Quick answer: Yes, and it is in the busiest stretch it has ever had. The Division 2 shipped in March 2019 as a good but flawed looter shooter, came within touching distance of being abandoned in late 2020, and got seven more years of support instead. Year 8 is running now, a third expansion called Echoes of Central Park arrives on 3 November 2026, crossplay finally lands in November after more than seven years, and Ubisoft has confirmed Year 9. Buy it on sale or play it on Game Pass, and get Warlords of New York before anything else.
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
Most reviews of this game are frozen in 2019. They'll tell you co-op scaling is broken, that the endgame is nothing but damage stacking, and that the Dark Zone feels deserted. All three of those were true once. None of them are true now, and repeating them does you no good at all if you're deciding whether to install it tonight.
So this is a review of the game as it actually exists, with the dates attached so you can tell how fresh it is. The short version is that The Division 2 is one of the stranger survival stories in live service, a game that was quietly scheduled for the scrapheap and then came back.
The part nobody tells you: this game almost ended
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
Support was supposed to stop after Season 4 of Warlords of New York, around December 2020. Contracts on the development team were winding down and staff were being moved to other projects. Then player numbers climbed through the pandemic, Ubisoft reversed the decision, and a largely new team was assembled to keep it going.
That matters for a review because it explains the shape of the game. There's a long quiet stretch in the middle where very little arrived, then a steady run of free modes, then expansions spaced years apart. If you bounced off it at some point between 2020 and 2023, you were playing during the gap. Plenty of live service games never get a second act at all, as the shutdown list in our look at the live service graveyard makes fairly grim reading on.
Everything added since that 2019 review
| What | When | Cost | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Warlords of New York | Mar 2020 | Paid | New York zone, level cap 40, reworked gear. Widely treated as the real full game |
| Summit, Countdown, Descent, Incursions | 2020 to 2023 | Free | Four distinct endgame modes added at no charge |
| Battle for Brooklyn | 27 May 2025 | $14.99 | First new open world zone since 2020. Brooklyn Heights and Dumbo, 3 main and 4 world missions, autumn setting, Smart Cover returns, level 40 boost, plus 50 stash |
| Xbox Game Pass | 27 May 2025 | Subscription | Base game on PC and console. Expansions still sold separately |
| Year 7 seasons: Crossroads, The Pact, Mutiny | 2025 to 2026 | Free track | Seasonal journey reworked for co-op. All new gear sits on the free tier |
| Year 8 Season 1, Rise Up | 2 Apr 2026 | Free | Escalation mode with 10 difficulty tiers, Prototype gear tier above High End, Black Tusk joins Retaliation |
| Realism Mode | 2026 anniversary | Free | HUD stripped out, no passive health regen, ammo actually matters. Needs Warlords |
| Year 8 Season 2, Into the Dark | 16 Jun 2026 | Free | Toxic Dark Zone, new Incursion called Steel Creek, PvP talent pass, two Classified Assignments |
| Year 8 Season 3, Red Horizon | 27 Aug 2026 | Free track | Cleaners return, Under Pressure global modifier, Toxic PvE Dark Zone made permanent, uncapped Blackout Dark Zone, Fafnir and Iron Will Exotics on the free track |
| Title update Y8S3.2, patch 2.38 | 15 Oct 2026 | Free | Escalation no longer burns tokens just to enter. Red Moon Unleashed event to 3 Nov, Lichtenberg rifle, Conflict rank cap doubled to 200 |
| Crossplay | Nov 2026 | Free | On by default, can be turned off. Clan size doubles to 100. Leaderboards reset |
| Echoes of Central Park | 3 Nov 2026 | $29.99 Deluxe | Third expansion. Central Park in Manhattan, a new replayable endgame area, level 40 boost and stash expansion included |
Count the money column. In seven and a half years this game has charged for exactly three expansions, one of them $15. Every mode, every season's gameplay-affecting gear, every balance pass has been free. Premium passes exist at $9.99 a season and sell cosmetics and loot caches, and the items that actually matter stay on the free track. That's an unusually restrained model for a Ubisoft live service game, and it's worth saying out loud given how the rest of the industry behaves. We dug into why that restraint is so rare in why big budget games stopped being fun.
What is happening right now, in October 2026
If you install this week you are walking into the middle of three things at once, which is unusual for a game this old.
Red Moon Unleashed is live from 15 October to 3 November. It is the Halloween event, and it is a proper one: Moon Cultist variants of every existing faction, named bosses including the Necromancer and the Risen Hunter, a new Lichtenberg rifle, and an apparel cache with 43 items in it. From 27 October there is also a stat multiplier window with bonuses to reload speed, swap speed and armour on kill. Free, no pass required.
Crossplay arrives in November, which is the single biggest quality of life change in the game's history. Ubisoft says it needed a partial rebuild of the online architecture to get there, which explains why it took more than seven years. It will be on by default and you can switch it off at the character select screen. Clans go from 50 members to 100. Leaderboards get wiped in the transition, so if you care about a placement, screenshot it.
Echoes of Central Park lands on 3 November at $29.99 for the Deluxe edition, built by Massive Entertainment with Ubisoft Bucharest. It takes you to Central Park in Manhattan, it is built around a horror register rather than the usual faction warfare, and it includes a replayable endgame area where you start as the hunted and later return as the hunter. Pre-orders include a Level 40 boost and a stash expansion.
Wait before you pre-order Echoes of Central Park. No review scores exist yet, and this game's track record on expansions is genuinely uneven. Warlords of New York was excellent. Battle for Brooklyn got mixed reviews and a rocky launch week. At $29.99 this is double Brooklyn's price, and the only detail confirmed about length is that there is a campaign plus a replayable endgame zone. There is no reason to commit money before the reviews land on 3 November. Prices and edition contents also vary by region and storefront, so check your own before buying.
What still holds up
The cover shooting remains the best thing here, and it was always the best thing here. This isn't a power fantasy like Destiny. Enemies flank fast, flush you out deliberately, and punish you for holding one piece of cover too long. A hard fight is a sequence of small repositioning decisions, and winning one feels earned in a way that very few shooters manage. If you want that same deliberate, cover-led feel in a cheaper single player package, our Terminator Resistance review covers the budget version of it.
Washington DC is still an exceptional setting. Overgrown, cluttered, convincingly abandoned, and dense enough that wandering off a main road almost always finds you something. Brooklyn in autumn, added in 2025, was the first time the game changed season, and the shift in light did more for the atmosphere than you'd expect.
Solo play is properly supported. Enemy counts scale down, matchmaking is optional rather than forced, and you can finish everything alone if you want to. Escalation runs solo too. If you want a sense of how this world compares in raw scale to the usual suspects, we measured them properly in the biggest open world maps, actually measured.
What does not hold up
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
The story is still thin. Most of it arrives through an earpiece while you're shooting someone, the dialogue is functional at best, and an interesting premise about a collapsed society mostly resolves into hostile factions standing in your way. Seven years of seasonal narrative layered on top has made it harder to follow, not easier, which is why Brooklyn's plot reads as nonsense if you skipped the seasons it continues from. Expect the same problem with Central Park.
The opening hours feel their age. Levels 1 to 30 are the oldest content in the game and it shows in the mission design and the pacing. Both paid expansions now hand you a level 40 boost that skips past it entirely, which is a reasonable option and a slightly damning one.
Bullet-sponge melee enemies are still irritating, and Battle for Brooklyn itself got a genuinely mixed reception. Positive outlets called it the best $15 they'd spent in a while. Others scored it around 6 out of 10, calling it safe and forgettable, and a fair chunk of the community thought the level design was the weakest the game has produced. Its launch in late May 2025 also had server and login problems. Buy it for the setting and the extra skills, not expecting a second Warlords.
Escalation had a bumpy first few months too, and it is worth knowing why that matters. At launch in April 2026 you wagered tokens to enter a run and lost them if you wiped or disconnected, which punished people for their own internet dropping. Ubisoft walked that back in stages: tokens stopped resetting between seasons in May, and as of 15 October 2026 entering a run no longer spends tokens at all. You just need a balance matching the tier. If you tried Escalation in spring and found it punishing, that specific complaint has been fixed.
On player numbers. One outlet reported that Steam concurrents spiked more than 400% following the Year 8 roadmap reveal in 2026. The spike is widely corroborated, the claim that it reached an all-time high is not, so treat the size of it with caution. What is safe to say is that queues are fast and the game is comfortably populated, and crossplay in November should shorten matchmaking further on every platform.
Buy, wait or skip
| You are | Verdict | Do this |
|---|---|---|
| New to the series | Buy on sale | Base game plus Warlords of New York. Deep discounts are frequent. Ignore both newer expansions until level 40 |
| On Game Pass already | Just play it | Costs nothing extra. Check whether Warlords is included in your tier before buying it |
| Lapsed since 2020 to 2023 | Come back | You missed four free modes and the whole of Year 8. Start with Escalation, then the Red Moon event before 3 November |
| Lapsed earlier in 2026 | Come back now | Two free seasons since Rise Up, and the Escalation token system that annoyed everyone was fixed on 15 October |
| Playing actively, own Warlords | Brooklyn is optional | $15 for roughly 6 to 10 hours, plus Smart Cover and extra stash. Fine, not essential |
| Tempted by Echoes of Central Park | Wait for reviews | $29.99, out 3 November, no scores yet. This game's expansion record is uneven. Nothing is lost by waiting a week |
| Separated from friends by platform | Wait for November | Crossplay is weeks away. Do not buy a second copy on another platform now |
| You disliked it before | Skip | The core loop has not changed. If cover shooting and loot grinding bored you, more of it won't help |
One ordering note that trips people up constantly: Battle for Brooklyn requires Warlords of New York, and it only unlocks at level 40. Buying an expansion first does nothing for a new player.
Before you install
This is a large download that has grown steadily with seven years of content, so budget for well over 100 GB once updates land. On a 25 Mbps connection that's most of a day, and on 60 Mbps you're looking at roughly four to five hours. Start it before you go to bed rather than when you want to play.
It's an always-online game, so a stable connection matters more than raw speed, and there is no offline mode even for solo play. Worth knowing before you commit the storage. If your connection makes a download this size impractical, the smaller open world options in our mobile open world roundup are a far better fit.
If you like this, try these
- Cyberpunk 2077, the other big open world shooter that was written off at launch and fixed over years
- Days Gone, if the ruined-America setting is the part you're here for
- Battlefield V, for gunplay without the loot grind
- Marvel's Spider-Man, if you want a dense city with an actual story attached
Verdict
Recommended, with a caveat. The combat is still among the best in the genre, the city is still one of the most convincing in any shooter, and the support record over seven years is genuinely rare. Year 9 is already confirmed, which almost no 2019 live service game can say. The story is weak, the first thirty levels are dated, and the expansion record is uneven. Get it cheap or through Game Pass, get Warlords of New York, and let Echoes of Central Park be reviewed before you pay for it. Assessed against the game as of title update Y8S3.2, patch 2.38, 15 October 2026.
Frequently asked questions
Is The Division 2 still worth playing?
Yes, particularly on sale or via Game Pass. Year 8 has run three seasons in 2026, crossplay arrives in November, a third expansion lands on 3 November, and Ubisoft confirmed Year 9 at Gamescom in August 2026. The endgame is deeper now than at any previous point.
Does The Division 2 have crossplay?
Not yet, but it arrives in November 2026, more than seven years after launch. It will be enabled by default and can be turned off at the character select screen. Clan capacity doubles from 50 to 100 and all leaderboards reset when it goes live.
Do I need Warlords of New York?
Effectively yes. It raises the level cap to 40, reworks the gear system, and is required for Battle for Brooklyn and for Realism Mode. Most of the community treats it as part of the full game rather than optional.
What is Echoes of Central Park and should I pre-order it?
It is the third expansion, out 3 November 2026 at $29.99 for the Deluxe edition, set in Central Park in Manhattan with a horror tone and a replayable endgame area. Pre-orders include a Level 40 boost and stash expansion. We would wait for reviews. Brooklyn was mixed and this costs double.
Is Battle for Brooklyn worth $15?
For existing players, probably. It's roughly 6 to 10 hours, adds Smart Cover, the Catalyst Exotic, 50 stash slots and a level 40 boost. Reception was mixed, with scores around 6 out of 10 from some outlets calling it safe. It is not a second Warlords.
Can I play solo?
Yes, start to finish. Enemy counts scale to the number of players and matchmaking is never forced. Escalation supports solo play as well. Raids and Incursions are the main things that genuinely want a group.
Is it pay to win?
No. The only paid content is the three expansions. Every new seasonal item that affects gameplay sits on the free pass track, including the Exotics added in Red Horizon. The premium pass runs $9.99 a season and sells cosmetics and loot caches.
Is the co-op level scaling bug fixed?
Yes. That was a 2019 launch issue where low-level players were killed instantly alongside higher-level friends. It has long since been resolved. Any review still citing it is describing the launch build.
Is a Division 3 coming?
A new mainline entry has been acknowledged as in development, with no release date. Separately there is The Division Resurgence on mobile, and Survivors, a standalone extraction mode currently in a test programme. Year 9 of this game is confirmed and continuing regardless.
Where to go next
- Why most big budget games don't get seven years of support
- The live service games that were switched off instead
- How big open world maps really are
- What else is worth installing right now
- Browse more Action, Open World and Multiplayer guides
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