Eagle eyed players notice that the first Incursion, The Division’s raid-like end game experience, has been secretly renamed without any notice from Ubisoft.
While few actually know what The Division’s true endgame will look like, many have their assumptions. The hope is that Ubisoft’s latest RPG looter-shooter will offer a raid-like experience, wherein a group of players take on the game’s greatest challenge and come away with top tier loot. Previously, we had come to know that raid-like experience as an Incursion, but today Ubisoft pulled a switcheroo and changed the name.
For those who took notice, the Falcon Lost Incursion at the bottom of The Division’s map is now called an Operation. Moreover, the title of the mission is now Last Stronghold.
Ubisoft offered no reason for the name changes and, in fact, didn’t even mention they were changing the name in their patch notes. Even while discussing the upcoming patch in their latest State of the Game stream, the developers continued to refer to the endgame content as an Incursion.
Although there was nothing wrong with the Incursion name, one has to assume the change to Operation was made to make the experience seem more raid-like. Operation, in our mind, suggests a group of players working together to accomplish a goal, whereas Incursion had a more nebulous connotation. Some even took the Incursion name to mean The Division was adding a horde mode, until Ubisoft clarified that this was to be the major endgame component.
Outside of the name switch, though, not much has changed with that mysterious mission at the bottom of New York City. The recommended gear score is still 150 and we still have no idea how to calculate gear score. The hope is that Ubisoft will surface that information prior to the April update, which will unlock the Operation among other things, but Ubisoft Massive has kept mum on the issue.
April’s Division update will be a major change for a number of reasons, not just because it adds the Incursion/Operation. Once the update goes live, players will also be able to trade with their teammates post-mission, but only while in the instance. Moreover, there have been rumblings that the PvP Dark Zone will see a major change with the April update, but Massive has yet to comment on that.
It’s clear that even though The Division is released, the title is still continuing to evolve. The developers are getting a better understanding of what does and doesn’t work in the game, and they are fine-tuning the experience in response to player feedback. And as we can see, nothing is exempt when it comes to change.
Which name do you prefer for The Division’s raids: Incursion or Operation?
Tom Clancy’s The Division is out now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
