It's true.
Destiny fans seem trapped in a bizarre cycle of suffering and anguish. I'm watching the stages of grief play out in real time for thousands and thousands of people.
They spend years telling everyone how much they hate Bungie, how terrible Destiny is, and how incompetent the developers have become. Then the second the game they hate so much stops getting development, in the very next breath, they start begging for Destiny 3.
The new cope for their community is basically
"Despite years of shit talking the product, maybe if we all log on and play, they'll make another one!"
If Bungie is really as incapable as what they say, why would Destiny 3 suddenly be the game they've always wanted? Why with the sudden optimism?
Why would the same studio that supposedly spent years making bad decisions suddenly reverse course and deliver a masterpiece? It's never been more over for Destiny fans, they cant please you. I know the struggle, Blizzard is teasing a new version of classic wow, but its going to be shit. It's going to have gay pride parades and furry shit in it. It's over.
As one of those longtime Destiny fans, I can't speak for everyone, but the reason I don't want it to end is because I still care. The opposite of love isn't hate, it's apathy. When people are calling Bungie out for stupid ideas and getting mad about it, they just want the game they love to be in a better place than it is. It's when you stop hearing those voices altogether that you know something bad is happening. That means people have given up entirely.
What the response to the end of development shows is that there are still a lot of people who care about the Destiny universe and truly want more of it, even if they hadn't been playing as much lately for one reason or another. They want more of the story, they want to play through more activities, and they want to be able to share in those memories with others. It shows that the franchise's seeming death was more brought about by stupid decisions from Bungie than by people's disinterest.
And yeah, it's obvious that Bungie in its current state probably couldn't deliver an adequate follow-up, especially not with Sony shooting down any attempt to (and I don't blame them with how much money they've burned). But that doesn't stop people from wanting.
The core issue at all of this is what would a Destiny 3 even look like? I'm not a Destiny person but it feels like that it would have to be a huge justification to not just keep Destiny 2 going instead against the idea of your existing D2 install base being reset to starting over in a new game. (Did Destiny 1 let you carry anything to Destiny 2?)
Is there a real market for Destiny 3 to chase?
I've gone over this before, but the biggest issue is that D2 was not designed from the start to be infinitely built upon, it was only supposed to last a couple years at most before being replaced with D3. This led to bandaid decisions to keep it going like removing vast chunks of the game in order to make room for more, which did keep the game alive but also ruined its reputation. And while people were upset about nothing from D1 transferring to D2 (they literally blew up your vault at the start of the campaign), over time that attitude has softened somewhat, with more players these days seeing that continuing D2 long past its initial expiration date caused more harm than good.
So in theory, a fresh game could potentially offer a stronger base to build off of, ideally being designed from the ground up to last a long time. You could also potentially mitigate a lot of the problems that the D1 -> D2 transfer had, which were more due to the radical shift in various aspects of game design (replacing customizable subclasses with static ability kits, dual primaries and shoving everything else into the power slot so rockets competed with shotguns, slower and less vertical movement, etc.). Instead of reinventing the wheel, just transfer all of the work you've done over the past decade on modern class and weapons design and work on building off of it. There wouldn't even really need to be a hard reset of gear and abilities, you could just start off with everyone's stuff transferred over and pick up easily, not leaving behind any of the guns or cosmetics they know and love.
It's pie in the sky, sure, and I'm under no illusion that this will happen. But I do think the market is still there for a well-crafted looter shooter, and without Destiny, what else is there? People point to Warframe as a replacement, but it doesn't necessarily hit in the same way for people (I tried, I didn't like it). And Borderlands? I'd rather not OD on cringe, thanks.