Destiny 2 servers go dark for 24 hours ahead of Lightfall’s release

Destiny 2 players who were hoping for some game time before Lightfall will have to wait until the expansion launches tomorrow to play the game again. The Destiny 2 servers went offline at 10:45am CT today, marking a 24-hour maintenance window before Lightfall releases. Players can log in again at reset tomorrow.

Destiny 2 commonly brings long maintenance periods ahead of larger updates, such as seasons and expansions, so the long downtime isn’t exactly unexpected. The maintenance window for Lightfall, however, is far longer than its predecessor. For The Witch Queen, the servers went down at 8:45pm CT and resumed at reset, which made for a little over 14 hours of downtime.

When players log into Destiny 2, they can take in the new Lightfall expansion, as well as a slew of other features the expansion is bringing for all players—even if they don’t own the DLC. Lightfall is overhauling buildcrafting in the game, tweaking the ability economy, touching on The Witch Queen‘s crafting system, and even tuning difficulty in most activities. And for expansion owners, that’s even before visiting the new destination of Neomuna, using the power of Strand, embarking on the new raid, or setting foot into Season of Defiance content.

Related: Destiny 2 Lightfall early patch notes: Neomuna, Strand, buildcrafting changes, weapon crafting changes, and more

Due to the long downtime, Bungie is allowing players to preload Lightfall starting around the time maintenance hits. This will seemingly be a long download, so prepare your internet connection and your storage space.

Bungie’s platform storage page indicates PC players on Steam and Epic Games will need over 200 GB of storage space to preload Lightfall, and the same principle will apply to some consoles. In the Feb. 16 This Week at Bungie blog post, the developer confirmed some platforms would require users to have both the live version of Destiny 2 and the Lightfall preload. The older version of the game will be deleted once the servers are back, so having the game on disk won’t require the full 200+ GB, but having the Lightfall preload will still require a colossal amount of storage space.

Though preloading will save some time and allow players to visit Neomuna more quickly, the Destiny 2 servers are usually overloaded whenever expansions launch, so players should expect congestion and queues in the game due to the sheer demand—as is the custom for new major releases.

Players can return to Destiny 2 at 11am CT on Tuesday, Feb. 28, when the Lightfall expansion officially launches.