http://www.gamespot.com/articles/destiny-will-have-level-boost-for-the-taken-king/1100-6429506/ "Of course, armor won't be useless. Better gear will still count toward your overall power and defense, so it'll still be important to go search for the best legendaries and exotics. However, that won't be necessary to rank up. Creative director Luke Smith stated that the Light level requirement resulted in forcing players to focus only on the acquisition of gear. "The conflation of gear and character level led to this place where your identity was determined by things outside of your control,” he explained. “We don't want to do that." In addition, loot drops will be more closely tied to your character level. Bungie is changing the game so that you are even more likely to receive high-level drops the closer you are to level 40. You'll also get drops you already own much less in the new expansion. Destiny: The Taken King launches on September 15. Bungie recently stated that The Taken King will not let you upgrade your currently owned legendary gear. Additionally, your Ghost companion will no longer be voiced by Peter Dinklage. Nolan North is redoing the entirety of the Ghost's lines in the game." ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/destiny-the-taken-king-lets-you-try-out-guns-adds-/1100-6429472/ "Notably, Bungie is working on the Crucible, Destiny's competitive multiplayer mode, to make it more fair and a better overall experience. For one thing, Bungie is adding a mercy rule to the Crucible to end unfair matches early. If you find yourself in a wildly unbalanced match--your team is getting crushed, or vise versa--the mercy rule will come into effect, ending the match and putting your team back into matchmaking. Additionally, matchmaking itself has been retooled to more often match your team with teams of similar skill levels. Longtime Destiny fans often laugh at the mention of the Gunsmith, an NPC who is important in the early parts of the game for acquiring weapons, but quickly loses all relevance. Now, Bungie is making the vendor useful for Guardians of every rank, because the Gunsmith now has a reputation meter like other vendors. Unlike with other NPCs, however, you gain rank with the Gunsmith by testing out his weapons. This basically works like old Exotic weapon bounties. You "check out" a gun from the Gunsmith, and this gun has a bounty attached to it. If you complete that bounty, you'll turn the gun back in and receive reputation with the vendor. If you reach a high enough reputation level with the Gunsmith, you'll unlock the ability to buy legendaries directly from the vendor once a week. Finally, Bungie is once again changing the way that you upgrade legendary and exotic weapons. Although you won't be able to boost the power of current legendaries, exotics and new legendary weapons can be buffed by utilizing unwanted exotic and legendary gear. You can sacrifice an item from the same gear slot to upgrade a different item, making receiving duplicate drops much less disappointing."