This past weekend saw a bizarre, still largely unexplained outage of Sony’s PlayStation Network service, effectively rendering a bunch of folk unable to access digital games and online servers. As someone who moonlights as a console sicko, I’ll admit it was a real spanner in my weekend plans.
It was quite frankly terrible timing, too—as if there’s ever a good time to be almost completely offline for an entire day—considering Capcom was running its second Open Beta Test for Monster Hunter Wilds. The PSN outage meant that would-be hunters were left in the dark for almost half of the beta’s runtime, leaving folk pleading with Capcom to extend the Forbidden Lands’ opening times.
I was in two minds as to whether Capcom would actually do such a thing but thankfully, it seems they’ve decided to show a little generosity. After previously posting that it was “considering running OBT2 for an additional 24 hours at a future date,” it’s now confirmed that it’ll be tacking that extra day onto the already-planned re-run of the second beta taking place in just a few days from now.
“Hunters, we’re pleased to confirm that due to the PlayStation Network outage that occurred during the first week of OBT2, we’re extending the second week of OBT2 by +24 hours on all platforms,” a follow-up post from the Monster Hunter X page read.
The second-second open beta test will now run from February 13 at 7pm PT / 10pm ET / February 14 at 3am GMT until February 17 at 6:59pm PT / 9:59pm ET / February 18 at 2:59am GMT.
Of course, for PlayStation hunters it’s great news that they’ll be able to reap a little bit of their lost time back, but for the rest of us it’s a nice wee bonus we wouldn’t have otherwise had. An extra day to throw my head against Arkveld repeatedly or mess around a little more with my beloved hunting horn—as a veteran doot bro, I’m really digging Wilds’ iteration—is a thing I’m certainly not gonna say no to.
Even if you don’t plan on spending a load of time in the beta before Wilds releases later this month, it’s still worth popping in for a quick hunt to nab those sweet beta test rewards for the full game.
