Destiny Holiday Stocking Stuffers

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, many gamers were filled with anticipation for the promise of holiday extras and add-ons in certain games, seasonal discounts and the opportunity to take down "Christmas Noobs." However, that excitement was squelched on Christmas day when hackers took down both Xbox Live and PSN. The outage left many gamers unable to play, and some unable to even set up their shiny new consoles.

Once the outages were over, focus was back on enjoying new games and the holiday festivities within them, except in one game: Destiny. Bungie promised a holiday gift for Christmas, but by New Years it was nowhere to be seen with word that it would come in January after the holidays. Bungie has delivered on that promise today with the developer shipping a legendary item to each Destiny player, available at the Postmaster.

As soon as Bungie announced the gifts, players who jumped in the game and picked up their package had mixed reactions to the specific items they'd received.

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Considering that Christmas is the biggest gift-giving event of the year, some players were hoping for something a little more special or unique, such as a Ghost skin or specialized vehicle. By just giving out a single legendary (or in some cases, exotic) item, some, less grateful players are unimpressed and it seems that Bungie may have hyped up this bonus to the point where expectations were raised a little too high. But hey, at least it wasn't just a white, green and red holiday shader, right?

Giving away a hot item to all players is a kind gesture by Destiny's developers, and most players on the Destiny forums and Reddit recognize that, even if it fell short of what some players expected from the biggest - and arguably most controversial - game of 2014. That expectation was especially high due to the hype about the gift in early December, and when considering what Rockstar offered GTA V players: holiday clothing, Santa hats, Christmas character masks, discounts on items, and of course snow, or more importantly, snowball fights.

Bungie itself set a pretty high precedent in October with its Halloween gift including the Flight of Shadows, which changed the appearance of a player's respawn for 24 hours; Halloween-themed sparrows; and of course, the Jackolyte, which turned players' heads into jack-o-lanterns. With such an offering at Halloween, players naturally had high hopes for Christmas, especially players who bought into the first expansion, supporting Bungie's efforts. That being said, it's important to keep in mind that Bungie did say in a Tweet a couple days ago that the Christmas gift would be "small" but "Legendary."

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With the upcoming House of Wolves DLC (the second expansion), the hard mode version of Crota's End raid and other upcoming content (leaked details on that here), it's unsurprising that Bungie's focus is on other tasks beyond a fun holiday gift. So we'll all just load up our new legendary item, and get back to the task of grinding for materials, hunting ultras and majors, and taking down Crota.

What do you think of Bungie's holiday gift to players? Is it what you were hoping? Let us know your thoughts and what you got in the comments!

Destiny is available on PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.