The first Destiny 2 fireteam finished the new Garden of Salvation raid hours ago, claiming the World First belt for its team members.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of players have since followed in their footsteps, completing the Garden of Salvation raid for themselves. But then Bungie considered whether that number would be significantly higher if the servers had been stable. Bungie, appropriate, decided to make a change and extending the completion deadline -- after the new deadline had already concluded.
For completing the Garden of Salvation raid in the first 24 hours of availability, Destiny 2 players would be rewarded the "Dive into Darkness" emblem. There's also an emblem reward just for completing the Garden of Salvation raid in general, but the Dive into Darkness emblem comes with a level of prestige. With the new deadline change, raiders who managed to complete the Garden of Salvation prior to 12:00 pm today - players who thought they'd missed the deadline - will now also receive the reward.
It's all a bit of a snafu and there are some definitely some frustrated players as a result. After all, the initial Contest mode that enabled a fair playing ground for initial raid runners ended at the correct time and wasn't extended. So technically, players who completed Garden of Salvation in this extended window had an advantage over players who finished it during the original time-frame. But Bungie's decision is rather clever in that regard, as it ensures that no one took advantage of the extension intentionally. It simply rewards dedicated raiders who barely missed the mark.
Bungie publicly recognized server issues in Destiny 2 earlier today, saying that players were seeing an increased number of BABOON and WEASEL errors. Both of those errors are tied to server congestion and login server issues. In other words, players weren't able to log into the game. Bungie posted within just a matter of hours that the server congestion had cleared up, and that there would no longer be a queue to get into Destiny 2. It was overall just very unfortunate timing to have server issues.
All in all, it's the right decision for Bungie to have made. A new raid launch in Destiny 2 is intended to be a celebration, a social gathering that brings Destiny 2 players together. The reward is certainly intended to be exclusive, but not to the degree that players are feeling like they've been taken advantage of. Extending the deadline just a small bit is a fair decision to make. It keeps playing field fair, rewards dedicated raiders, and hopefully keeps the Garden of Salvation and Shadowkeep hype going that much longer.
Destiny 2 is available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.