The Witch Queen is the expansion that made longtime Destiny 2 players stop apologizing for still playing Destiny 2. Bungie released it in February 2022 and the Deluxe Edition bundles everything around that arc: the base expansion, Seasons 16 through 19, two Year-5 dungeons, an Exotic SMG with catalyst and ornament, and an Exotic Sparrow. If you are looking at the base expansion alone and wondering whether the Deluxe bump is worth it, the answer lives entirely in whether you plan to see out all four seasons and clear those dungeons on a regular rotation. If you do, the math almost always lands in the bundle's favor. The campaign itself is what changed the conversation. Bungie built proper mission-by-mission narrative momentum here, something the franchise had not really managed since The Taken King. The Throne World destination is dense, the Lucent Hive are a genuinely novel enemy type, and the Glaive weapon class arrived with this expansion and introduced a combo melee-ranged-shield playstyle that still has its dedicated mains. Legendary campaign difficulty is where you should start if you have any Destiny experience at all - the rewards are better and the encounter design actually expects you to use your kit properly. The four seasons that ship with the Deluxe (Risen, Haunted, Plunder, Seraph) represent a full year of the live-service loop. Some seasons respect your time better than others - Season of Plunder has one of the better seasonal activity hooks, while Season of the Risen felt a little thin mid-run. The two dungeons bundled in are replayable endgame content with craftable weapon sources, which matters a lot for the loot economy. Dungeon loot is among the healthiest in the game: deterministic crafting removes the worst RNG frustration once you have unlocked patterns. Guild tooling remains Destiny's long-standing soft spot - the clan system gives you a shared bounty chest and some cosmetics, and that is about as far as it goes. If you came from FFXIV or even old Wildstar hoping for real guild infrastructure, you will feel that absence. The live-service reality is that these seasons are now static. The season passes are fully unlocked in the bundle, so you are not chasing a battle pass timer - you can finish them at your own pace, which is a meaningful advantage over playing them live. The story content, seasonal missions, and exotic quests are all accessible. What you will not get is the live community energy of everyone grinding the same thing at the same time. For some players that is a relief. The dungeons are still actively run in the endgame population, so matchmade-adjacent LFG tools will get you into them without much wait. Who is this for: returning Destiny players who skipped the Witch Queen year and want the complete arc before moving into later expansions, or new players who have burned through the free-to-play base content and want the most story-coherent paid entry point. If you have never touched Destiny 2 before, the breadth of systems here will be overwhelming at first - give it a few weeks before judging the Glaive's learning curve. Veterans of MMOs that did not survive their second year (pours one out for Anthem, for Babylon's Fall) will recognize Destiny 2's staying power here even if they stay appropriately skeptical of what comes next. Yuki, Scout Team