Reinventing PvP in The Division’s Last DLC: The Last Stand

The first State of the Game of 2017 brought pleasant news in regards to Year One’s last DLC: “Last Stand” has a primary focus for PvP players, although there will be news of PvE elements to be released soon, as was stated by Massive Community Developer, Hamish Bode with Red Storm Studios Developers, and Terry Spier and Keith Evans who worked on developing The Last Stand.

“It is step one for organized PvP” within The Division,” says Spier.

The new game mode opens new areas of the Dark Zone, with seamless movement through DZ 6 to “DZ North”, which expands the current Dark Zone to 7, 8 and 9. 

DZ North will comprise “…more interiors, bigger spaces, rooftops and building interiors,” says Spiers, doubling the size of Dark Zone 7-9 in an Arena style type of gameplay, while promoting player/s to play intelligently, strategically and tactically as a cohesive unit. 

They are also promoting no penalties for dying, and the respawning times will be faster and will take place at Area B where heavy combat takes place. Spier also commented on Gearsets and said that there will be NO new gear scores because “we want people to jump into this right away.” 

The Last Stand is structured in 8v8 squad mode in which you will have to queue-in (i.e., your 4 person squad will be paired with another squad of 4 to comprise your team and is objective based, capturing Area A, B and C. 

This is much like “Conquer” mode in games like Battlefield 1 and Star Wars: Battlefront. Once the objectives are obtained, the session with be over; however your gameplay-style among other things will factor into the end-session leaderboards for Dark Zone. Everything you do counts and will receive bonus rewards for winning.

What is most interesting is that players will be taking on the role of either Shay Agent and/or Rogue Agent—thereby being a good guy is subjective if you followed the game’s storyline. 

Also, the players who like or primarily engage in PvE, Update 1.6 will have a New Incursion (I’m hoping its at the USS Interpreid which at one point players where able to leave the playable map before bug fixes in 1.2). More news is to be released on PvE aspects of 1.6 in the upcoming weeks.

Other news Hamish addressed in this week’s State of the Game:

• AlphaBridge WILL be nerfed confirmed (no surprise there).
• PTS will only be available on PC; PTS Last Stand TDB.
• Survival solo queue fixes will be corrected in 1.6.
• No wait delay for PS4 users. To be released on all platforms at the same time.

I can’t wait to see what this does for the PvP community and those hardcover PvPers. I am also eager to see how the environmental design north of the DZ will turn out, as well as engaging in penalty-free PvP in the DZ. 

We can only hope that the Red Storm team has guided PvP within The Division toward the right step.



"Reinventing PvP in The Division’s Last DLC: The Last Stand" was first seen on Rune Works:  Gaming.


by Maria Sumoza