The Division 2 Dark Hours raid won't have matchmaking, despite Massive promising it for all activities
It looks like Dark Hours, The Division 2's first eight-player raid, will indeed require a pre-made team.
Now that we finally have a date for the launch of The Division 2's first raid, Dark Hours, the first question on players' minds wasn't about loot or gear.
Instead, it's unsurprisingly has been whether the raid will support matchmaking or not. Alexandre Guenounou, who works on the game's marketing team, confirmed on Twitter that Dark Hours does not feature any form of matchmaking. In other words, solo players are going to have to find seven others to be able to access it.
Many players are definitely not happy with developer Massive's decision, but it goes beyond outrage over the lack of a crucial feature.
The bigger problem is that prior to The Division 2's launch, Ubisoft communicated time and again that all activities in the game support matchmaking. The Tweet below, for example, highlighting the game's "online experience" features a panel about matchmaking.
"Matchmaking is provided for every game activity and difficulty level," it reads. The tweet was issued on February 15, one month before the game's launch.
While it's possible to suggest Massive was only referring to content available at launch, that argument is flimsy at best.
For one, the existence of the raid was known at that point, and the developer could have simply stated it won't support the feature at any point pre-launch. Confirming that all activities allow matchmaking also likely factored into the purchase decision for solo players.
For their part, Guenounou promised to clarify why the decision to drop matchmaking was made after speaking to Massive.
We'll update you when we hear more.