Destiny 2.

I can imagine an open world MMO shooter existing one day that isn’t instanced and you can see way more than 8 people at a time, with world bosses and dungeons, etc.

 

[L*][*N*K]

So if I play it now, how lost will I be?

 

[GreatnessRD]

So if I play it now, how lost will I be?

You'll be fine.