Game Rant interviewed GGG's Jonathan Rogers and Mark Roberts about PoE's new League and  PoE 2's Ranger:

Path of Exile 1 and 2 Interview: Devs Talk Necropolis' T17 Maps and PoE 2's Ranger Class

Game Rant speaks with GGG's Jonathan Rogers and Mark Roberts about Path of Exile's new League, PoE 2's Ranger, and more.

• Path of Exile is expanding with the Necropolis League and PoE 2 is revamping the Ranger class.
• Game Directors Jonathan Rogers and Mark Roberts provide insights on dynamic skill changes, Ascendancy classes, and Tier 17 Maps.
• PoE 2 will focus on maintaining class identity and encouraging diverse builds.

Path of Exile is soon launching its Necropolis League alongside plenty of quality-of-life changes and additions, and at the same time, Path of Exile 2 revealed to the world its revised version of the original's Ranger class. The Path of Exile franchise is ever-growing and proving it can be the go-to action RPG for generations to come, and the way the base game is reinventing itself with Necropolis is a testament to that.

Path of Exile 2's new Ranger class also holds a lot of promise, offering many cool Lightning or Poison-based skills to players. Game Rant talked to Grinding Gear Games' Jonathan Rogers (Path of Exile 2 Game Director) and Mark Roberts (Path of Exile 1 and 2 Game Director) about this and a lot more, including Path of Exile's upcoming release of Tier 17 Maps or Path of Exile 2's approach to Ascendancy classes. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: Does duration change dynamically in PoE 2? For example, you have Rain of Arrows going on, then you gain a Frenzy Charge with Sniper's Mark and Snipe. Does Rain of Arrows' duration change immediately or does it only affect future ones? Does this apply to all duration-related effects?

Rogers: For that effect in particular, it's when you use the skill rather than when you get the Frenzy Charge. Using the skill is effectively consuming the charge so the skill will continue. Generally speaking, though, things do update dynamically as your stats change in Path of Exile 2, but that particular case is one where it's intended to spend the charge as part of the skill's activation.

[...]

Thanks Couchpotato!

The Trial of the Ancestors expansion for Path of Exile will be released on August 18:

[ExileCon 2023] Path of Exile: Trial of the Ancestors Trailer

Thanks Couchpotato!

The new expansion for Path of Exile will launch in December:

December Expansion Name Reveal

Blue's News reported that the expansion for Path of Exile had been released yesterday.

Path of Exile: Siege of the Atlas Released

The Siege of the Atlas expansion is out for Path of Exile as the latest new content for Grinding Gears' free-to-play action/RPG. The Windows and macOS editions are now available the official website, while console gamers must wait until February 9th. Check out the Official Trailer for a look, or the Patch Notes for an outline of all that this brings. A recent announcement outlined what this brings to the party:

Siege of the Atlas Content and Features:

• Updated Atlas: The end-game Atlas of Worlds has been simultaneously simplified and also made deeper. The region system has been removed, and individual Atlas Passive Trees have been replaced by one gigantic Atlas-wide passive tree which creates a more flexible way for players to engage in the content they like best while also increasing its challenge and reward.
• Four Pinnacle Bosses: The new storyline is capped with four new Pinnacle Bosses, ultimate boss fights for players seeking additional challenges. These bosses can potentially drop a selection of extremely valuable new unique items.
• Endgame Item Crafting: Players can master the Eldritch Implicit Modifier system to improve their best items. New currency items allow them to craft powerful new implicit modifiers onto items that enable new build opportunities.
• Archnemesis League: Players can collect modifiers to use on Petrified Monsters that are encountered throughout Wraeclast in order to create their own mini-boss fights. Each modifier provides a reward and a monster behavior and will stack in subsequent fights to create progressively more dangerous and rewarding encounters. These modifiers can be combined to create recipes for even more challenge and reward.
• Game Balance Improvements: Spellcasters and Archers have been targeted with a massive selection of balance buffs, so that they are even more competitive with Path of Exile's best builds.

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The "sometime in February" date of the expansion has been set to February 4th. A stream has been planned on January 27th to reveal its content.

February Expansion Date Reveal

Path of Exile Livestream Announcement

Tune in at 11am on January 27th (PST) to find out all about our next expansion!

In the livestream, you'll learn all about new endgame content in Siege of the Atlas and the features of the challenge league that will accompany the expansion. It's followed by a live Q&A between ZiggyD and Chris Wilson.

You can catch everything you need to know at twitch.tv/pathofexile. Twitch Drops will be enabled for the livestream so make sure to encourage your favourite streamers to watch along with us!

Path of Exile's Expansion Launch Date

You'll be able to play the new Path of Exile: Siege of the Atlas for free on February 4th (PST) on PC and on February 9th (PST) on console.

We can't wait to see you then!

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COG Connected reports an update from the developers about their next expansion for PoE.

PATH OF EXILE DEVELOPERS PROVIDE UPDATE ON NEXT EXPANSION AND MORE

Path of Exile Developers Provide Update on Next Expansion And More

Path of Exile is a popular action role playing game that originally released in 2013. Since then, it has released on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in 2017 and 2019 respectively. The game has often been lauded as the leader in the ARPG genre, overtaking the likes of Diablo. Path of Exile is known for its difficult but expansive and in-depth systems and engaging content. The developers have provided an update on Path of Exile heading into 2022 as the year comes to an end.

The developers indicate that they are planning to release the 3.17 Expansion sometime in February 2022. As a result, the Scourge League will be extended for two weeks. Fans of the game can look forward to more details via a livestream prior to the launch. Additionally, as usual, there will be juicy Twitch Drops for viewers.

The team confirmed that the two-week delay was to ensure that its New Zealand team would be able to enjoy the holidays and recharge for the year ahead. There will be confirmation on the dates early in the upcoming year. The ‘Hard Mode’, which has been highly anticipated, will be tested sometime after the launch of 3.17.

[...]

Grinding Gear Games posted an update about the launch of Scourge. Another update revealed the Atlantis Mystery Box, a series of cosmetic effects obtainable through microtransaction.

How Scourge's Launch Went

Over the weekend, we launched Path of Exile: Scourge and were thrilled by the number of people who joined us for launch day. In fact, we reached 254,570 peak player concurrency which is 96% of our previous highest record!

The actual deployment was fairly smooth. We had one issue in the first hour where our regional routers were crashing occasionally when routing chat packets containing linked items. Each of these crashes would disconnect about 10% of players. We temporarily disabled chat, which mitigated the issue, and were then able to restore chat functionality without item linking.

Item linking functionality will be restored in our next realm-restart patch, which also fixes another problem that is causing rarer partial-realm crashes (one so far). If all goes well, we expect to deploy this today at around 10pm PDT.

[...]

RPGamer reports that Grinding Gear Games has announced the next expansion for Path of Exile. Scourge will be released very soon, October 22nd, and is free for all players.

Path of Exile: Scourge Expansion Revealed

[...]

The Scourge Challenge League sees players coming across a figure that appears out of nowhere and trying to escape from an unseen threat. She hands players a device called the Blood Crucible, encouraging them to implant it in their body, which they do. As players advance through areas, the Blood Crucible is filled with the blood of defeated monsters. Once it fills up a certain amount, players can activate it and are sent into a parallel reality. This is a version of Wraeclast in the midst of an apocalyptic event where it being overrun by demons called the Scourge. The amount of blood collected determines how long players can spend in this reality, though players can choose to shift back early if they wish. [...]

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Henriquejr spotted the announcement for the expansion Path of Exile:Expedition:

Path of Exile Announcement Stream (July 2021)

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In this livestream, we announced our July 2021 expansion, Path of Exile: Expedition where you will join the Kalguuran expedition, excavate their lost relics and undead using chains of explosives, then barter, deal and gamble these relics with their merchants. We also revealed the long-awaited return of Path of Exile: Royale!

Fextralife compared Path of Exile with the Diablo franchise:

Path of Exile vs Diablo: Is Path of Exile Better Than Diablo? Which One Should You Play?

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Henriquejr spotted that the expansion Path of Exile: Ultimatum has been released:

Path of Exile: Ultimatum Official Trailer

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In Path of Exile: Ultimatum, you must undertake the trials of Chaos and choose whether to risk it all for ultimate power. Our April expansion contains the Ultimatum challenge league, eight new Skill and Support Gems, improvements to Vaal Skills, an overhaul to past league reward systems, dozens of new items, and much more. We've also just released a new trailer and gameplay showcase for Path of Exile 2.

Grinding Gear Games announced that Path of Exile: Echoes of the Atlas has already become its most successful expansion to date:

Path of Exile: Echoes of the Atlas Becomes Most Successful Expansion in Grinding Gear Games’ History

With 265K+ simultaneous players at launch and becoming the #4 most popular game on Steam, The Maven is pleased… for now

"Echoes of the Atlas has been Path of Exile's most successful expansion so far," Chris Wilson, co-founder of Grinding Gear Games said. "We are so pleased to still be setting new player number records after over 30 quarterly league releases since 2013. It shows us that our development methodologies are evolving in the right direction as we work towards completing Path of Exile 2."

Interest in Path of Exile has not dwindled in the least as nearly 300,000 fans were viewing the Echoes of the Atlas expansion debut livestream simultaneously while a total of 782,000 unique viewers tuned in. When the highly-anticipated expansion launched, it reached 265,250 simultaneous players, becoming the #4 most popular game on Steam at the time. Since launch, player numbers have been 11% higher than Path of Exile’s previous highest launch, which was Delirium in March 2020 during the peak of the first global lockdown. 

The expansion Path of Exile: Echoes of the Atlas is available today:

Path of Exile: Echoes of the Atlas Launches on PC

Grinding Gear Games kicks off 2021 with a major expansion for their popular action RPG that will test the mettle of players crazy enough to go toe-to-toe with The Maven

Auckland, New Zealand, January 15, 2020 – Grinding Gear Games is announcing that its next major expansion for Path of Exile, Echoes of the Atlas, is launching today at 11 AM PT on PC and Mac, and on January 20th for Xbox and PlayStation® consoles, including the new Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. The expansion delivers new end-game content, a new challenge league, new skills, and a new pinnacle boss simply known as The Maven. 

The Echoes of the Atlas expansion will deliver several new pieces of content and improvements such as: 

• End-game content including new pinnacle boss, The Maven, which requires players to defeat several bosses simultaneously in order to challenge her; New Boss Arena; Atlas Passive Skill Trees; 11 New Maps with Bosses; Craftable Watchstones and The Maven’s Orb.
• New Ritual Challenge League
• New items and skills
• Rebalancing nineteen Ascendancy classes, three of which had major reworks
• The return of Heist and Harvest leagues

Here's the trailer of the new expansion:

Path of Exile: Echoes of the Atlas Official Trailer

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Have some fun with Path of Exile in December:

Path of Exile Ends 2020 With Three Epic December Events

Holiday shopping isn’t the only thing that will fill up your time next month

Auckland, New Zealand, November 23, 2020 – Grinding Gear Games is announcing three epic events that will be taking place in Path of Exile during December 2020 to end the year with a bang, bang, bang. The events include a one-week Mayhem Event, a one-week Endless Delve Event, and a three-week Heist Flashback Event that are guaranteed to keep the holiday spirit going strong leading up to the end of the Heist League and the launch of Path of Exile’s 3.13 endgame-focused expansion in January. 

Starting at 12PM PT on December 4th, a one-week Mayhem Event will kick off by taking classic Path of Exile modifiers from past leagues Anarchy, Invasion, Breach, Ambush, Torment, and Harbinger and turning them up to 11. Each area in Wraeclast will have one of the following scenarios: 20 Rogue Exiles, 20 Strongboxes, 20 Invasion Bosses, 20 Breaches, 20 Tormented Spirits, or 20 Harbingers, with mods changing every hour. 

The one-week Endless Delve event kicks off a week later on December 11th at 12PM PT, taking place entirely in the Azurite Mine. In this unique event, players start their plunge into the perilous darkness with some starter gear. Players will have access to the passive points normally gained from quests and incur Kitava’s resistance penalties at various level thresholds. Players can ascend their character using the Altar of Ascendancy from within the Mine Encampment while Lilly Roth and Niko will be available to provide skill gems. Players will not have access to their Hideouts or any towns, which means they’ll be going solo against the darkness. Good luck with that. 

Last, but not least, is the three-week Heist Flashback Event. Starting on December 18th at 12PM PT, each game area will include several popular mods from past leagues, with a random selection of three of the following mods present, which will change each hour, on the hour:

• 2 Additional Rogue Exiles 
• 2 Additional Invasion Bosses 
• 1 Additional Breach 
• 2 Additional Strongboxes 
• 3 Additional Tormented Spirits 
• 2 Additional Perandus Chests and a 33% chance to spawn Cadiro 
• 3 Additional Rare Monster Packs with Nemesis Mods 
• 3 Additional Magic Monster Packs with Bloodlines 
• 1 Additional Abyss
• 2 Additional Harbingers 
• 1 Timeless Monolith 
• 1 Metamorph 
• 1 Delirium Mirror 
•  Beyond 

Prizes for all three events include the new Demigod’s Authority, a Twilight Mystery Box for reaching level 50, and random microtransaction prizes at level 60, 70, 80, 85, 90, and 95 that will be drawn at the conclusion of each event.

Path of Exile: Delirium has been announced. The latest expansion will be coming in mid-March.

Grinding Gear Games Announces Path of Exile: Delirium

Auckland, New Zealand - February 26, 2020 -
Grinding Gear Games announced today that it will launch the next expansion to their hit ARPG, Path of Exile: Delirium on the PC at noon PST, March 13th, 2020 with the PlayStation®4 and Xbox One versions available the following week.

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Since its launch in 2013, Path of Exile has been known for its exciting action combat with risk/reward tradeoffs and its incredibly deep character customization options. The Path of Exile: Delirium expansion will dramatically push the boundaries of both of these systems.

In the latest expansion, as you touch the Mirror of Delirium, reality turns to mist and your worst nightmares emerge before your eyes. Delirium introduces dozens of lethal monster modifiers, many new bosses, and horrifying demons lurking within rare and unique monsters. Encounters you once mastered can now be played under the effects of Delirium, substantially ramping up their difficulty and rewards.

• Path of Exile: Delirium Key Features Include:
• Download and play for free, but never pay-to-win
• The Delirium Challenge league
• New Delirium Cluster Jewels let you dynamically expand your passive skill tree
• Four new skills and three new support gems, including Kinetic Bolt, a new physical damage wand skill and Bladeblast, which detonates blades created by other abilities.
• Thirteen new unique items, including a cosmetic set of equipment and many new unique jewels
• Numerous improvements to the Conquerors of the Atlas endgame

December's Metamorph challenge league has been integrated as core game content More information about specific features of Path of Exile: Delirium can be found at: www.pathofexile.com/delirium

The Blight supporter packs for Path of Exile are now available:

The Blight Supporter Packs Are Available Now!

To celebrate the announcement of our upcoming expansion, we've just released two pairs of Blight Supporter Packs! By purchasing these you will receive cosmetic effects, such as an Armour Set, Weapon Effect, Aura Effect, a Pet and more! Press M in game to check them out!

There are two pairs of packs available with many exclusive microtransactions. Each of the two pairs has different contents, so you can choose whichever one (or both) you prefer. You can upgrade from the cheaper one in a pair to the more expensive later.
The Sentinel Supporter Pack contains a Weapon Effect, a Pet, a Portrait Frame, a Supporter Forum Title and 250 points. The Sentinel Overlord Supporter Pack contains everything from the Sentinel pack as well as an Armour Set, 550 points, a Portrait Frame and a Forum Title. Check out the preview of the Sentinel Overlord Supporter Pack below!

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The Lich Supporter Pack contains a Weapon Effect, an Aura Effect, a Portrait Frame, a Supporter Forum Title and 250 points. The Bane Lich has the same contents as the Lich pack, plus an Armour Set, an alternative Helmet Skin, a Portrait Frame, a Forum Title and 550 points. Check it out below:

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You can upgrade from one of these Supporter Packs to another in the same series by clicking "Upgrade" on the desired pack. The process will include any pure points packs purchased since the release of Blight. The maximum amount that upgrades can contribute is 80% of the value of a pack.

Note that the Core and Blight packs are in different series, so you can't upgrade from one of those to the other type. If you have any questions about this process, please contact support@grindinggear.com!

We hope you really enjoy these Supporter Packs! Thank you so much for your generous support!

PC Gamer looks back at the making of Path of Exile:

The making of Path of Exile

How Grinding Gear Games created a free-to-play classic.

When Chris Wilson was called a noob in his own game, Path of Exile, he knew it was going places.

Before the Grinding Gear Games co-founder had gone to bed, on the first night of Path of Exile's closed alpha test, he was running the highest level character in the game. When he woke up, he had the privilege of being insulted by the player who deposed him.

"The thing we were worried about with our closed alpha was whether or not people would actually keep playing overnight,” Wilson recalls. “This was basically us inviting our friends and family to play, and they’d play for a few hours to humour us. But if this person was willing to call in sick the next day and not go to work because he could be the number one player in the world in this upcoming action-RPG, which was his goal, then we had something.”

[...]

Thanks henriquejr!

The Legion expansion is out now:

Path of Exile: Legion Official Trailer and Developer Commentary

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A forum post on the Path of Exile forums talks about how the developers will rebalance melee in the June expansion.

How We're Approaching the Melee Rebalance in 3.7.0

In Synthesis, we performed an extensive rebalance of Spellcasting throughout Path of Exile. A lot of this work focused on a numerical rebalance of most skills.

We have indicated that the June 3.7.0 expansion contains a similar rebalance of Melee skills, and while we certainly do intend to numerically adjust them to make sure they're viable, the actual scope of Melee changes planned is a lot larger than we have indicated so far.

Players from other Action RPGs have occasionally criticised Path of Exile's melee combat for being "clunky", especially early on before players get a lot of attack speed. We are making various experimental changes to the animation system that should help resolve these concerns and really tighten up the feel of melee combat.

In addition to animation system improvements and melee skill rebalances, we are experimenting with changes to systems such as accuracy, melee splash, leech, fortify, various Ascendancy classes, the passive tree, hit/miss feedback, melee base types, movement skills and melee damage availability on items.

This post has been intentionally light on specific details because all of the above potential changes are ongoing experiments that evolve as we try new stuff. We'll post more information in the news over the coming weeks (with the majority of it after 3.7.0's announcement in May). We are very excited about these changes and look forward to sharing more information with you.

Edit: And Cyclone is now a Channelled skill.

An upcoming patch for Path of Exile's 'Synthesis' expansion makes many changes and improvements.

We're continuing to work on improvements for recent content, based on your feedback. We're planning to release the 3.6.2 patch by the end of this working week, which contains a lot of Betrayal changes as well as whatever Synthesis ones are ready. Please note that the following list may be changed prior to the release of this update.

The following improvements are planned to be included in this patch:

• Fixing various issues where monster packs in Fragmented Memories and the Memory Void didn't contain the correct Rare monsters. This also fixes the issue that many players are having where they can't find the Rare monsters required for the "Defeat Synthesis Monsters" challenge.
• Adding labels to Synthesised Chests.
• Reducing number of additional monsters that spawn during Betrayal Intervention encounters. Monsters will respawn less frequently as well.
• Fixing various issues where Niko would not show up in areas for some players, preventing Sulphite from being spawned.
• Increasing the amount of Mastermind Intelligence gained at the completion of a Safehouse.
• Adjusting Intelligence gain values from Betrayal encounters.
• Further changes to address lag and client freezes during Intervention encounters.
• Adding a "release" option that players can select if they don't want to make a choice at the completion of a Betrayal encounter.
• Intervention targets will now deal less damage for a short duration after they have spawned. This is intended to give players more time to react and to re-position as needed.
• Areas prior to Maps will only spawn a single Betrayal encounter. Map areas will continue to spawn three encounters. While we understand that players have been able to somewhat deterministically find Betrayal encounters by repeatedly creating new instances of areas such as The Quarry or The Foothills, we don't want this to be the correct answer. It is both bad for server load and not exactly the intended avenue to gather Intelligence. We are adjusting Intelligence-gain values towards Safehouse unlocks and Mastermind unlocks which should give players quicker access to these without having to resort to creating the same area repeatedly.
• Transportation encounters require you to be closer to them before they'll begin. Previously, they began when you were further away than felt correct.
• Fixing a bug where Intervention encounters could not occur if you had already completed another Job in the same area.
• Fixing a bug where Sulphite Veins in an area affected by the Monstrous Treasure prophecy would not give any Sulphite.
• Fixing a bug where various Sextant modifiers spawned their monsters or barrels inside of Fragmented Memories.
• Adding the ability to toggle visibility of map modifiers on or off.

There are other Synthesis changes that we are working on but can't commit to for 3.6.2 as they are taking some time to finish, test and finalise before they can be patched in. Some of these may have to wait until 3.6.3, which we're targeting to release sometime in the middle of next week.

@Bluesnews A new expansion for Path of Exile called Synthesis has been announced for March 8th.

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In Path of Exile: Synthesis, you will encounter Cavas, recover his lost memories and chain them together to reach valuable rewards, new boss fights and crafting opportunities.

Our March expansion contains the Synthesis challenge league, new items, new gems, a complete rebalance of spells throughout Path of Exile, an integrated version of the Betrayal league and much, much more.

[...]

@PCInvasion A former Diablo player relates his experience trying Path of Exile as a newcomer.

The talk of the town these past few days has been about BlizzCon. More specifically, it’s Blizzard’s decision to announce a mobile game, Diablo: Immortal, which did not sit well with their hardcore PC fanbase. We’ve already covered Diablo: Immortal quite a fair bit, including the reaction from the Path of Exile community. The action role-playing game (ARPG) from New Zealand-based Grinding Gear Games has become the main alternative for anyone seeking to move away from Diablo. That’s probably why the community has been very welcoming of new players — “Diablo refugees” or “Diablo exiles” to the world of Wraeclast — looking to give their game a try.

This is my story as a Path of Exile newcomer. I came in with an open mind and I ended up with a discombobulated brain within the first few seconds. I ended up sharing this experience to the Path of Exile community on Reddit, and they had an overwhelmingly positive response. If you’re new to the game — probably a former Diablo player — you might be able to relate to it as well.

[...]

Path of Exile has a new official trailer for 'Delve'.

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For more information, please visit https://www.pathofexile.com/delve

The Incursion update for Path of Exile is live:

Announcing Path of Exile: Incursion

We're proud to announce the Incursion League which allows players to travel back in time to discover the location of the ancient Vaal treasure temple of Atzoatl and change its history to craft their own perfect temple to run. This update features a new NPC, giant temple with over 75 modular rooms, many new bosses, dozens of new unique items and divination cards, 12 new gems, a massive revamp to over 20 iconic skills and more!

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A Q&A on what to expect from the upcoming content update 3.3.0 for Path of Exile.

What to Expect from Content Update 3.3.0

In just less than a month, we're going to start promotion for Path of Exile's next big release - currently known as Content Update 3.3.0. While it's too early to reveal the full details of this release, we wanted to answer some general questions about its scope so that you have an idea of what to expect (and when).

Is 3.3.0 an Expansion or League?

After a few years of alternating expansions and leagues, we released two expansions back-to-back in late 2017. Our March release blurred the line between an expansion and a league (with a league alongside a significant Ascendancy revamp, introduction of the Uber Elder fight and new skills). We are pitching 3.3.0 in a similar way. It is branded as a league, but is certainly a large release compared to leagues of the past.

In parallel, we are also working on our next big expansion for release later this year.

What's 3.3.0's League like?

When designing 3.3.0's league, we wanted to reinforce the core of what makes Path of Exile fun to play: killing monsters, gaining experience and earning items in every area you enter. We'll talk more about this league when it's being announced next month. If you enjoyed leagues that involved a lot of monster-killing like Ambush and Breach, you'll certainly enjoy this one.

What else is included in 3.3.0?

Alongside many smaller features you can read about on announcement day, a huge push in 3.3.0 is skill revamps and facilitating new builds. Normally we'd keep this balance information quiet until announcement day, but I have been encouraging the team to write news posts that explain the changes so that you can give us feedback and begin to think about new builds. In addition to the revamps, there are also a bunch of new Trap skills that go hand-in-hand with balance changes to make Trappers a lot more powerful this league. You can read some early information about 3.3.0 skill revamps posted by the team here and here.

It's our belief that every Path of Exile release needs a really compelling and rewarding league, alongside enough skill and metagame changes to have many exciting builds for you to look forward to experiencing that content with.

What's the timeline for 3.3.0? When should I book time off work?

We currently expect to release 3.3.0 on Friday June 1. The Xbox One version will be released after that weekend, as close as possible to the PC version. While we're pretty confident in this date (because 3.3.0's league and many of the balance changes are already in the gameplay iteration phase), it could still change if something unexpected occurs. We'll announce the final firm date in approximately a month.

Are you running an Alpha test for 3.3.0?

Yes, we will be, after the contents are announced next month. Please don't apply for Alpha access based on reading this - it doesn't work like that.

What's happening with Supporter Packs? When are the War for the Atlas ones going away?

3.3.0 has its own set of league supporter packs. When these are released, the Bestiary ones will go off sale (we'll give you notice before this occurs, of course). The War for the Atlas packs will remain on sale until the next big expansion, which will also be announced in advance so you can plan your purchases appropriately.

Are you still making improvements to Bestiary?

Yes, alongside developing 3.3.0, we're working on addressing feedback and fixing issues in the Bestiary League. An example is solving the issue where Red/Yellow beasts can be shattered or have their corpses destroyed, preventing Necromancy Nets from working on them.

Is there going to be some type of race event before 3.2.0 ends?

Yes, we're planning a big Flashback event from early to late May, on both PC and Xbox One. We'll post more information as we approach it! This doesn't rule out the possibility of community or invitational races, which we're also trying to make happen.

The Bestiary League has launched alongside the content update 3.2.0:

Path of Exile: Bestiary League Official Trailer

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In the Bestiary Challenge League, hunter-scavenger Einhar Frey teaches you to hunt, capture and sacrifice beasts in order to craft powerful items.

Path of Exile's March Update includes the Bestiary League, dozens of new items, new gems, new end-game content, and more.

The Bestiary League will be available on March 2:

Path of Exile: Bestiary League Official Trailer

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In the Bestiary Challenge League, hunter-scavenger Einhar Frey teaches you to hunt, capture and sacrifice beasts in order to craft powerful items. Path of Exile's March Update includes the Bestiary League, dozens of new items, new gems, new end-game content, and more.

The Path of Exile blog has a story from development about the Undying.

In early 2007, Jonathan, Erik and I started planning the five-act structure of Path of Exile. By late 2008, specific details had been decided regarding the contents of these acts. Plans like the non-linear layout of Act 2 and the surprise-PvP component to the bandit quests were already laid down. While almost everything we planned was eventually implemented and lives on in modern Path of Exile, there is one aspect that didn't go at all according to plan, and was toned down massively to just become a relatively unremarkable monster type. This news post is the untold story of The Undying.

While planning the monster composition of Act Three, we wanted to introduce an interesting mechanic that would play with the ruined nature of the City of Sarn. As the first Act that had buildings, Act Three contained transitions from indoors to outdoors within the same map. We wanted to take advantage of this by designing a monster type that strongly played into this mechanic.

The plan was this: City Stalkers (later renamed to The Undying) were undead beings who roamed the shaded areas of Sarn, wrapped in bandages. They couldn't tolerate the light and would never leave the shade. In return for their restricted movement areas, they were incredibly powerful and would destroy players in combat until an appropriate countermeasure was earned.

We love surprise monsters and the suspense that they can create. This is why we have Sand Spitters emerging from underground, Statues coming alive and Rock Golems (internally called Moss Monsters) that form out of piles of rocks when you approach. In order to keep the suspense up, there are of course statues that don't come alive and inanimate piles of rocks that are just there to distract you.

Our intention with the player's first experience of Act Three was that the first area would be very quiet, with no monsters to fight outdoors. Upon venturing into the shade, though, players would be charged by deadly City Stalkers and would have to retreat to the safety of the sun. Their experience with the rest of the Act would involve a game of caring very much which areas were shaded, while occasionally being forced to step out of the light to travel between buildings. Because of their early encounters with the City Stalkers, they would fear every moment spent out of sunlight, as it is one step away from being swarmed by the deadliest monsters in Path of Exile. We intended for City Stalkers to have immense life regeneration, preventing players from making reasonable progress past them.

Later in the Act Three storyline, players would earn the ability to harm City Stalkers, allowing them access to areas that were previously off-limits (similar to what you'd encounter in a game like Metroid). Suddenly the one-sided fights would become more fair, and revenge could be exacted. Our intention was that this ability would come in the form of a white Support Gem which, while supporting your primary damage skill, would let you harm City Stalkers and would turn off their life regeneration.

We found this idea really compelling because we liked to experiment with extreme ideas. We wanted Path of Exile to be brutal, and took every opportunity to achieve that. Unfortunately, there were many problems with the above plan, which look obvious with hindsight and experience:

Directing players into a lethal encounter to make sure they understand it is dangerous was probably too aggressive, especially with a hardcore permadeath mode in the game. Some players would not understand that this was a sign that they needed to go elsewhere and find a way to become powerful, and would have instead become concerned that the game is too difficult and it's literally impossible to progress. We saw these exact concerns later from encounters that were far more winnable than how we intended this one to be.

If the City Stalkers can't go in the sunlight, then what stops you kiting them around and hitting them while you're out of the shade? While they regen too fast to die, they certainly look like noobs standing in the shadow and not doing anything. There would have been a lot of work to make this realistic and feel good.

If you recall the early versions of Act Three (prior to the 2.0.0 and 3.0.0 simplifications of it), you'll remember it was already a rabbit warren of fetch quests and obscure instructions. Adding to this the inability to travel in some areas and the requirement to later go back to places you've already been was not a step in the right direction.

While it was cool to use a Support Gem to be able to kill the City Stalkers, this would disrupt people's builds substantially. Having to spend an Act playing without one of your existing Support Gems was too much for many builds. It's also really hard to communicate. We initially intended the Baleful Gem and Maligaro's Spike to have a similar arrangement, where you kill Lorrata with the Spike socketed with the Gem, but we never got around to this for similar reasons. Maybe one day!

Another practical concern was how difficulty levels were handled (this was eight years before we removed them - at the time, Path of Exile had Hard, Cruel, Ruthless and Merciless as its difficulty levels). If you had the white Support Gem from the first difficulty level, what prevented you from taking it to the second one and immediately being able to kill the City Stalkers? Our plans for the act were complex enough that being able to immediately fight them wasn't really an option. We also wanted to avoid having four copies of the gem, as that'd be confusing. We couldn't take the gem away when you finished the act, because you might need it to go back there to farm some experience, help a friend, or finish a side-quest.

And so, the idea of City Stalkers fearing sunlight was scrapped. They were named The Undying and do make up part of the monster composition of modern Act Three, but without the crazy mechanic that almost made it in.

"Stay out of the shadows. They bite." -- Hargan

There is new content available for the action RPG Path of Exile:

War for the Atlas is now live!

The War for the Atlas and Abyss Challenge League are now live! We're very happy to see the community so active and engaged in the new content. We ran into a few small issues after launch but these have been fixed now. We'll be keeping a close eye on everything throughout the weekend and will continue to fix things as we go.

Don't forget, if you haven't already gotten yours, it's still possible to receive a free helmet skin simply by watching your favourite streamer play Path of Exile! Find out more here.

We hope that you enjoy the new content. Please consider checking out our new War for the Atlas Supporter Packs. Thank you so much for your support!

Path of Exile: War for the Atlas will feature a new boss called Shakari.

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New Boss Fight: Shakari
21 NOVEMBER - NAZAZZZA
Last week our trailer for Path of Exile: War for the Atlas teased many new aspects of the upcoming expansion. You may have noticed one new boss, Shakari who will appear in Act Nine! The team has been working hard on this fight and we're eager to share a full reveal of this gameplay in action. Check out the full demo video here.

By the way, the Turmoil Events ended recently and your characters have been migrated to their parent leagues. We'll be sending out the rewards throughout today and tomorrow. We are aiming to have them awarded to the winners as soon as possible. We hope you enjoyed the event as much as we did and are getting prepared for the Mayhem Events later this week!

@MassivelyOP Path of Exile now has a trading website.

One of the few features Path of Exile has traditionally lacked is an “easy” trading feature like an auction house, and that was by design: Grinding Gear Games feared bot farming, lowered drop rates, and high gear disparities between players, to say nothing of the lesson taught by Diablo III’s original launch. But players always find a way around the design, and as in many auctionless MMOs, players resorted to forum sales and whole websites devoted to facilitating the buying and selling of in-game gear.

“That’s where we are today,” GGG writes this week. “It’s easy to list items for trade, easy to search for items, and is often quite frustrating to complete a trade. This remaining frustration is the only thing standing in the way of trades being basically instant. While we understand that this sounds like a positive thing, we are very concerned regarding what will happen if that does eventuate. We have to prioritise the long-term health of Path of Exile.”

Consequently, the studio has now created its own version of the trade sites already run by players, though of course GGG’s is safer. It isn’t a full-fledged auction hall, however.

[...]

Here are the patch notes for Path of Exile 3.0.2.:

Content Update 3.0.2 Patch Notes

In the last week we've mentioned Content Update 3.0.2 and some of the features it includes like the two new unique items, Spectre and Aura persistence changes, and support for new languages. We're expecting to deploy this patch later today but in the meantime, here are the patch notes!

[...]

Thanks henriquejr!

Windows Central checked out the action RPG Path of Exile, which is now available for XBox One, too:

Path of Exile review: One of the best Diablo-style action-RPGs on Xbox One — and it's free

Path of Exile, the popular free-to-play, Diablo-style action role playing game (RPG) from Grinding Gear Games, has finally made the jump from Steam to Xbox One.

With loads of characters, areas, and depth, plus extremely fair monetization, this is one free game that every RPG fan needs to try.

In Path of Exile, you play as a warrior who has been exiled from his or her native land of Oriath to a troubled region called Wraeclast. From there, you have to fight through numerous regions. The story advances primarily through fully-voiced NPC conversations, along with occasional clunky cinematics. Story isn't the most important element in this style of game, but this one provides enough motivation without getting in the way of the adventure.

[...]

Pros:
A huge action-RPG with tons of free content. Loads of characters and free slots with which to play them. Great world and monster design. MMO-style towns make the world feel alive.

Cons:
Targetting inside and outside of combat is imperfect. Some bugs and crashes. For instance, the game crashes when you select the "Resize UI" option in the settings. No easy way to fully respec character - not even a paid option.

Score: 4.5/5

Henriquejr spotted that the Path of Exile expansion Fall of Oriath will launch tomorrow:

Path of Exile: The Fall of Oriath and the Harbinger League launch tomorrow!

The Fall of Oriath is so close now! This expansion launches alongside The Harbinger League in less than 14 hours as of the time of this news post. The studio is buzzing right now and we can't wait to see what you think of the work we've done. In the meantime, this news post has the information you'll need to know about what happens on launch day.

The Path of Exile expansion Fall of Oriath will release August 4th.

The Fall of Oriath Release Date and Trailer!

20 JULY - NAZAZZZA
We are excited to announce that Path of Exile: The Fall of Oriath will be launching on PC at 1pm on Friday, August 4th (PDT) alongside the Harbinger Challenge League. The Fall of Oriath is set to be our largest content expansion ever. In addition to six new acts of content, it includes new skill and support gems, unique items, improvements to game performance and much more! Check out the latest trailer[www.pathofexile.com] for a sneak peek of the chaos

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@MassivelyOP Path of Exile will be getting lots more expansions in future according to a community Q&A.

There was no confirmation regarding a launch date for the expansion, but the team did discuss lengthening the ignore list, trade improvements, the Xbox One launch, and controller support. The team also hinted that there are "a lot more" expansions being planned for the MMO.

"There are a lot more expansions coming, and they'll likely cover many types of content," GGG says. "Only one of our five expansions released so far includes a new act for example! We'll likely continue to make more new acts in the future."

Here's part one of the Path of Exile developer Q&A:

Last week we asked the community for questions for our developers to answer. We received dozens of pages of questions and have spent the week answering many of the ones from the first eight pages. We're going to have to answer more of these questions in a follow-up post or two soon!

Note that not everything has been answered in this post. Some large topics have been missed out, if information isn't available right this second for a good answer. We will try to answer these ones in a follow up post. Minor edits were made to the questions to fix grammar or spelling mistakes.

[...]

What is the current plan for languages? I read about a german portation quite a while ago. Sure it won't be at a high place on the list of priorities, but i would be a nice QoL. :)

We're trying to find people to help us with German, French and Spanish translations. Last week we asked for help in the news and over 500 people contacted us! We're blown away by the amazing response!

[...]

Thank you for the info, henriquejr!

Henriquejr spotted some concept art for the next act of Path of Exile. Look here.

@GamePressure Path of Exile is getting a new expansion called 'Fall of Oriath' which will introduce 6 new acts.

Grinding Gear Games have announced the biggest expansion so far for their free-to-play action RPG Path of Exile. The Fall of Oriath DLC is going to introduce six new acts, starting with large Act 5 taking place in a brand new location - the eponymous Oriath, where your hero had been exiled from. Acts 6-9 are going to take you back to the places you previously visited, but these locations are supposed to be filled with new bosses and lore and therefore are promised to feel much different. The last one, Act 10, takes you back to Oriath for the final stand.

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Path of Exile will be getting a console release for Xbox One.

We're proud to announce that Path of Exile will be making its console debut on Xbox One later this year! The Xbox One version is also free-to-play and will contain all the content from the PC version, including the upcoming 3.0.0 expansion that includes Act Five. Check out the Xbox One Trailer here!

Xbox One players will play on their own realm, separate to the PC realm. This is due to small gameplay differences between the two versions, such as the number of Flask slots and how some skills are targeted. We intend to follow the same content and league release schedule on both the Xbox One and PC versions of Path of Exile.

We're really excited about this release. It represents over a year of work from a small strike team within our studio - the guys who also created our DirectX 11 version. We'll announce more information over the coming weeks!

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@Gamebanshee The Path of Exile team has outlined its forthcoming content plans.

Upcoming Content Releases

Most of our team are now back at work after the New Zealand holiday period. We have a busy year ahead! The purpose of today's news post is to highlight the rough plans of what happens when the Breach leagues end in seven weeks.

In late 2015, we started our schedule of having releases at predictable times on a 13-week timeline. Talisman, Ascendancy/Perandus, Prophecy, Atlas of Worlds/Essence and Breach were released on this schedule. It works really well because the leagues feel like the right length, they come out at key points in the year (like a few weeks before Christmas) and the schedule is the same from one year to the next.

At the moment, most of our team is working on the major 3.0.0 expansion which contains Act Five and some other surprises. We have three goals in mind as we plan the timing of 3.0.0's release:

• To create our best expansion ever, with a higher quality level than any previous release.
• To ideally not disrupt our existing 13-week schedule.
• To have flexibility with the date that we start the Beta.

When the Breach league ends, we'll be launching another challenge league (2.6.0) in line with the above schedule. The Beta for 3.0.0 will start at some point during this league (likely near the middle). We expect that the Beta would run until the end of the 2.6.0 league.

So for the 2.6.0 update, we're planning:

• Some balance changes to keep the metagame fresh. An example is that we have lined up significant buffs to one-handed melee weapons.
• A new challenge league. We don't want to spoil what it is yet, but it's certainly appropriate for the last league before the new era of 3.0.0.

We're planning to formally announce full details of these various releases in mid-February. All of the dates in this post are provisional - we want to be transparent with what we have in mind, but please expect stuff to change as various things are finished earlier or later than expected.

Path of Exile now has cloaks or in tech parlance cloth physics technology. There is an interview with the person responsible at the Path of Exile site.

Hi Alex! Thanks for taking part in the interview! Could you please introduce yourself and let us know a little bit about your history with gaming and programming?

Hi Bex. My name is Alex and I graduated from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Since my early school days I have really enjoyed writing programs related to all kinds of physics simulations. A game called Ballance was one of the earliest games that employed a very precise, accurate and fast rigid-body physics. I was basically obsessed with the idea of mimicking that.

Since those times I have really enjoyed making all kinds of programs based on physics simulations. Some examples: a guitar synthesizer that produces sound from simulating string deformations, AI for robots in a simulated physical environment, all kinds of optics simulations (path tracing, global illumination) and simulating broken heart fracture dynamics. You can see some of my work on my YouTube channel here.

I have always been driven by games. Some of my inspirations have been exploring the weird world of Planescape: Torment, the smooth gameplay of Devil May Cry, gravity gun physics in Half-Life 2, running Mephisto in Diablo 2. There are so many games that gave me inspiration, but one of the most important is, you guessed it, Path of Exile.

Could you please tell us about your current role at Grinding Gear Games and what an average work day is like for you?

I was hired to do all kinds of experimental stuff. Implementing physics was the most natural thing for me to start with because I wanted to make the game world feel more responsive. I wanted to make it react to the player and give more visual feedback to actions. We aren't quite there yet in terms of integrating physics in all game assets that might benefit from it but the physics engine is ready. At work I do pretty much the same thing that I do for fun, I experiment with implementing all kinds of tech.

What is the most challenging aspect of programming physics for Path of Exile?

Path of Exile is a very dynamic game and when implementing physics, performance is the top priority for me. Because of that, I can't introduce any noticeable framerate drops due to physics. I was writing the Path of Exile physics engine from scratch and it had to behave somewhat naturally under completely unnatural circumstances like characters using Leap Slam with 100% increased attack speed or a Lightning Warp that basically shrinks the character to size of 0, teleports and then gradually inflates them back to normal size. A direct consequence of physics simulation for items like cloaks is them wrapping around character's head, tangling between arms and legs and flapping all over the place when attacking 10 times a second. Introducing non-physical constraints to prevent such behaviour gets pretty tricky.

What is your favourite thing you've worked on for the game so far?

I'm allowed to do any kind of crazy stuff that makes the game feel better and does not impact performance. Something as simple as character movement is actually more complicated than one may think because we want the character to affect light cloth objects they run past due to induced air flow currents. To do that, I made a very fast approximation of an actual vortex pattern created by objects moving through medium, called Karman Vortex Street, that's actually created by moving actors. It automatically creates relatively realistic and very cheap (performance-wise) approximation of air turbulence for all character movement including skills such as Whirling Blades.

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Path of Exile has been updated to 2.5.0. This update includes new unique items, new challenges and rewards, adjustments to Master Missions, and a new 64-bit Path of Exile client that uses DirectX 11! Check out the full patch notes here.

Content Update 2.5.0

The Breach Challenge League:

• Challenge leagues are a great opportunity for a fresh start in a new economy. All of your old characters and items are still present in the Standard and Hardcore leagues, but you're encouraged to join the new leagues, complete challenges and demonstrate your mastery of Path of Exile!
• With 2.5.0, there are Standard and Hardcore variations of the Breach challenge league available. They have the same core mechanics and items.
• Tears in the fabric of reality have formed throughout Wraeclast. Engage them to expose an alternate realm and reveal those who dwell there. Slay monsters inside the Breach to keep it open long enough to reap your bounty.
• Deep in the Breach, you may draw the ire of horrific new bosses: Breachlords. The more damage you inflict on them, the more treasure they'll part with during their escape.
• Among the riches found in the Breach, you may also encounter Splinters. Combine 100 Splinters of the same type together to create a Breachstone. When placed in the Map Device, a Breachstone allows travel into a Breachlord's Domain, the one place where they are truly vulnerable.
• Monsters from the Breach drop new unique items that are specific to their Domain. When slain in their Domain, Breachlords are able to drop Blessings that allow these new uniques to be upgraded.
• There are a total of 35 new unique items specific to the Breach league.
• The new challenge leagues include a set of 40 new challenges. When you complete 12 challenges, you will receive the Breach Footprints Effect. At 24, you will receive the Breach Portal Effect. When you complete your 36th challenge, you will receive the Demonic Wings Back Attachment. These microtransactions are only obtainable in this league.
• From the 19th challenge onwards and for every third challenge after that, you will receive pieces of the Breach Totem Pole decoration to display in your hideout. The Totem Pole permanently showcases how many of the Breach challenges you completed during the league.

New Content:

• Added 55 new unique items, 35 of which are exclusive to the Breach challenge league.
• Added a new Intelligence/Dexterity Support Gem - Cast while Channelling: While casting supported channelling skills, trigger another linked spell at regular intervals, with a small damage penalty. This support gem is available from the Sharp and Cruel quest reward in Cruel difficulty for the Witch, Templar, Shadow and Scion. It is available for all classes from Petarus and Vanja after completing The Eternal Nightmare in Normal difficulty. There's a new Channelling tag on relevant skill gems.
• Added a new Neutral Skill Gem - Vaal Breach: Creates a Breach at your location, making you vulnerable to its powerful inhabitants.
• Before her rescue, Navali is now guarded by The Faun.
• Very early areas in Act One have been cosmetically improved.
• Hellions have had their art replaced with a new model.

New Features:

• Many of 2.5.0's features including the new renderer were deployed early with update 2.4.2. Thank you for your testing and feedback.
• The DirectX 9 renderer is still the default. You can change to the DirectX 11 renderer in the options. We will make the DirectX 11 renderer the default once we're sure there are no emaining problems.
• Melee action targeting has been greatly improved.
• The challenge and achievements panel now has progress bars for numeric challenges. Your overall challenge progress and challenge reward milestones are also shown.
• Weapons now display their range on their item descriptions.
• Improved early tutorials.
• Added support for the slash symbol in Premium Stash Tab price fields.
• Various improvements to preloading have been made

...

The patch notes for the Path of Exile content update 2.4.2:

Within the next two days we're deploying Content Update 2.4.2 which contains new skills, improvements to master missions and much more. In the meantime, the full patch notes are now ready to view.

Important Note:

• In order to provide a smoother experience at the launch of December's 2.5.0 update, this 2.4.2 update contains many of the improvements intended for 2.5.0. Enjoy!

New Path of Exile Client:

• There are now two Path of Exile game clients. The original DirectX 9 version has been substantially improved. We have also introduced an experimental 64-bit DirectX 11 version which you can now use. This version will become the default for systems that support it at 2.5.0's release.
• To use the 64-bit DirectX 11 client: If you're using the Standalone game client, then run PathofExile_x64.exe. If you're using Steam, right click on Path of Exile in your library and click "Play 64-bit DX11 Version".
• Both the DirectX 9 and 11 clients are substantially faster than the previous version of Path of Exile in high-load situations when CPU-bound. In addition, the new DirectX 11 client has more scope for future improvement as we continue to optimise it over time.
• These improvements are CPU optimisations and thus don't improve performance if your graphics card is the bottleneck.
• We now use D3D9 Ex mode on Windows Vista and above which substantially improves memory usage and game window resize speed under DirectX 9. You can disable this with --nodx9ex if you encounter problems.
• There is a known issue where the 64 bit client will not work if the DirectX 11.1 runtime is not installed. If you have this problem, you will need to fully update your copy of Windows with Windows Update. We will address this issue in an upcoming patch.

Features:

• Added new Dexterity/Intelligence skill - Blade Flurry: Repeatedly strike at enemies in a circle in front of you while channelling, dealing damage to and around the struck enemy. The damage is continually boosted while channelling. You unleash an additional strike for each stage reached once the channelling ends. Requires a Dagger, Claw or One-Handed Sword.
• Added new Intelligence skill - Scorching Ray: Unleash a beam of fire that burns enemies it touches, and decreases their fire resistance. Remaining in the beam intensifies the burning, adding a portion of the beam's damage in stages. Enemies who leave the beam continue to burn for a duration. Increasing cast speed also increases the rate at which the beam can turn.
• Added new Intelligence skill - Blight: Apply a debuff to enemies in front of you which deals chaos damage over time. Enemies who aren't already debuffed by Blight are also hindered for a shorter secondary duration, slowing their movement. Continued channelling adds layers of damage to the debuff, each with their own duration.
• We've revamped the fog system in Path of Exile and changed the environments of many areas to use this new fog.
• Some cloth objects in Path of Exile now have a physics simulation. Over time, we'll be adding more things to interact with this system. Some banners in the Solaris and Lunaris temples can be experimented with for now.
• The chat user interface has been improved. You can now toggle the display of all types of messages and can see how many of each type have arrived while that mode was disabled. By default, users are now subscribed to chats that they cannot see, so toggling it on will show prior messages.
• Server announcements are now shown in a separate part of the chat UI.
• There's now an item filter bundled with Path of Exile that you can select in the User Interface options.
• The sender of a whisper message is now notified if the recipient doesn't receive it because they are changing areas.
• Added explanation text to some advanced terms on item hovers. You can press Alt to see them.
• Removed the Kaom's Path area and modified Kaom's Stronghold and Kaom's Dream to compensate for its removal.
• Navali now has a "Sell Items" option.
• You can now talk to Navali in other people's hideouts to Seek/Seal Prophecies and sell items to her.
• When you are about to apply a Sextant to a map it now previews the radius.
• When hovering over maps on the Atlas, the Sextant mod on that selected map will be displayed in a lighter shade of blue.
• When binding a skill to a button on the skill bar, the auras that are currently active are indicated.
• The Sextant Mod which added Creeping Agony to your maps can no longer be generated.
• The map bosses for the Castle Ruin and Strand maps now have a version of Blade Flurry which matches the player skill more closely.
• Necromancers now have new visual effects for their curses
• Amarissa and Ambrosia in the Caverns of Wrath and Anger now have new visual effects.
• Monsters that start inactive can't spawn certain Nemesis mods any more.
• The damage dealt by the Herald of the Obelisk variation which creates areas of Lightning Clouds can no longer stun.
• Improvements have been made to how Life, Mana and Energy Shield numbers are displayed above the life and mana orbs.
• Caustic Clouds created by monsters now more clearly indicates what area they affect.
• The pirate ghosts summoned during the Reef boss fight are now magic monsters.
• Reduced the size of the Chateau map and increased its monster density to bring it in line with other maps.
• The Orchard Map's signature monster packs are now larger.
• You can now rename your guild in-game.
• Some quests that previously awarded a rare item or a fully-linked item now award a fully-linked rare item.
• Warbands members now drop their signature items already identified.
• Continued to improve and fix issues with the Hall of Grandmasters.
• Added 3D art for the Cybil's Paw and Cloak of Flames unique items.
• The Voidwalker unique item now has the Celestial Footprints effect.
• Item hovers can now scale in width a small amount to dynamically adjust for long stat descriptions that would otherwise spill a few words onto a second line.
• Made improvements to the layout of the Armoury Map.
• Various improvements to preloading have been made.
• Continued to incrementally improve the sound, art, effects and environments.

Forsaken Master Improvements:

• The longest of the Elreon missions is now shorter, with fewer waves of enemies.
• Vorici will now Smoke Mine to teleport to his target when his mission is complete.
• Vorici no longer gives you a mission to kill the target without killing any of the guards.
• On missions from Vorici where you have to avoid killing some enemies, the enemies will have significantly more life, have life regeneration, and are less likely to be attacked by minions.
• On missions from Vorici where you must keep the target on low life, the target will have more life. The length of the timer was reduced to 8 seconds from 10.
• Removed the automatic Ethereal Knives variation of Vorici guards.
• If there is a Den of monsters, Tora will Blink Arrow to the Den when anyone approaches the entrance, even if the mission has not been started.
• In Tora missions where there is no den of monsters, Tora will Blink Arrow to the last target monster killed when the mission has been completed.
• For missions variations that do not complete at Catarina's location, she will teleport via Convocation to the location of the last monster killed or consumed when the mission is completed.
• All of Catarina's monsters that are killed or consumed as part of the mission objective now grant experience and drop items.
• Undead on Catarina missions now move faster. Some Catarina missions with exploding minions no longer require as many exploding undead to be slain.
• For Vorici, Catarina, and Tora, if you complete a daily mission where they teleport, the return portal to your hideout will move to them after any player has received their reward.
• When you die in a Zana mission, you respawn at her map device.
• Removed the timer on Haku Missions where you spawn at the Spirit that required you to click the Spirit before 30 seconds. These instead now have a barrier that you cannot pass until you have picked up the spirit.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a bug where The Broken Prince, The Fallen Queen and The Hollow Lady in the Vaal Pyramid Map would still block collidability when dead.
• Fixed a bug where Raised Spectres could get stuck with an infinite duration Shield Charge effect if movement was interrupted via Convocation mid-charge.
• Fixed the "Elemental Hit has +x% chance to Freeze, Shock and Ignite" enchantment that claimed it was for Burning Arrow.
• Fixed a bug with the Avatar of Thunder where he could remain invisible if you travel far away and come back while he is disappearing.
• Fixed various problems with PvP preconstructed characters, such as their passive trees and items.
• Fixed a bug where the Vinktar Square map item had no sell value.
• Fixed a bug where Weapon and Armour Racks would still be collidable after they are opened.
• Fixed a bug where Summon Lightning Golem was not triggerable with Mjölner.
• Fixed a bug where the Stag, Boar and Bear heads clipped with the body armour when worn by a Scion.
• Fixed a bug where the Shaped Canyon Map was using the mod pool of mid-tier maps rather than high-tier maps.
• Fixed a bug where Tormented Spirits could possess a monster that was already possessed by a spirit of the same type.
• Fixed various terrain blocking issues with the Death and Taxes unique map.
• Fixed various unique maps that didn't have corresponding guild tag letters.
• Fixed issues that could allow daily mission portals in hideouts to spawn inside walls.
• Fixed a bug where items in the vendor window have an extraneous divider in their description.
• Fixed a bug where Raging Spirits could sometimes be targeted by monster melee attacks.
• Fixed a bug where the Essence Panicked Rubble monster could be targeted.
• Fixed a bug where the default close key would still close the Atlas even if you've mapped this function to another key.
• Fixed an issue where some Prophecies would give out old versions of maps.
• Fixed a bug where Daresso's voice acting didn't play when you defeated Barkhul.
• When you close a Prophecy dialogue window, it now fades out the audio correctly.
• Fixed a bug where The Scourge would look strange on certain characters.
• Null's Inclination now correctly indicates that it casts all socketed minion skills on kill, instead of just one.
• Fixed various cases of Master mission entrances spawning in inaccessible locations or blocking players.
• Fixed a bug where you could use an Orb of Chance on the Offering to the Goddess.
• Fixed several armour modifiers not affecting armour against projectile hits, or affecting it incorrectly. This included all armour granted by body armours.
• Fixed a bug where players and minions would block Masters from being able to open portals to their daily missions.
• Fixed a bug where Spectral Throw could travel further than intended if used when standing very close to a wall.
• Fixed a bug where you could not take quest rewards if you had any Panel open on the left side of your screen
• Fixed a bug where you could add Oba to your friends list in the Oba's Cursed Trove map.
• Fixed a bug where the Mutated Maw encounted during Tora missions was dealing far too little damage with its Caustic Ground Leap Slam skill in later difficulties.
• Fixed a bug where the damage dealt by the Herald of the Obelisk variation which created areas of Lightning Clouds had too much variance in how fast it could apply.
• Fixed a bug where Strongboxes that detonated nearby corpses would not deal any damage.
• "The Dream Trial" Prophecy can no longer trigger on maps that have the Sextant mod that forces Zana to be present.
• Fixed a bug where the enchantment for "Increased Critical Strike Chance if you haven't Crit Recently" wasn't working.
• Fixed a bug where killing a monster with Soul Conduit via a skill that would trigger a corpse-consuming skill would result in no item drops.
• Zana Atlas quests now work correctly on the Jungle Valley and Arachnid Nest maps.
• Zana quests in maps that relate to inactive monsters no longer grant them effects until they're active.
• Fixed a bug where the boss of the Vault map could get stuck on ledges. He now more effectively slams to get down.
• Fixed a bug where players could get stuck in the Plateau boss room.
• Fixed a bug where Spectral Summoned Skulls from the Essence Mod were unaffected by player auras.
• Fixed a bug where Flame Dash could take you to the other side of locked doors and walls.
• Fixed a bug where players were sometimes unable to move if they had no skills on their skill bar.

Thanks henriquejr!

@PC Invasion they report that David Brevik is joining the Path of Exile team which was the 'diablo-like' game reported earlier.

There has been confusion and speculation on what game and where David Brevik would be taking on an advisory role on this "diablo-like" RPG. We now have confirmation he's joining Path of Exile.

David Brevik is joining Grinding Gear Games as an advisor on Path of Exile and will help launch the game in China. The news was initially broken via a press release put out by Tencent and has been confirmed by GGG's CEO Chris Wilson.

Chris Wilson told PC Invasion, "David is an advisor, primarily for our launch in mainland China, but we hope to learn from his experience as much as we can over the coming months."

Both Brevik and Wilson will be heading to China to help with the game's launch and to meet fans.

The Path of Exile developers decided to head to their forums recently to answer some community questions regarding the games future.

Last week we asked the community for questions for our developers to answer. We received dozens pages of questions and have spent the week answering most of the ones from the first six pages. We're going to have to answer more of these questions in a follow-up post soon!

Originally, the intent of "Unique" tier items was to have... well, "Unique" items, that weren't going to be better than well-crafted Rares, but in some cases would enable different playstyles... Is this still the overall intent of Uniques? There's a few Uniques that are overwhelmingly Best-in-Slot for a lot of builds, and I was wondering if these were exceptions, or perhaps Uniques that worked out better than intended, or if you've relaxed the original design choice for Uniques?

Our preference is that most characters use rare items with just a few unique items. This will vary by build, with the most combo-ish ones requiring many unique items, and mundane damage dealers (like my favourite type of hardcore Marauder build) using almost entirely rare items.

It's very hard to hit exactly the right power level when designing a unique item. Some of them underachieve because the community doesn't work out their full potential, and some of them become far more powerful than you planned due to the community coming up with crazy combos that the developers didn't think of. That concept is the core beauty of Path of Exile's character customisation.

In addition, many of the most powerful uniques involve design-a-unique supporters who have very valid reasons for their unique being powerful. They want something people will care about, to leave a true mark on the game. It's very hard to hit the right power level here, especially as the metagame changes over time. To use a specific example, we nerfed Soul Taker many times internally before releasing it. It was a shadow of its former power. However, the vocal part of the community were outraged that we released such a powerful item, completely invalidating the process of crafting a rare one-handed axe. I kind of agreed with them, and wished we had pushed the nerfs harder. A few years later, I receive mail asking when we're going to buff Soul Taker to get it up to an appropriate power level.

What are the pros and cons of having high player power vs the environment?

Players like to feel powerful. Philosophically, we want people to look forward to coming home from work so that they can load up Path of Exile, smash some monsters and get better items for their characters. The power creep towards fast clear speed has definitely helped this feeling.

On the other hand, there are several negative issues we're dealing with. Higher clear speed means more combat going on per second. This affects both the server performance (costing us more money) and the client performance (in some cases, making it hard for people with lower machines to play in parties). These are areas that we're tackling at the moment with technology changes.

While some players and developers are concerned about the clear speeds, there's the subtle issue that now players are used to the rate of item acquisition from that speed. If we substantially rebalanced things so that it's a little slower, then this would affect the rate at which players accumulate wealth. It's very hard to say whether the prolonged playtime would offset the frustration of progressing more slowly.

Have you seen improvements in player retention with the subsequent improvements to content clear times?

Player retention is marginally better and players play for around 25% longer each day compared to the time period when gameplay was slower. We can debate all day about whether it's due to the clear times or not. I suspect it's that people want to feel powerful, rather than finish the maps quickly.

[...]

What's your stance on all the exploiters and peoples abusing various bugs and unwanted mechanics during the first days or weeks of a league, either breaking the economy or gaining unfair advantage? Is there anything done to act against those and protect the whole playerbase?

There are several factors in play here. The first is that Path of Exile is designed for players to try to take advantage of knowledge and gain economic advantage over other players. If you work out a smart way to craft, or you find a build that lets you get to Uber Atziri first and offer her uniques up for sale at top prices, then you are winning at Path of Exile. This is a game that rewards you for being smart.

As for people crossing the line and exploiting the game by abusing bugs, this is something that both happens far less than you think, and often is actually attributed to non-abusive behaviour coupled with tall stories. We often see people claiming exploits to explain how they got rich, but then when we investigate the accounts we find more mundane behaviour like faked screenshots, wealth pooling, RMT or just lucky drops.

Having said that, people who actually exploit the game are generally mercilessly banned along with their co-conspirators. It's usually pretty clear where the line is here.

Why haven't all basic skill gems been made available to all classes from vendors? Everyone hates making mule characters to get gems, and trading for them over and over again is annoying at best.

Surprisingly, not everyone hates characters having identity. There's a bit of a slippery slope when trying to optimise for the type of player that wants to instantly gain access to gems from all character classes. For them it's a harmless change, but for most of the playerbase it'd be hugely overwhelming and would break the immersion of you being offered appropriate choices for your character. I'm not saying we won't do this, but we'd need to find the right way to do it.

Update 2.3.0 comes with a lot of new content for Path of Exile:

Auckland, New Zealand - June 3, 2016 - Grinding Gear Games is officially launching the Prophecy content update for their online action RPG, Path of Exile at 1pm Pacific Time, June 3rd, 2016. Content update 2.3.0 includes both a Standard and Hardcore version of the Prophecy Challenge League, in addition to a wealth of new skills, items, and challenges.

"The Prophecy challenge league has more content than some of the full expansions we've released in the past," said Chris Wilson, Managing Director for Grinding Gear Games. "We're really excited to explore it alongside our players."

Prepare for a content update June 3rd for Path of Exile in the form of Prophecy Content Update 2.3.0 & Prophecy Challenge Leagues. The content update will include new skills, items, balance changes and a endgame labyrinth.

Coming on June 3, 2016!

Content Update 2.3.0 will be released at 1pm on Friday June 3 (US Pacific Time). This is 10pm in the CEST timezone and 8am on June 4 in New Zealand. The Prophecy Challenge Leagues will also start at this time.

This article does not contain the full patch notes for the 2.3.0 update. We'll be releasing more details on specific features over the next couple of weeks, culminating in the final patch notes a few days before the update is released.

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Path of Exile's latest chapter, Ascendancy, will become available today. In addition the Perandus Challenge Leagues also become available.

Grinding Gear Games Announces Path of Exile: Ascendancy and the Perandus Challenge League

Are You Ready to Face the Lord's Labyrinth? Find out on March 4th, 2016
 
Auckland, New Zealand - March 3, 2016 - Grinding Gear Games announced today that it is ready to unleash the latest chapter for their hit online ARPG, Path of Exile.  On March 4th, Path of Exile: Ascendancy and the Perandus Challenge League will be launched simultaneously at noon US Pacific time.

Path of Exile was released in October 2013 to critical acclaim including winning GameSpot's PC Game of the Year award.  Since its launch, Path of Exile has become a world community of over 13 million players including localized versions in Traditional Chinese, Russian, Thai and Brazilian Portuguese.   

Path of Exile: Ascendancy, like every major expansion of PoE, will be completely free-to-play (and of course, never Pay to Win - This means that your success in the game is dependent on the depth of your skill, not your wallet). More information about Path of Exile: Ascendancy can be found at www.pathofexile.com/ascendancy

The Perandus Challenge Leagues
Launching alongside Path of Exile: Ascendancy is the Perandus Challenge Leagues. These brand new leagues offer players the wealth of the Eternal Empire. Discover caches of Perandus family treasure, slay their guardians and claim the coins contained within. Anyone lucky enough to uncover one of the lost caches will discover something remarkable: fistfuls of glittering coins that can be exchanged with Cadiro Perandus himself for vital equipment and ancient artifacts.

Path of Exile: Ascendancy Features:

• The Trials of Ascendancy: Seeking a worthy successor, Emperor Izaro constructed deadly trials throughout Wraeclast to find candidates. Six types of lethal traps have been crafted by Izaro into elaborate puzzle rooms - an entirely new gameplay type for Path of Exile.
• The Lord's Labyrinth: Having proved your mettle in the Trials of Ascendancy, you earn the right to enter Izaro's Labyrinth. Years have passed, but its traps are as dangerous as the day its doors were first opened. With an entirely new system for generating sequences of random areas, the overall layout of the Labyrinth shifts every day, uncovering new puzzles and secrets.
• Emperor Izaro: Entombed forever in his own creation, Emperor Izaro lives on. You will face Izaro multiple times during the Labyrinth and the fight will evolve depending on your actions in previous encounters.
• Ascendancy Classes: Long ago, nineteen competitors entered The Lord's Labyrinth, each representing a different style of combat. Their powers can be claimed by those who prove themselves worthy by defeating Emperor Izaro. There are 19 new Ascendancy classes, each with its own additional Ascendancy Skill Tree to master.
• Enchantments: Izaro's power can also be used to infuse items with powerful properties. These enchantments trigger specific skills and effects to occur on certain conditions. Each time the Labyrinth is completed, you maybe add one of these enchantments to an item.
• Powerful New Gems: Ascendancy introduces a set of devastating new skills and support gems to customize your character with.
• Exotic New Items: Featuring dozens of Unique Items and Divination Cards designed by Path of Exile's community, Ascendancy adds tantalizing power for players to discover.
• Challenge Leagues: The launch of Ascendancy also marks the start of our latest challenge leagues. These leagues provide an ideal opportunity for a fresh start for returning players.

Path of Exile will receive its latest update, Ascendancy, on March 4th.

Thanks to Couch for tonight's news.

On March 4, at 12pm PT, the expansive and excellent free-to-play action-RPG Path of Exile will receive its fourth major expansion: Ascendancy.

The highlight of this xpac is The Lord's Labyrinth, a maze of traps and terrors generated fresh everyday. Die once in the labyrinth's bowels and you'll have to start over, upping the stakes in an already challenging game. Riddling the labyrinth is a series of boss fights with one Emperor Izaro which, intriguingly, promise to evolve based on your actions in previous bouts.

More.

Blake Peterson (GameRevolution) has checked out the upcoming expansion Ascendancy for Path of Exile:

Get ready to ascend to the next level.

I learned several things at my meeting with Grinding Gear Games to see Path of Exile: Ascendancy, their new expansion for the action-RPG, Path of Exile: Awakening. One is that New Zealand is the primary English-speaking test-market for cellphone games and applications, due to its small but technologically progressive population, making it a kind of eco-bubble perfect to try out new strategies on. Grinding Gear Games, I learned, is a bit of an oddity in that it's a studio that isn't built around mobile development.

Path of Exile: Ascendancy adds two new sections to the game, the Trials of Ascendancy and then the more comprehensive Lord's Labyrinth. In-game legends say that centuries ago, the Emperor Izaro built a labyrinth to decide his successor, and any who reached the heart of it would take his place; but he was betrayed and sealed within his own maze. He waits there still, after centuries, for you (cue eerie music). Or something. That's the general gist of the expansion.

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[...]

The biggest expansion for Path of Exile to date, The Awakening launches on July 10.

New Trailer:

Grinding Gear Games posted a new forum update on the Path of Exile webpage with more information about a three part Twitch.Tv Q&A Stream with ZiggyD.

I spent three hours yesterday chatting with ZiggyD about The Awakening on his stream. He has broken the Q&A up into several pieces: Part one is here and part two is here and part three is here.

Grinding Gear Games posted a few more updates on the forums of the Path of Exile webpage with more information about the up-coming expansion The Awakening.

The latest update is a new video of the King Kaom Fight from IGN.

IGN have posted a video of the boss fight with King Kaom in Path of Exile: The Awakening. In the video, our technical director Jonathan walks James through the Kaom fight with an exclusive demo.

Chris Wilson the Producer and Lead Designer of Grinding Gear Games was interviewed by MMO Games last week to talk about his F2P ARPG game Path of Exile.

On Friday night, I had the chance to sit down with Chris Wilson — Producer and Lead Designer of Grinding Gear Games, the 57-person team behind the esteemed free-to-play action MMORPG Path of Exile. You may or may not have heard by now that the game has a big expansion on the way. So big that it will be adding in a third more stuff to do in game. Whew! This will be Path of Exile’s fourth Act and is the biggest yet. Did I say that it’s big?

Producer & Lead Designer Chris Wilson of Grinding Gear Games was interviewed on RPGamer last week to talk about the next digital expansion for Path of Exile.

How long has the expansion been under development?

In 2013, when we released the game, we knew we wanted to make a follow-up expansion that was really big, pushed its plot forward a lot, and added new storyline and monsters. The problem was that we knew it was going to take two years and were concerned that two years without releasing any new content for existing players would be a death sentence. So we put together another team and had one team working on the expansion, while the other team finished three smaller ones, which took about four-to-six months each whereas this one has been in development since around 2013.

Can you tell us about the general Path of Exile experience and what changes The Awakening makes to it?

It is both a very large expansion to the core content of Path of Exile but also adds new systems that push the game in other ways. Path of Exile has a reputation in the community as a game that provides a lot of character customisation possibilities. This is partly because we have some systems that, while relatively easy to use for new players, can be very deep for players that like to fiddle around with the details. An example here is that all the skills you can use in the game are [equippable] gems that you can trade between players, and you can also combine them together by putting support gems in the sockets nearby to modify their properties. For example, you can take the fireball gem and convert its damage to ice, spit out multiple projectiles, convert it into a traps or set of mines that can be detonated, convert it into a totem that casts fireballs, or all of the above. That applies to the active skills, but it's the passive skill tree we'll be talking about more here.

Grinding Gear Games unveiled their new expansion for Path of Exile called The Awakening this week at a media summit, and made a new post about all the new media coverage.

We're proud to announce Path of Exile: The Awakening. Many different news sites are covering the announcement, and they'll be posting their articles and videos over the next few hours. We'll keep this news post updated with links to them. Check out initial coverage from Gamespot, Gamepedia, PC Gamer, Game Trailers, PC World, Shacknews, MMORPG.com, MassivelyOP, GotGame, IGN and MMOHuts!

Due to the vast changes in The Awakening, we will be running a Closed Beta starting on April 20. You'll be able to register your interest and will hopefully be selected to help test it. Because of the expansion's testing needs, we'll be starting out with a smaller Beta population and will expand it to a large one over approximately six weeks. We're not announcing a final release date for The Awakening yet until the exact duration of the Beta is known. After working on it since 2013, we're really excited to finally let you guys play The Awakening!

Here's a list of all the news coverage so far:

• Gamespot have posted an impressions video
• Gamepedia has an article written by community-member-turned-journalist iamacyborg. They've also posted a first look video!
• PC Gamer have posted an article with their impressions.
• Game Trailers have also posted a preview video.
• Hayden at PC World has posted his impressions in an article.
• MMORPG.com describes The Awakening as a "Game Changer"
• Shacknews have also posted a detailed article.
• MassivelyOP have also posted a detailed article.
• Notable industry writer Paul Semel has posted an interview with Jonathan.
• GotGame have posted a 12 minute video of me demonstrating The Awakening!
• IGN have posted a gameplay video where James interviews Jonathan about the new content and features.
• Darren from MMOHuts has posted a video that includes new gameplay footage and questions with me.

One of the newer updates on the Path of Exile forums has infomation the developer will be discontinuing the current Forsaken Masters Supporter Packs.

The current Forsaken Masters supporter packs will stop being sold at the end of Sunday April 19th PDT. We've created a video to highlight the contents of the current supporter packs. These are exclusive and won't be available again in future. If you're interested in a supporter pack, now is the time to purchase them before they become unavailable!

Grinding Gear Games posted a preview of the upcoming expansion for Path of Exile.

Our upcoming Path of Exile expansion contains a slew of Quality of Life improvements that we've been working on this year (many of which were suggested by community members). We plan on revealing all of these over the next few weeks of development, but we have taken an early screenshot to show a few of them today. The screenshot shows three QOL improvements: the party leader is indicated in blue on the minimap, party character names are shown, and there's now an optional in-game clock built into the UI. Note that these features are unfinished, and can/will look different by the time they're fully released.

Grinding Gear Games posted the answers to last weeks Q&A on the Path of Exile forums, and also announced patch 1.3.1c was released this week.

We've deployed Patch 1.3.1c, which improves client performance, fixes a bug and introduces two new microtransactions: Eagle Claw Wand Skin and the Ghost Flicker Strike Skill Effect. Today's news post also includes the answers to questions from the Developeract Q&A earlier this week.

Grinding Gear Games is holding a new Q&A on the Path of Exile forums this week.

Our last Developer Q&A event was in December, so we feel it's time for another! We've previously used a variety of formats for answering community questions (in-game, a Twitch stream or via Raptr), so for this one we'll be answering questions posted in this forum thread. We'll let questions accumulate for two days and then will answer them in the news post on Wednesday (NZ time).

Note that while we welcome questions about future content, quite a few things are going to be covered by the "We can't talk about the Act Four expansion yet" answer. Having said that, there's no harm in asking!

I'd recommend just posting few important questions rather than many trivial ones. Depending on how many good questions there are, there's a very good chance that we can't answer them all. We'll do our best to pick a selection of important ones. If you want to increase the chance that your question is answered, try to phrase it in a constructive non-hostile way. It's also good to check that no one has posted a very similar question before you.

I'll be the primary person answering questions, but will reach out to other developers for answers as needed. Just to clarify, the answers are going to be posted two days from now. Let the questions begin!

Grinding Gear Games released another patch for Path of Exile this week.

We've deployed 1.3.1b and have posted its patch notes here. Among other changes, this patch includes a substantial client performance improvement (a new text rendering system) and a proactive balance change prior to this weekend's race season. Both the PvP and Race seasons start this weekend. Alienware are providing prizes for them (as detailed here). You can view the Race schedule and Prizes, the US PvP Schedule and Prizes or the EU PvP Schedule and Prizes. Good luck in the events this weekend!

Grinding Gear Games has once again posted news on the Path of Exile forums that path 1.3.1 is now available for download. Here is the short post with the news.

We've successfully deployed patch 1.3.1, which introduces the Hall of the Grandmasters Unique Map and many other changes. Click here to read its patch notes. This patch contained two new microtransactions - the Seraph Bow Skin and the Verdant Blink and Mirror Arrow Effect. You should also check out the new Season Eleven Race Rewards!

Grinding Gear Games posted a few more updates in the forums for Path of Exile. The first two posts talk about a new competition the developer is holding.

At 5pm PST on Sunday (2pm NZT Monday, 2am CET Monday), we'll be hosting the America portion of our Season One PvP Invitational on our Twitch Channel. The event will be commentated by streamer-extraordinaire WillyWonka and PvP-expert GreenDude! It's a double-elimination tournament that will crown a Standard and Hardcore champion, then host a grudge match that decides which league is better at PvP. The European invitational was held one day earlier and you can see its results/VOD here. Today's news post will serve as the thread for the American tournament, showing the invitees and the brackets they are playing in. We'll be updating it as it plays out.

At 7pm CET on Saturday (7am NZT Sunday, 10am PST Saturday), we hosted the Europe portion of our Season One PvP Invitational on our Twitch Channel. The event was commentated by streamer-extraordinaire WillyWonka and PvP-expert GreenDude! It's a double-elimination tournament that crowns a Standard and Hardcore champion, then hosts a grudge match that decides which league is better at PvP. The American invitational will be held one day later (5pm PST Sunday, which is 2pm NZT Monday or 2am CET). Today's news post will serve as the thread for the tournament, showing the invitees and the brackets they are playing in.

Some extra news from me:

• We've just deployed patch 1.3.0j. Check out its patch notes here.
• We're expecting to deploy patch 1.3.0k next week, which includes a cool microtransaction for Issue #3 of the digital comic, as well as bug fixes!
• The PvP invitational events are this weekend
• The larger 1.3.1 patch (Hall of Grandmasters, new uniques, etc, etc) is due in approximately two weeks

Grinding Gear Games posted a new retrospective for 2014 on the games website.

Today's the last day of 2014 in New Zealand, so we're wrapping the year up with a look back on Path of Exile's biggest year. We are so thankful for the help, support and feedback you guys have given over the last three years. In 2014, Path of Exile became bigger than we ever dreamed it would, and it's because of you guys spreading the word and encouraging friends to play. 2015 is going to be a huge year, with our largest ever expansion coming up really soon. We can't wait to share it with you

Grinding Gear Games posted a new update on the Path of Exile forums with information on a new podcast with the developer, and announces a new comic issue is available.

The 22nd episode of the community State of Exile podcast has been released! Here's a link to it on YouTube. Issue #3 of our digital comic series is nearly complete - we're planning to release it in late January. Here's a teaser panel from that issue. You can purchase issue #1 here and #2 here.

Grinding Gear Games has once again posted news on the Path of Exile forums that path 1.3.0d is now available for download. Here is the short post with the news.

We've deployed patch 1.3.0d and have posted its patch notes here. This patch addresses many areas, ranging from PvP balance to changing how some of the Bloodlines mods work.

Edit: In a followup serverside-only patch a few minutes later, we made these additional changes:

• Fixed an issue where magic packs of more than one monster could fail to have a Bloodline mod.
• Fixed a bug where packs with Phylacteral Link would not swap their vulnerability between pack members.

Grinding Gear Games once again posted news on the Path of Exile forums that path 1.2.4 is now available for download. Here is the short post with the news.

We've deployed patch 1.2.4d today. It added two new microtransactions - the Swordfish Ice Spear and Chicken Pet. It's pretty crazy how popular that Chicken is. Today's patch had a bug that destroyed imprints of items. Update: We have restored these imprints in their original locations. If there was something in the way, then they were restored to a remove-only tab called "Restored Item".

Grinding Gear Games posted a new update on the Path of Exile forums with information on various new updates fro those still playing the game.

Today's news post is an assortment of miscellaneous updates about various topics. We deployed the 1.2.4b patch yesterday, which fixed several small problems. The testing of PvP changes on our Alpha server is going well - we expect to start tournament testing on Alpha in the coming weeks. If you're a PvP player who would like to help with this testing, please PM Qarl with a brief explanation of your PvP experience.

Several members of our team are heading to Melbourne tomorrow for PAX Australia this weekend. We're not running a booth there, but are holding a fan meetup on Saturday evening somewhere in the CBD. Email me at chris@grindinggear.com if you'd like to receive information about the meetup once it's decided.

The second issue of the comic is expected to go on sale a week from today.

Grinding Gear Games posted news on the Path of Exile forums that path 1.2.4 is now available for download. Here is the short post with the news.

Content Update 1.2.4 has been released. It includes the schedule and prizes for Race Season Nine, which you can check out here. The update also contains two new microtransaction skins and eight hideout decorations that you can view here.

Grinding Gear Games  has two new updates this week for Path of Exile. The first update talks about the new content from the next game patch.

Last week we posted about Race Season Nine. Because the race season uses tech from the 1.2.4 patch (which we're planning to deploy on Tuesday), we've confirmed a start date of that race season to be the weekend of October 25. We'll be posting a full schedule next week in advance of the season starting. Today's news update describes some of the changes in the upcoming 1.2.4 update!

These aren't the full 1.2.4 patch notes, but a few of the changes you can look forward to are:

• New Skills: Herald of Thunder and a skill currently called Lightning Touch.
• New Microtransaction Skins: Seraph Sword and Seraph Shield.
• Some purchasable Hideout Decorations.
• Two new Unique items.
• You can now set your default loot allocation option.
• You can ctrl+click a Waypoint and select "New" to create a new instance of the area you're currently in.
• Added support for a new type of race that scores players on how long it took them to complete an objective.

The second update has more information about the December PVP update.

We'll be releasing a major update to Path of Exile's PvP featureset in December. This will be released in the 1.3.0 update, alongside new challenge leagues. Today's news post outlines our plans for these PvP features.

We'll be starting our first formal PvP season in December. Each season will feature a variety of different tournaments, ranging from shorter casual events with rapid matchmaking to larger-scale multi-hour tournaments with swiss pairings. We're also planning a type of free-for-all event inspired by the Sarn Arena.

The PvP seasons will last roughly a month each and will feature alternate art unique items as prizes. There are are also the PvP equivalent of Demigod uniques, awarded to the best competitors. The first season will focus around 1v1 level 28 dueling, but will include a few team and no-level-cap events. Later seasons will shift the focus to different types of events.

One of Grinding Gear Games updates this week for Path of Exile has news on the next Hall of Grandmasters Development update on the games website.

Hall of Grandmasters Development Update 3

Grandmaster Supporters have been busy submitting characters for the Hall of Grandmasters Unique Map. We've been testing character importation and have recorded a video showing a work-in-progress fight against one Grandmaster. Eventually you'll be facing several at once! We're very pleased with how this encounter has turned out so far. As you can see in the video, the Grandmaster behaves a lot like a real player. For previous news about the Hall of Grandmasters, check out Development Update 1 and Development Update 2

Grinding Gear Games posted news on the Path of Exile forums that content update 1.2.3b is now available for download along with a new Grandmasters update.

We've deployed update 1.2.3b! As mentioned before, there are a variety of new item skins to check out in this patch. The rest of today's news post is an update on the status of the Hall of Grandmasters.

The Grandmaster Supporter Pack includes the ability to immortalise one of your characters in the Hall of Grandmasters unique map.

Last month we posted Development Update 1 which included some pictures of what our internal version of the Map looked like at the time. Almost all of the development on the Map since then has been behind-the-scenes rather than cosmetic changes. We've finished the process that allows characters to be exported, and have included that in today's 1.2.3b patch. If you're a Grandmaster Supporter and would like to see how to submit your character, check this thread out.

We originally planned that Grandmaster Supporters would email us to specify what character they want to submit. They'd then have to leave that character untouched in the right state for several days while we get around to finding it in a backup and exporting/importing it. This was a bit unreasonable, so we've implemented a system that allows players to export their own characters. That way they can change it to the Grandmaster build, export it, and go back to playing the character on its regular build.

Today's patch added an item that Grandmaster Supporters will receive in their microtransaction stashes. Clicking it will automatically export their character and send it to us. More information can be found here! As we receive submitted characters, we'll be adding them to the internal testing version of our Map and starting the next part of the process: balancing it.

Edit: The Grandmaster export items have been added to your accounts now! If you're a Grandmaster Supporter, look in your microtransaction stash!

Grinding Gear Games posted news on the Path of Exile forums that content update 1.2.3 is now available for download. Here is the short post with the news, and more links.

After several weeks of development, we've deployed Content Update 1.2.3. This patch included three new cosmetic pets - check them out!

A last minute addition to the patch notes for 1.2.3 included:

• We have reduced the master level required for larger hideout sizes. You can now upgrade your hideout at levels 5 and 7 (rather than 6 and 8) respectively.

Edit: We've deployed a serverside fix just now to fix a problem where creating a new hideout didn't respect the new levels.

Grinding Gear Games happily announced today that Path of Exile has over several million players now since the game launched last year. They also sent a press release.

Path of Exile Celebrates Seven Million Players

Taiwanese account registrations over one million just one month after debut; Forsaken Masters deemed "extremely well-received"

Auckland, New Zealand - September 26, 2014 - In partnership with leading Asian publisher Garena Online, Grinding Gear Games today announced that its critically-acclaimed action RPG Path of Exile has seen unprecedented success following the launch of the game's second expansion, Forsaken Masters, and its official release in Taiwan.

Exceeding expectations of both Grinding Gear Games and Garena Online, Path of Exile has reached a new level of success. Less than one month after the game's official release in Taiwan, Path of Exile saw over one million new Taiwanese account registrations - a number steadily growing after an incredibly successful Open Beta and launch. Published by Garena Online, the Taiwanese version of Path of Exile features traditional Chinese language support as well as a number of Taiwan-exclusive microtransaction options. Path of Exile went live in Taiwan on August 14, 2014.

Much of the game's ongoing success is due to the acclaim of its latest expansion, Forsaken Masters, as well as Grinding Gear Games' steadfast devotion to keeping Path of Exile updated with new content, which includes a new expansion every few months. Boasting a wealth of new and engaging content, Forsaken Masters has been "extremely well-received" by both new and existing players of Path of Exile, bringing the worldwide total of registered players to well over seven million. Path of Exile also saw a record-breaking number of concurrent players within the past month, reaching a peak of 154,000 players online simultaneously.

In Path of Exile: Forsaken Masters, players cross paths with the seven Forsaken Masters, who aid Exiles in their own specialized way. Each Master offers unique quests, training, mission variations, item crafting and modification options, secret and customizable towns known as Hideouts, tiers of Hideout decorations, and more in exchange for an Exile's help. New Challenge Leagues, revamped boss fights, new lore, new Unique items, new skill and support gems, a PvP Spectator Mode, and dozens of other additions have also been implemented as part of the Forsaken Masters expansion. Path of Exile: Forsaken Masters was released as a free content update on August 20, 2014.

Interested gamers can download and play Path of Exile via Steam, or by registering on the official Path of Exile website at www.pathofexile.com.

Further information about  Path of Exile: Forsaken Masters can be found on the Path of Exile website at  www.pathofexile.com/masters.

Grinding Gear Games regularly releases videos to expand on and complement updates, including patch previews, upcoming gameplay trailers, Developer Diaries, featured community content, and Build of the Week segments directly from Chris Wilson. Interested players should check out the Path of Exile YouTube channel at  youtube.com/user/grindinggear.

Grinding Gear Games posted two new updates on the Path of Exile forums with information about the new content path, and released a new podcast.

Information about Next Week's 1.2.3 Content Update

We're planning to deploy the 1.2.3 Content Update late next week. Today's news post includes some information about what's intended for the update, but shouldn't be treated as full patch notes. There are many other changes that aren't included in this post.

A large component of 1.2.3 is increased mission variety. Tora has now found new kinds of monsters she'll ask you to hunt down, including bosses with all-new skills. Haku's bosses have been improved and have all-new effects that occur when you pick up the Spirit. Vagan has a new combat variation, new companion variations, and sometimes drops traps around his arena before the fight starts. At higher difficulties, Elreon missions can now have waves that include Magic, Rare, and Unique monsters. Some improvements have also been made to the Vorici guards.

As mentioned earlier, we're including three new microtransaction pets in this patch: Blue Land Crab, Formosan Deer and Nursery Web Spider.

We have added a monster designed by a Ruler of Wraeclast! You will find it in some of Tora's missions and the heavily forested areas of Act Two.

We are adding two new Unique Maps, designed by supporters. Both are are very challenging maps with appropriate rewards to go with those challenges.

State of Exile Podcast and New 1.2.3 Screenshots

The fifteenth episode of the community State of Exile podcast was recorded today. It's in two parts, the second of which has Carl and Rory from our balance department as guest speakers. Part One is here and Part Two is here. In other news, we've released five new screenshots from the 1.2.3 patch (One Two Three Four Five). All of these screenshots show a new type of enemy skill (internally called "Beacons") that cause objects to be placed randomly that explode a few seconds later. In these screenshots, they are being used in some Haku mission variations.

Grinding Gear Games posted news on the Path of Exile forums that path 1.2.2b is now available for download. Here is the short post with the news, and more links.

1.2.2b Patch

We're deploying a 1.2.2b patch to fix a few issues with today's 1.2.2 deploy. Thanks for your patience! One feature that people are enjoying in today's patch is the ability to unleash pets in your hideout. We've seen some pretty awesome hideouts with large collections of pets so far. Someone purchased over 100 Wetas! If you haven't checked out the three new skill effects in 1.2.2, they're over here.

The bows and wands affected by the problem in the first few minutes of 1.2.2 have been restored in remove-only stash tabs.

Grinding Gear Games next update on the Path of Exile forums has information on the upcoming content of the next patch. Here are the details.

We're in the final stretches of development on the 1.2.2 Content Update. In addition to Roaming Pets and some new microtransaction effects discussed previously, the patch contains various other quality of life improvements. Click through for more information!

• We've added some new bench-crafting mods.
• Masters can sell decorations to you while they're in towns.
• Levels of daily missions from masters have been adjusted to better line up with player levels at those stages of the game.
• The Cast on Melee Kill Support Gem has been reworked so that it always triggers and increases the damage of the triggered spells.

The full patch notes will be available next week.

Grinding Gear Games latest update on the Path of Exile forums has news about the development of the the Hall of Grandmasters.

The Grandmaster Supporter Pack includes the ability to immortalise one of your characters in the Hall of Grandmasters unique map. If you'd like to read more about what The Hall of Grandmasters is, lots of information is at the bottom of the purchase page. Today's news article is an update on how development of the map is going. We'll post more updates in the news as progress continues!

Grinding Gear Games latest update on the Path of Exile forums has news about new supporter pack signed art, and the notes for the new game patch.

We've deployed update 1.2.0c - its patch notes are here. Some of the Forsaken Masters Supporter Packs contain sets of signed concept art (from Path of Exile's past, present and future) that we ship out to Master and Grandmaster supporters. We've started preparing these packs for signing and shipping. We expect to start sending them out late this week or early next week. You'll receive an email as we ship your pack.

Grinding Gear Games latest update on the Path of Exile forums has news about a new player record, a version 1.2.0 c preview, and mentions a State of Exile Podcast.

Over the weekend we hit a new record of 154,300 users playing Path of Exile simultaneously! We're currently preparing a 1.2.0c patch (likely to be deployed tomorrow) which includes a lot of improvements to the Forsaken Masters experience. For example, you'll now be able to sell items to vendors in other people's hideouts, which will make mapping a lot more convenient

Grinding Gear Games has posted new weekend update for Path of Exile with news on Stash Tab Sales, Server Stability, Concurrency Record, and new Beyond Updates.

We've had a lot of reports about server stability issues in the last few hours, mostly from Canada and to a lesser extent, other areas of Northern America. We've escalated the issue to our server host who are investigating it. These types of issues usually involve internet issues between various ISPs and can be resolved with the ISPs investigating for a few hours. We're keeping a close eye on it!

There's a similar issue going on with our Australian gateway over a longer period of time, related to internet choppiness between Australia and our master servers in America. We're looking for solutions to this and are confident that we can resolve it.

We broke another international player concurrency record last night and it's very clear that tonight is going to be another all-time high! I'll let you know how it went after the weekend.

We've been receiving a lot of feedback about the Forsaken Masters expansion. The vast majority is extremely positive, but some players have expressed concern with the balance of some of the bosses in the Beyond league. We are reading the feedback, continuing to playtest, looking at player data and making more changes. I expect the next set of changes will be deployed on Monday or Tuesday. The leagues are an evolving thing, and we're keen to hit the sweet spot of challenge, reward and fun.

Grinding Gear Games announces the next expansion for Path of Exile called Forsaken Masters is now available to download , and play for free.

Path of Exile: Forsaken Masters is Now Live

Newest expansion adds personal towns, master missions, new item crafting options, Rampage and Beyond Challenge Leagues, and
much more!

Auckland, New Zealand - August 20, 2014 - Grinding Gear Games, developer of the award-winning action RPG Path of Exile, today announced that Path of Exile: Forsaken Masters, an entirely new content expansion, is now live as of 3:00 PM PST (10:00 AM New Zealand Time on August 21) as a free update to the game. Path of Exile: Forsaken Masters offers both new and returning Path of Exile players a slew of new content and features related to the seven Masters.

As per the expansion's title, players will cross paths with the seven Forsaken Masters -- seven skilled individuals who were exiled to the forsaken continent of Wraeclast by Dominus, a powerful entity of corruption and tyranny. Each Master offers unique quests, training, mission variations, item crafting and modification options, secret and customizable towns known as Hideouts, tiers of Hideout decorations, and more in exchange for an Exile's help. New Challenge Leagues, revamped boss fights, new lore, new Unique items, new skill and support gems, a PvP Spectator Mode, and dozens of other additions have also been implemented as part of the Forsaken Masters expansion.

Further information about Path of Exile: Forsaken Masters can be found on the Path of Exile website at http://www.pathofexile.com/masters.

MMORPG has a new preview of Catarina the Master of the Dead from the upcoming game expansion Forsaken Masters for Path of Exile on August 20th.

Grinding Gear Games' Path of Exile is set to receive its second major expansion on August 20th, and we caught up with Lead Designer Chris Wilson to reveal two of Forsaken Masters' big new features: the Witch Catarina, Master of the Dead and the Standard Challenge League coming with the expansion: The Rampage League. But first, just what is Forsaken Masters all about?

Grinding Gear Games released a new video of one of the Masters from the games next expansion called Master Assassin Vorici. Here is the short video teaser.

Last week we announced our August expansion, Forsaken Masters, and revealed two of the Masters. Today we have released a teaser video for one of those two - Vorici, Master Assassin.

Update: They also released a new trailer for Armourmaster Haku.

Gamespot has posted a new preview/interview with Grinding Gear Games about the next expansion for Path of Exile called Forsaken Masters.

Even excellence can be improved. This seems to be Path of Exile developer Grinding Gears Games' philosophy, a philosophy readily apparent not just in the aforementioned action role-playing game's overall quality, but in the clear zeal the Grinding Gear leaders have for their art. Each time I interact with a member of Path of Exile's development team, I'm struck by the breathless passion which talents like lead designer Chris Wilson can barely contain. It is with this same passion that Wilson recently described to me the upcoming Path of Exile expansion called Forsaken Masters, which will seek penance on August 20th.

Grinding Gear Games also posted a new FAQ on the games forum that answers questions from the community about the expansion.

This article assumes you've read the announcement of Path of Exile: Forsaken Masters at: www.pathofexile.com/poefm

The purpose of this article is to explain our design direction behind the expansion and how some of the new features work. There are plenty of other changes that aren't described in this article. Any information in here may change before it's released.

General Goals For Expansion

We had five broad goals for the design of the Forsaken Masters mini-expansion:

• To add new content that augments the entire game and is available to low level players in their first playthrough of Normal difficulty.
• To make sure that all of the new content is also available inside of end-game Maps.
• To improve crafting options while not making it too easy to get the best items.
• To rebalance the game around various changes like the fix to snapshotting and the updated passive tree.
• To add some awesome fun content that appeals to our core community and also people who only want to log in for a little while each day.

Grinding Gear Games posted news on the games forum with the title. and a new description of the games latest expansion called Forsaken Masters.

Coming on August 20!

Path of Exile: Forsaken Masters will be released at 3pm on August 20 (US Pacific Time). This is midnight in the CEST timezone and 10am on August 21 in New Zealand.

This article is not the full patch notes for Path of Exile: Forsaken Masters. We'll be releasing those patch notes a day or two before the expansion is released. There are dozens of other changes included such as a new Quest Tracker, Tutorials and PvP Spectator Mode.

We're so proud of this expansion and can't wait to share it with you. There are so many interesting mission variations to explore and powerful new possibilities with crafting. Half of our development team is addicted to building custom Hideouts! Over the next three weeks we'll be updating this article with reveals of unannounced Masters and other content. Enjoy!

Grinding Gear Games posted news on the games forum with a countdown for the release of the next expansion, and information on a new patch for Path of Exile.

The Countdown to the Next Expansion is On!

The deployment of 1.1.5d today (patch notes here) has started a one-month countdown to our next major content release - the upcoming expansion in August. We have some great teaser screenshots planned for the next week, leading up to the grand reveal of the expansion's name, theme, lore and features a week from now. We have a really full schedule of previews and updates over the next month, so remember to check the news every day!

The expansion will be released at 10am NZ time on Thursday, August 21.

For those of you still playing Path of Exile the games developer Grinding Gear Games posted news on the games forum about more mini- expansions.

Many players have been asking for an update on when we're going to start releasing information about the August mini-expansion and new challenge leagues. Today's news post should shed some light on the current schedule we're working towards.

We'll post some screenshots of upcoming content (that doesn't spoil the theme of the expansion) next week and will start teasing expansion content towards the end of the week. A firm release date will probably be announced around that time also.

I'm making sure that when we post our first in-depth article about the expansion, it'll cover most of the information at once. We'll be announcing some information through press partners over the coming weeks, but will of course link to it from the news here and the main expansion information article. We're very excited about finally sharing details of what we've been working on!

In addition to the main news article, we'll also update the Development Manifesto at the time with discussion about the motivation behind (and specific details of) various changes we're making.

There's currently a pair of one-month leagues running that end on August 9, NZ time. We're expecting to post an infographic about the leagues once they've completed. Is there any data you'd like to see in that infographic that we don't normally cover?

Grinding Gear Games send news they are collaborating with Dynamite Entertainment to release a new graphic novel for Path of Exile.

Grinding Gear Games and Dynamite Entertainment Team Up for Path of Exile Graphic Novel

Four serialized issues featuring all-new Path of Exile lore and artwork from artist Carlos Rodriguez with writers Royal McGraw and Edwin McRae

Auckland, New Zealand - July 9, 2014 -  Grinding Gear Games, developer of the critically-acclaimed action role-playing videogame  Path of Exile, today announced that it will be partnering with comic book and graphic novel publisher Dynamite Entertainment to launch a four-issue comic book series based on  Path of Exile. Featuring canonized lore based on the in-game world of Wraeclast, this is the first time the  Path of Exile  IP has been utilized in a medium outside of the game.

Planned for a summer release, the first issue of the  Path of Exile  comic series will reveal backstory from an upcoming, unannounced expansion, weaving elements from the existing in-game narrative with an entirely new and gripping conflict. Each 22-page issue will release digitally with individual cover art, and the entire series will ultimately be compiled as a full-color, printed graphic novel, and be published by Dynamite next year. Additionally, each issue will feature unique in-game bonuses for players of  Path of Exile, such as armor cosmetic effects, among other surprises.

In close collaboration with Grinding Gear Games' Creative Director Erik Olofsson and Narrative Designer Edwin McRae, the  Path of Exile  comic series will be illustrated by Carlos Rodriguez and written by Royal McGraw. Carlos Rodriguez is a comic artist with published work in series such as  Nightwing  and  Teen Titans (DC Comics), as well as in  Fall of the Hulks: Red Hulk  and  X-Men Vs. Agents of Atlas (Marvel), among countless others. Royal McGraw is a professional writer who has penned projects for DC Comics, Syfy Channel, Electronic Arts, and other top-tier entertainment companies.

"We are thrilled to be working with Grinding Gear Games on this," said Rich Young, Dynamite's Director of Business Development, who is also serving as Editor on the project. "The work being produced by the creative team is really top notch, and it's tying in seamlessly to the game, thanks to Edwin and Erik. I think that fans of Path of Exile are really going to enjoy this series, which adds to the depth of the game, but in a different medium."

Path of Exile  is an online action role-playing game set in a dark fantasy world. Playing as one of seven unique character classes, players find themselves banished for their past misdeeds to world of Wraeclast. There, they encounter hundreds of species of deadly enemies laden with loot and mysterious artifacts as they explore the abandoned continent. With over 5.5 million and counting registered users,  Path of Exile  has received universal critical acclaim, including 2013 Game of the Year awards from leading game sites such as GameSpot and PC PowerPlay.

More information about Path of Exile and the  Path of Exile  graphic novel can be found on the game's website at  www.pathofexile.com.

The following news is for any of our Brazilian readers as Grinding Gear Games sent out a press release the games is now available to play in your market.

PATH OF EXILE LAUNCHES IN BRAZIL

UOL BoaCompra and Grinding Gear Games Partner to bring popular action RPG to Brazil

(São Paulo) July 2, 2014 - UOL BoaCompra, the leader in emerging markets and digital goods payments in Latin America, today announced a partnership with Grinding Gear Games to bring its popular, highly acclaimed action RPG Path of Exile to gamers in Brazil.

With this partnership, UOL BoaCompra's payment methods will allow Path of Exile players in Brazil the ability make purchases in-game using their preferred payment methods. To provide even further coverage for the dark and gritty action RPG, the payments giant will also monetize the game throughout Latin America, Portugal, Spain and Turkey. The partnership grants UOL BoaCompra exclusive monetization rights for Path of Exile in Brazil and will ensure that local customer support, payment gateways, and marketing through Brazil's largest content portal, UOL, will be provided.

"We have an avid player base in Brazil, so we're excited to finally be able to deliver the full Path of Exile experience and introduce the game to a whole new audience," said Chris Wilson, Managing Director for Grinding Gear Games. "UOL BoaCompra understands the Brazilian market very well and takes an innovative approach to deliver a high quality service to the Latin American community."

"Path of Exile is one of the most exciting RPG's we've seen in a while, and their community is growing rapidly in Brazil," said Christian Borneman, Head of Global Business Development for UOL BoaCompra. "The game's features - the ability to trade, modify, build characters, and challenge one another - is a perfect fit for Brazilian gamers who strongly prefer games with unique and social strategies; we're excited to bring such an acclaimed title to our gaming community."

To celebrate the launch, Grinding Gear Games is offering an exclusive pack valued at R$89 BRL ($40 USD). The pack will be available to all Path of Exile players for one week and includes:

• 400 Path of Exile Points ($40 USD)
• Royal Green Frog - FREE
• Divine Sign - FREE
• Back Attachment - FREE
• Premium Stash Tab - FREE

The popular online PC action role-playing game features ethical microtransactions; the game is free-to-play, but never pay-to-win. Playing as one of seven character classes, players find themselves banished for their past misdeeds to the dark fantasy world of Wraeclast. There, they encounter hundreds of species of opponents laden with loot and mysterious artifacts as they explore the abandoned continent.

Grinding Gear Games sent out a new press release with news about their charity race entering week two, and mentions they have raised almost $20K for Child's Play.

Path of Exile's First Ever Charity Race Raises Almost $20K (so far) to Benefit Child's Play

With one week left, over 3,600 Angelic Masks have been sold!

Auckland, New Zealand - May 15, 2014 -  Grinding Gear Games announced today that their first charity race event has already raised almost $20,000 to benefit the Child's Play charity. The event, which started on Saturday, May 10, 2014 in the Path of Exile game, will continue to run till Saturday, May 24, 1:00 PM PST.

The exclusive item on sale for this charity event, the Angelic Mask, has sold over 3,600 units at a cost of $5.00 a piece, and is only available during the two week event. 100% of the proceeds are donated directly to the Child's Play charity.

Participants of the event will be eligible to win great in-game prizes, which include special micro-transactions as well as signed art from Path of Exile. Additionally, Grinding Gear Game's partners such as NVIDIA, Razer, and Turtle Beach have contributed an awesome array of keyboards, mice, and graphics cards that will also be awarded to participants. Grinding Gear Games will pick winners randomly from the participants whose characters reach the following levels or higher. Participants can win prizes from multiple tiers as their characters level up.

Prizes available in the random drawing include:

• Level 15: 100x Stash Tab Bundles
• Level 20: 100x Premium Stash Tab Bundles
• Level 25: 10x Razer Mice
• Level 30: 5x Razer Keyboards
• Level 35: 5x NVIDIA High-performance Graphics Cards
• Level 40: 8x Turtle Beach Ear Force Z SEVEN Gaming Headsets  (Newly Added on May 7th!)
• Level 50: 10x Sets of all Seraph Micro-transactions (Armor pieces, Wings, Weapon Effect and Footprint Effect)
• Level 65: 5x Sets of Signed Prints of Original Early Concept Art
• Level 85: 1x One hour private Q&A on Skype with Chris, Jonathan and Erik

In addition, the top 5 players (ranked by experience) will receive an Alternate Art Demigod's Bounty unique item.

More information about the Path of Exile 2 Week Charity Race to Benefit the Child's Play Charity can be found at  https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/915739/page/1.

RPGamer reviews the F2P RPG Path of Exile, and awards the game with a 5/5.

After spending nearly two hundred hours playing with my first character, mostly solo, entirely with self-found gear, I reached a new appreciation for how perfectly balanced and addictive Path of Exile is straight through to the post-game. I've finished several acts co-op with my brother, joined strangers for post-game map runs, exchanged currency in trade chat, and looked up ideal passive tree progressions and skill combinations online, and yet nothing compares to feeling elated when a foe drops a unique post-game map or an extremely rare, valuable currency item. Endlessly customizable and endlessly replayable, I wish I had the time to try every build that appeals to me, and I haven't felt this way about an action RPG since Lord of Destruction. Grinding Gear Games has created something special here, and given it gratis to the world.

Grinding Gear Games sent a press release out about an upcoming charity event to help Child's Play. Here are the details if you're interested in helping.

Path of Exile First Ever Charity Race to Benefit Child's Play

Grinding Gear Games Partners with NVIDIA and Razer for a Two Week Event that Benefits Both the Player and a Great Cause

Auckland, New Zealand - May 5, 2014 -  Grinding Gear Games announced today that they are launching a two-week Path of Exile Ambush/Invasion race event to benefit the Child's Play charity. The event will start at 1pm Pacific on Saturday, May 10, 2014 in the Path of Exile game and run till Saturday, May 24, 1pm Pacific.

Grinding Gear Games has created an exclusive new helmet skin call the Angelic Mask specifically for this charity event. The mask will cost $5.00 and only be available during the two week event with 100% of the proceeds being donated directly to the Child's Play charity.

Participants during the event will be able to win great in-game prizes such as special micro-transactions as well as signed art from Path of Exile. Additionally, Grinding Gear Game's partners such as NVIDIA and Razer have contributed an awesome array of keyboards, mice and graphic cards that will also be awarded to participants.  Grinding Gear Games will pick winners randomly from the participants whose characters reach the following levels or higher. Participants can win prizes from multiple tiers as their characters level up.
 
Prizes available in the random draw include:

• Level 15: 100x Stash Tab Bundles
• Level 20: 100x Premium Stash Tab Bundles
• Level 25: 10x Razer Mice
• Level 30: 5x Razer Keyboards
• Level 35: 5x NVIDIA High-performance Graphics Cards
• Level 50: 10x Sets of all Seraph Micro transactions (Armor pieces, Wings, Weapon Effect and Footprint Effect)
• Level 65: 5x Sets of Signed Prints of Original Early Concept Art
• Level 85: 1x One hour private Q&A on Skype with Chris, Jonathan and Erik

In addition, the top 5 players (ranked by experience) will receive an Alternate Art Demigod's Bounty unique item. 
  
More information about the Path of Exile 2 Week Charity Race can be found at:  Path of Exile Charity Race to Benefit Child's Play.

Grinding Gear Games has a new post on the forums of Path of Exile about the return of the games Development Manifesto.

The Return of the Development Manifesto

The Development Manifesto is a set of articles that discusses our development philosophies, upcoming content and changes we're internally testing. It currently only contains seven articles, but we'll be expanding it over the coming weeks to cover many other topics. Please check it out and let us know if you have any feedback!

The following topics are included in today's update:

• Improving Communication: The Development Manifesto (Please Read First!)
• Rebalancing Corrupted Area and Invasion Bosses
• Content Update 1.1.3 Compiled Info
• What's Being Kept from Ambush/Invasion in July?
• Client Performance
• Improvements to New User Experience
• Client-server Action Synchronisation

 Rock, Paper, Shotgun has posted a new Wot I Think review for Path of Exile.

Sometimes it takes a while to make a judgement. I spent a fair amount of time with Path Of Exile’s beta but hadn’t revisited the release version for more than seven or eight hours in total until I decided to write something about it a few weeks ago. Now that I’ve been back to the grim shores of Wraeclast for a long vacation and have stared deep into the heart of the passive skill tree’s labyrinth depths, I’m ready to tell you wot I think.

Grinding Gear Games has a new forum post for Path of Exile with information a new patch was deployed, and shares information to the next content update.

1.1.1c Patch Deployed and Content Update 1.1.2 Information

We've deployed the 1.1.1c patch which fixes some minor issues and adds support for Race Season Seven (which starts tomorrow!). We've prepared a Google Calendar of this season here and an iCal version here.

Our next content update is 1.1.2 and is currently scheduled for late next week. This is a rough estimate - we'll post a more detailed timeline once we know for sure.

These aren't patch notes, but some of the changes we're working on include:

• A new cold DPS skill: Glacial Cascade
• A new PvP-targeted support gem
• Two new rogue exiles
• At least one new Vaal skill (Vaal Storm Call?)
• A new vendor recipe
• Two new achievements
• Four new unique items, including a Unique Map
• A new Invasion boss
• Two new Seraph-themed microtransaction effects

There are other changes (especially some buffs to less-popular skills) in the works, so if something isn't included in the above list, please don't assume it's not in this patch :

Grinding Gear Games has a new forum post for Path of Exile with information on the games latest content update. Here are the details.

Content Update 1.1.1 has been Deployed!

We deployed content update 1.1.1 today, which introduces new Vaal skill gems, rebalances Invasion bosses and makes many other improvements. Check out the patch notes here! There are a couple of new cosmetic microtransaction effects also. 

Six users have killed Atziri in Ambush now! It'll be very interesting to see how many more join their ranks over the weekend.

The San Francisco fan meetup (mid afternoon, Sunday March 16, mail chris@grindinggear.com for more info) has a pretty decent list of people attending so far! Roughly 10 developers and 40 community members are likely to be there, with more joining the list every day.

In the past we've given a lot of advance notice about patches, usually starting a week out or so. Today we deployed 1.1.1 abruptly with half an hour of warning. Which approach do you prefer?

Grinding Gear Games has a new forum post for Path of Exile with information the Mini-Expansion Sacrifice of the Vaal has received three new patches.

Since Sacrifice of the Vaal's release yesterday, we've released three patches. The first two (1.1.0b and 1.1.0c) were deployed using new technology that allows us to release patches without restarting the game servers. The final patch, 1.1.0d, was a more substantial one that required a server restart because of complex changes. These patches went well - there are more coming next week including hopefully the larger 1.1.1 update!

Exilic is running a Path of Exile levelling competition at 8pm CET Sunday March 9 (that's 8am Monday NZ time, which is 11am Sunday PST). They invited many of our top streamers to compete and the competition is being commentated by Kripparrian. Rory (one of our designers) is also being interviewed at the event. There are also prizes, provided by both us and Exilic. The link to the stream is http://www.twitch.tv/exilic.

IncGamers interviews Chris Wilson the Managing Director of Grinding Gear Games to talk about the games new expansion Sacrifice of the Vaal.

IncGamers: Firstly, are your servers ready for the huge influx of players :)?

Chris Wilson: Yep! We have a good idea what to expect from the previous public release (Open Beta last January, full Release in October, etc).

What are you most excited about so far from the development of Sacrifice of the Vaal (SotV)?

Chris Wilson: I’m most excited about the special craftable chests in the Ambush league. It’s an idea I proposed over a year ago, but we needed to find the right place to introduce it. It was very easy to slot it into these four-month leagues once we had development resources to work on it.

What have you learned from the development of SotV so far?

Chris Wilson: We’ve learned that it’s both easy and fun to put together a very cohesive Path of Exile mini-expansion themed around Sacrifice and Corruption. We have many ideas for future mini-expansion themes and are really looking forward to selecting from them for the next one.

Any ideas that haven’t made it into Sacrifice of the Vaal because of the bigger expansion and possible Act 4?

Chris Wilson: We managed to pack everything we wanted into SotV! Act 4 and its associated large expansion are in the works, but we have at least one more mini-expansion before they’re ready.

Anything you’d like to say to your fans before the release of SotV?

Chris Wilson: I’d like to thank the fans for their amazing support, great feedback and inspirational level of creativity they show with character builds. Thanks!

Special thanks to Chris and his team for providing those answers on short notice. With only a few hours remaining, Chris has acknowledged the 1.1.0 skill tree for the Offline Skill Tree Calculator on Reddit is legit but already out of date, so any info from gleaned the screenshots around the web and those below may not be final.

Grinding Gear Games has a new forum post for Path of Exile with informatioin the Mini-Expansion called Sacrifice of the Vaal is now available for free to all players.

Sacrifice of the Vaal is now Live!

We've successfully deployed Sacrifice of the Vaal and the new Ambush and Invasion challenge leagues have begun! The first 50 players to kill Queen Atziri and her minions in each of the new challenge leagues will receive an exclusive new microtransaction effect only available from this competition. For more rules, click through for the full news post. Also, our latest cosmetic skins - the Seraph Armour Skins are now available. Thanks so much for the generous support and enjoy Sacrifice of the Vaal!

Here are some more notes on the competition:

• To qualify, you need to be one of the first 50 people in Ambush or one of the first 50 people in Invasion league to complete the Challenge called "Kill Atziri and her Guardians". We are using the challenge-tracking system to track this.
• Standard and Hardcore kills do not count for this competition.
• Atziri and the four other Unique monsters in the Apex of Sacrifice must be killed.
• GGG staff members are not eligible to win the prize.
• We'll show what the prize looks like within the next few days in the news :)

Good luck!

Polygon has a new article about Path of Exile that wonders how the game faring. If you read the other article from yesterday they are almost the same.

When action-RPG Path of Exile was launched last year, developer Grinding Gear Games was clear. It would be an "ethical" free-to-play without any compromises to the evils of pay-to-win.

That meant no XP boosts or weapon upgrades, just for flashing a credit card. No expensive steeds or portals for fast-traveling. No intrusive ads and invitations to spend money on fancy new characters.

So how has the Diablo 2-style game been faring in the rough and tumble of the actual, open market?

Pretty good, it turns out. The New Zealand developer boasts over 5 million registered players with "hundreds of thousands" playing at any given time. Its first major expansion, Sacrifice of Vaal, is out next week.

"We probably would be making more income if we were pay-to-win," said lead programmer Jonathan Rogers. "But the game is doing very well. We paid off our development costs, the company is making enough money to expand."

Sacrifice of Vaal adds extra PvP content, a new race of dark-magic wielders and the ability to charge up super-powered weapons by killing monsters. But there will be no change to the game's low-key monetization policy.

"We would never want to compromise the game," said lead designer Chris Wilson. He added that gouging and persistent monetization policies generally hide game mechanics that are built around profits. The only way to win with a non-intrusive approach is to "make a really good game that people love to play."

Gamasutra has a new article that talks about the mechanics, and ethics of how free-to-play is used in Path of Exile. It's worth a read for any fans of the game.

Over 5 million people have signed up to Path of Exile. "Roughly" 1.2 million people are expected to play its next expansion during the month of its release, Chris Wilson, managing director of Grinding Gear Games, its developer, tells Gamasutra.

The game -- a Diablo-esque dungeon crawler -- is completely free-to-play. Its microtransactions are entirely cosmetic and have no effect on the gameplay -- and its gameplay is tuned like a premium game, with no stopgaps or gates. Yet its developers are wildly successful.

How does that work?

Grinding Gear Games has a forum post for Path of Exile with more information on the Mini-Expansion Sacrifice of the Vaal. They also released the first trailer.

When we released Path of Exile in October, we promised a major content update (a mini-expansion) every four months. Sacrifice of the Vaal is our first such major update, and will be released on March 5 as a free update to the game.

While this article is not the full patch notes, it covers most of the major new content and features of Sacrifice of the Vaal:

• Atziri, Queen of the Vaal
• Secret Corrupted Areas
• Vaal Skill Gems
• The Vaal Orb: Corrupted Items
• New Challenge Leagues
• Ambush League
• Invasion League
• New Boss Monsters
• New PvP Modes - Cut-throat and Sarn Arena
• Launch Week Competition
• Deployment Timeline

Grinding Gear Games has a forum post for Path of Exile with more information on the Mini-Expansion Sacrifice of the Vaal. Here are the details.

After announcing the name and theme of Sacrifice of the Vaal a week ago, today's update covers the overall scope of the mini-expansion. We've modified our promotional image to detail the specific areas that SotV improves, including a reveal of a new currency item and the names of the new challenge leagues. Full information will be revealed with the press embargo lifts on March 1. Let the speculation continue!

We released a few teasers this week and have many more planned for next week. Here are the ones so far:

• Teaser Screenshot 1 and a corrupted rare item
• Teaser Screenshot 2 and an Unset Ring
• Another corrupted item
• Teaser Screenshot 3 and a corrupted Unique item

In addition, we posted this 10 second teaser video today. Enjoy!

Grinding Gear Games has a new forum post for Path of Exile with informatioin the Mini-Expansion is called Sacrifice of the Vaal. Here are the details.

Path of Exile's first mini-expansion, Sacrifice of the Vaal, launches at 1pm PST on March 5. It expands the core game and sets the pace for our ongoing four-monthly updates. Today we're proud to announce both the name and theme of the update, while teasing some of the scope of how far the Vaal corruption has spread through Wraeclast

Grinding Gear Games has released information about a new mini-expansion.

Our first major update to Path of Exile (a mini-expansion with version number 1.1.0) will be released on March 5. This update has a name and theme that will be revealed next week. We've lined up several teasers and updates for you during the month of February and wanted to shed some light on when you can expect various reveals.

As usual, we're working on this content right up until the last minute. We're expecting to tease features over the course of the month (with early screenshots). We will fully announce how the new systems work at the culmination of our press tour in late February, as the details will be locked down by then.

Grinding Gear Games has a new video preview of the upcoming 1.0.6 update.

We've released a video showing some of the new content from this week's 1.0.6 content update, including four new summoner skills, a Unique item, Hillock's Zombie Slam, adding notes to friends and the new helmet microtransactions. We have also pushed back deployment of 1.0.6 back by one day to Thursday (NZ time) so that we are able to fully test some last-minute changes.

Grinding Gear Games has a new post about patch 1.0.5b for Path of Exile.

We've deployed 1.0.5b and have posted its patch notes here. A copy of the community interview that occurred on the weekend has been posted by its hosts and can be heard here. It's over an hour long and covers a lot of topics!

We've recently finished some technology that will allow us to make serverside updates to Path of Exile without needing downtime. It's likely to be in the 1.0.6 or 1.1.0 patch (after being sufficiently tested). Once this is deployed, we'll be able to hotfix server problems (like bugs or balance issues) in a non-disruptive way. This will probably mean that we deploy small updates more regularly and will be extremely valuable after large patches where it's extremely important to be able to deploy minor fixes quickly and without rebooting all the servers.

I also wanted to clarify that Act 4 is not part of March's 1.1.0 content update. There is a pile of new content, including some new game areas, but an entire Act takes way more than four months to create. While most of the community understand that Acts can take over a year to produce (depending on how much funding we have available), I've been seeing posts where people were confused about the word "expansion" that I used to describe the March update. While we think of it as an expansion because it contains so many different things, it doesn't have the new character class or new act that people seem to expect from the word. Because of this, we've moved away from using that language. What's something called that's a lot larger than a regular content update but smaller than the gigantic update that will introduce Act 4? A mini-expansion? Either way, the March update has its own name and you'll find out information starting in early February :)

PC Gamer reviews the F2P ARPG Path Of Exile, and awards the game with a 84/100.

If you play action-RPGs as a cathartic power trip, to slam into monstrous hordes and watch their bloody bodies ragdoll across the scenery, then Path of Exile will seem dry. It’s not a game about instant gratification, it’s about slowly forging an inventive character over three acts and three difficulty tiers. Once it has its claws in, Path of Exile is as compulsive as any other in the genre. After a few hours the combat becomes automatic. The objectives are moot, the quests, characters and creatures incidental. Every stab and slash is in service of the real journey across that vast levelling board. Every 500 to 1,000 clicks lights up another node, and the little warrior mannequin takes another step away from being a template and toward something that’s uniquely yours.

IncGamers has posted the results of their readers choice awards, and Path of Exile has won best ARPG.

Path of Exile was without a doubt the stand-out ARPG this year, so this is a wise choice from our readers. It shines with its unique skill system, a massive passives tree, regularly updated content from Grinding Gear Games… and it’s also free-to-play, with no pay-to-win microstransactions. The game launched back in September following what has to be one of the longest beta tests we can remember and since then it’s been constantly updated with new features. Next year GGG plan on releasing the first major content update expanding the world of Wraeclast, so there’s still a lot more to come. As an indie developer, what they have managed to achieve with this game is extremely impressive.

Grinding Gear Games has a new post with details on the progress of Path of Exile in 2013, and wishes you a Happy New Year.

Path of Exile: 2013 in Summary

It's just about to become 2014 in New Zealand, so we've decided to post a short retrospective on what has been the most exciting year of Path of Exile's history. PoE's success in 2013 is almost entirely due to our amazing community. Your patience, support, feedback and dedication have allowed us to grow Path of Exile into the game we always wanted it to be. Thank you for an amazing year - we're looking forward to making 2014 even better!

In 2013:

• Path of Exile evolved from Closed Beta to Open Beta (late January) and then to full Release (late October).
• We deployed 87 patches, ran over 1000 race events, posted 286 daily deals and 222 news posts.
• Grinding Gear Games expanded from 20 people to 55! While our core development team doubled in size (to 35) we also scaled up our customer support department by a factor of ten.
• We had three sets of supporter packs for sale at different times during 2013 (the tail end of the Closed Beta packs, the Open Beta packs and the current Release packs.
• Over 3.7 million new players signed up to play Path of Exile.
• We hit a peak of almost 70,000 people playing Path of Exile at the same time. We expect to beat this record as we localise the game to more countries next year!
• We had the pleasure of meeting several hundred fans at meetups in various countries.
• Zero Unique Fish were caught.
• 1 in every 500 people alive visited www.pathofexile.com.
• Path of Exile won numerous awards including GameSpot's 2013 PC Game of the Year.

Have a great New Year, guys. Thanks again for everything.

RPGFan reviews the F2P ARPG Path Of Exile and awards the game with a score of 88/100.

Preference among Diablo, Torchlight, and Path of Exile may be a matter of taste.  To be quite honest, all three series have proven themselves to be top-notch experiences in the realm of action RPGs.  In terms of atmosphere and the unique approach to character building, each latest title offers an engaging experience guaranteed to wile away the hours.  I've immersed myself in each world, and although I'll happily play the next title in each series, for right now Path of Exile stands above the rest.

Grinding Gear Games has once again posted a new video to preview the upcoming changes in the next Path of Exile game update.

Well this comes as a surprise it seems the F2P ARPG Path of Exile has won Gamespot's Game of the Year award. Usually some action game or FPS wins.

Who would have thought that Blizzard Entertainment, the uber-successful creator of the world's most revered action role-playing games, would be out-Diablo'd? A year after Diablo III was released, developer Grinding Gear Games created a dark and oppressive clickfest that seemingly rose from the ashes of Diablo II. After a notably long beta period, Path of Exile was released to great acclaim in 2013--yet, somehow, doesn't cost a penny to download, play, and love.

So yes, it's a wonder that Path of Exile is free, though you can certainly toss some cash the developer’s way by buying unnecessary cosmetic enhancements. But Path of Exile’s greatness has little to do with its price, or lack thereof, but is instead a result of its ridiculously complex skill tree, exciting action, and moody atmosphere. At first, the adventure hews closely to its obvious inspiration, but this familiarity is merely a stepping stone that allows Path of Exile to find its footing. Once it's clear you are on rock-solid ground, the game establishes an identity all its own--an identity that makes Path of Exile a worthy winner of GameSpot's award for 2013 PC game of the year.

Grinding Gear Games has posted a new video to preview the upcoming changes in the next Path of Exile game update.

Grinding Gear Games has a new press release about Path of Exile. It contains information about the amount of registered users, and talks about a new patch.

New Supporter Packs available; Version 1.0.2 now live

Auckland, New Zealand - December 2, 2013 - Grinding Gear Games today announced that their popular action RPG, Path of Exile, has exceeded initial expectations just one month after the game's official launch.

With over 4 million and counting registered users and more than 250,000 daily users, Path of Exile saw 1.5 million unique players log in following the end of its Open Beta. Path of Exile has also garnered a wealth of critical acclaim across the globe, including top scores from leading game sites such as IGN and GameSpot.

New Supporter Packs

Additionally, Grinding Gear Games has given both new and old community members the chance to support the game and receive exclusive bonuses through the purchase of all-new Supporter Packs. Thanks to the generous contributions of thousands of members of the Path of Exile community, the sales of Supporter Packs have funded a significant portion of the game's development, contributing to content and server costs throughout both the Closed and Open Betas.

These Supporter Packs offer a wide range of bonuses including Points (used for microtransactions), cosmetic item and spell effects, forum titles, alternate in-game social portraits, Path of Exile shirts/hoodies, the extended digital soundtrack, and more, with each tier containing more enticing rewards than the last.

Supporter Packs are now available for purchase in the following tiers: 

• Survivor Pack: $50
• Warrior Pack: $120
• Champion Pack: $280 
• Conqueror Pack: $900

For full details on each of Path of Exile's latest Supporter Packs, including purchasing options, please visit https://www.pathofexile.com/purchase.

Version 1.0.2

Furthermore, the latest update to Path of Exile, Version 1.0.2, went live last Wednesday, November 27. Version 1.0.2 includes several new Unique items, vendor recipes, achievements, and microtransactions, as well as final touches on the rapid-fire PvP Tournaments, various bug fixes, and some balancing changes to the game's damage over time mechanics.

Further information on Path of Exile 1.0.2, including the full patch notes, can be found at Path of Exile Update Notes Link

Grinding Gear Games regularly releases videos to expand on and complement updates, including patch previews, upcoming gameplay trailers, Developer Diaries, and Build of the Week segments directly from Chris Wilson. Interested players should check out the Path of Exile YouTube page.

IncGamers has posted the next review for the F2P RPG Path of Exile.

GGG have to be commended for keeping pay-to-win away from POE but it’s going to be up to the community to support the game. If the current pool of store items are enough to fund the game and further content development the future looks bright, but players will have to keep playing and new offers will have to be added all the time to keep that cash coming in.

Having played the game for a long time now on and off, it’s not easy to write about it, as most of the game features have been written about to death over the past couple of years here on IncGamers. In all the time playing over the past 12 months or so it’s apparent that Path of Exile does most things right if you’re looking for a new ARPG – it can look a little rough around the edges in places and there are minor connectivity issues from time to time, but these are not major issues when you consider what’s on offer.

Over the years I’ve played more ARPGs and free-to play-titles than you can throw a fireball at, and I think I can safely say that this is one of the best ARPGs around at the moment. It’s certainly the best free-to-play title I’ve played in a long time. I think GGG nailed it.

Techraptor is the next site to post a review for the F2P RPG Path of Exile, and gives the game a final score of 81/100.

If you are extremely into cut-scenes and graphics from Blizzard’s offering, you may want to look further. I have yet to see a cut scene, but as a person who does not tend to get into the backstory of a game all that much, this is a minor omission. The graphics in this game are not bad, but they are not quite up to par with Blizzard’s offering. The background music is quite repetitive and i have found myself humming it more than once However, these things do not make me enjoy the game any less, and with the recent update on 11/12/13, the game added some effects to weapons that I had not noticed in the past. This has me excited, in that it seems that the graphics and individual weapon development will be a continuing effort from the development team. Additionally, it seems as though there are many graphical and cosmetic changes available in the freemium store, but I tend to avoid real-money marketplaces at all costs, so I will leave that aspect of the game for you to explore.

IGN reviews Path of Exile and awards the game with a score of 8.8/10. Here is the verdict from the reviews conclusion.

Path of Exile successfully captures the spirit of older action RPGs and updates it for an experience that's as visually appealing as it's fun. The combat itself doesn't differ much from other examples in the genre, but Path of Exile distinguishes itself with a unique ability system based on gems and a labyrinthine passive skill system that permits the creation of almost any type of character. Leaderboards, PvP options, and lootable challenge maps spice up the higher level content, and an unusual bartering system staves off inflation in its multiplayer aspects. Best of all, it's free almost to a fault, revealing a compelling alternative path for free-to-play projects to come.

Gamespot posted a new review for Path of Exile, and gave the game a final score of 9/10.

Considering that Path of Exile costs you nothing beyond some Internet bandwidth, it provides an embarrassment of pleasures. If you like standing out in a crowd, you could toss Grinding Gear Games some cash by purchasing a cosmetic accessory, like a nature aura to surround your wand, or a pet ferret to tail you. I'm so fully committed to Path of Exile that I've spent a bit of coin myself, and my witch is only one of many wayfarers I intend to guide through Wraeclast. Many mysteries still await me, even in the savage regions I've already charted.

GameDynamo reviews the recently launched F2P ARRG Path of Exile.

Now, as a completely free F2P game, Path of Exile’s community is pretty hit-or-miss, but besides that, the F2P system in PoE is actually very well-balanced. All cash shop items are cosmetic-only except for the ability to create guilds and obtain additional stash storage.  GGG will presumably release additional content in the future that may be gated by the cash shop, but for now, anyone can hop in and experience everything the game has to offer for free. It’s a sweet deal.

As you’d expect from a free game, there's a slight amount of bugs to contend with as well as periods of the day when the servers can seem a bit laggy. GGG has been pretty awesome when it comes to fixing said bugs, however. The graphics and music in Path of Exile are solid for an F2P game and offer some great sights and sounds to the dark fantasy ARPG genre. There are no fancy Blizzard-style cutscenes, but hey—ARPGs are all about the action, right?

For a completely free game, Path of Exile has a lot to offer. The myriad of customization options alone makes this a solid contender in the world of ARPGs, and if GGG plays their cards right, this hidden gem in the messy world of F2P games could stick around for years to come.

RPGamer has a new 20 minute podcast interview for Path of Exile with Grinding Gear Games.

Path of Exile, the Diablo-style free-to-play ARPG from Grinding Gear Games, officially launched last week on Steam and the official Path of Exile website. Prior to launch, the New Zealand based developers flew in to Los Angeles to give local press some hands-on time and a preview of what was coming at launch.

I spent about 30 minutes with the new Scion class and dove a bit into the massive Final Fantasy X Sphere Grid-like skill system in PoE, but 30 minutes isn't nearly enough time to get a good feel for all of the complicated customization options going in the game, especially not on a prestige class like the Scion. My first impression of the game is this is a game for anyone who complained that Diablo III was too easy or lacked a real sense of character building and customization. This is definitely a game with the hardcore ARPG fan in mind, especially those who loved Diablo II.

To find out more about Path of Exile and everything that Grinding Gear Games has in store for the game, check out the latest episode of Dialog Trees. In this 20 minute episode I get a full rundown of the game and more.

Dialog Trees: Path of Exile Interview

IncGamers has a new podcast with Grinding Gear Games Chris Wilson to talk about Path of Exile's launch last week.

Grinding Gear Games’ Chris Wilson joins the IncGamers Podcast team to chat about Path of Exile as part of the game’s launch week as the studio gets ready to launch the game today. Where is he sleeping? What is he eating? All these important questions and more are answered.

Eurogamer reviews the F2P RPG Path of Exile, and gave the game a final score of 7/10.

It's free-to-play done well and it's not at all invasive, so I'm a little sad to say I'm unsure how effective a revenue generator it will be. Though it's not an unattractive game, Path of Exile doesn't have Torchlight 2's sense of style or Diablo 3's polish. Its cosmetics are fairly expensive, with $30 getting you a pet, a soundtrack and 200 points. 200 points might buy one or two customisations, but it won't even stretch to some of the weapon effects. You could blow it all on just expanding your stash, or one piece of headgear.

 

But how you choose to spend your money is your business. If this payment model works out for the developer Grinding Gear, I'll be very pleased. Path of Exile isn't a great action RPG, but it's a pretty good one, it's off to a promising start and the developer says it has a lot planned for the months and years ahead.

I can't say what their future holds as I'm not much of an economist (nor am I really a magpie). But I can say I've had many, many hours of fun in a game that still has much more to show me and which all of us, right now, can play for nothing at all. We're being spoiled.

Path of Exile has been officially released today you can download the game for free on Steam, or the games webpage.

You are an Exile, struggling to survive on the dark continent of Wraeclast, as you fight to earn power that will allow you to exact your revenge against those who wronged you. Created by hardcore gamers, Path of Exile is an online Action RPG set in a dark fantasy world. With a focus on visceral action combat, powerful items and deep character customization, Path of Exile is completely free and will never be pay-to-win.

Key Features

• Freedom. Power. Revenge.
  Banished for your misdeeds to the dark, brutal world of Wraeclast, you play as the Duelist, Witch, Ranger, Templar, Marauder, Shadow or the newly added Scion class. From forsaken shores through to the ruined city of Sarn, explore Wraeclast and uncover the ancient secrets waiting for you.
• Unlimited Character Customization
  Create and customize hundreds of unique skill combinations from tradable itemized gems and our gigantic passive skill tree. Combine skill gems, support gems and trigger gems to create your own unique combination of power, defense and destruction.
• Dressed to Kill
  Path of Exile is all about items. Find, collect and trade magic, rare and unique items with arcane properties, then customize your character build around the deadliest combinations you possess.
• Brutal Competitive Play
  Battle in PvP tournaments seasons and Capture the Flag events for worldwide recognition. Compete in Daily Leagues and Race Events that run as separate game worlds with their own ladders and economies to win valuable prizes.
• Fair-To-Play. Never Pay-To-Win.
  We're committed to creating a fair playing field for all players. You cannot gain gameplay advantage by spending real money in Path of Exile.

IncGamers interviews Grinding Gear Games CEO Chris Wilson a couple of days before the game officially launches to ask a few questions.

GGG started in 2006 so it’s been a long journey to get Path of Exile launched. How are you feeling now a few days before launch?

It has been an awesome journey! At the moment the team is working very hard on the last 100 or so issues. At the time of writing there are five days until release so we’re performing last minute fixes and quality assurance. While I always wish we had more time, I’m so proud of this version of Path of Exile and am really looking forward to launch day where we get to share it with the public.

Looking back at the game’s development is there anything you would have done differently as far as GGG as a company is concerned?

I’m honestly struggling to think of anything that I would have done differently as a company. We’ve retained our independence and still own almost all of the company ourselves. This independence has made it a lot easier to create Path of Exile to our vision rather than someone else’s.

Path of Exile has had one of the longest beta tests I can remember but was that something you had always planned or was it more of a necessity as a learning process for the team?

I remember thinking “we need at least a year of a live economy before we perform our final wipe”, and hence I’m glad that we were able to run a long Closed Beta before we wiped the game at the start of Open Beta in January. The lessons we learnt during that time really paid off and resulted in a much stronger item economy. To some extent we’ve been worried about the overall Beta period running for so long because there’s a propensity for modern games to stay in Beta forever and to use it as an excuse for quality. We’re looking forward to finally being released!

30Plusgamer has a new review of the Bera version of Path of Exile.

Back when Diablo 2 hit the scene in 2000, it became one of the most popular games that have been released. There was some fleeting success carried over from the Diablo prequel, but Diablo 2 took the ball and ran faster than anyone expected. The action adventure style, overhead viewing RPG, is a fun genre of game that many have tried to copy, but has never had the success as Blizzard has with the Diablo franchise.

Well, this writer says, move over Blizzard. Grinding Gear Games’ Path of Exile will bring success that you could not fathom, even with Diablo 3.

Gamedynamo posted a short hands-on preview of Path of Exile.

Having played a demo with a few high level characters, Path of Exile is definitely something to behold once you get your mind around how deep yet accessible the skill gem system and skill trees are. The skill gems are used with almost any item in your inventory. The most novel use I saw was skill gems being used with a map to enhance the difficulty and awards of the bonus dungeon it's to travel to. It was also fun seeing just how switching skill gems on equipped inventory can drastically change the player's main attack. One character had a hammer that called down fireballs on the screen as he constantly called an AOE attack wherever he spun the hammer.

GamerHub has posted the second part of their interview with Grinding Gear Games Jonathan Rogers about Path of Exile.

The Jace Hall Show has been kind enough to send us a link to a interview they hosted about Path of Exile. 

It was 2006 when Chris Wilson, Jonathan Rogers, and Erik Olofson were per usual, heavily involved in Diablo 2 and Titan’s Quest. It had been six years since D2 had hit the scene, so naturally, what did three hardcore Action RPG gamers with a background in coding and design think?

“Why don’t we make our own action RPG?”

Prior to meeting in a Diablo 2 forum, Chris Wilson, Jonathan Rogers and Erik Olofsson had never known each other. Chris and Jonathan were programmers in New Zealand and Erik was studying industrial design…in Sweden.

Says Managing Director Chris Wilson:

“We realized there was a bit of an opportunity before the inevitable Diablo 3 announcement within a decade to make a great, loyal action RPG. We were in a situation where we had the skills between us, programming and game design, and our life savings — which is a real bad idea when you really think about it — and the three of us got together to make it happen. I remember the conversation actually, we had been playing Diablo 2 and I said I want to make a action RPG like this. I was talking to Eric (who was in Sweden) and he said he’d come to New Zealand. We set up in my garage, the three of us, trying really hard not to spend any money, we were just a bunch of kids, mid 20′s trying to make a game together.

Fast forward seven years later and the guys have done just that, having recruited over a dozen other team members to form Grinding Gear Games and create Path of Exile, which has raised over $2.5 million in crowd funding.

What makes Path of Exile so different in a sea of action RPG’s?

“We feel as action RPG purists, that action RPGs are quite different than how they used to be a decade ago, says Wilson. “We’re trying to recreate the experience of playing the first RPGs Diablo and Diablo 2 and Dungeon Siege, they’re quite different than the modern RPG, which is largely trying to gain mass market appeal.”

GamerHub has a new video interview with Grinding Gears Games Technical Director Jonathan Rogers.

Grinding Gear Games has released a new trailer for the F2P RPG Path of Exile. The game will officially launch on October 23rd.

News10 interviewed the Lead Programmer Jonathan Rogers about Path of Exile.

Later this month a new free-to-play adventure will be making its public release as Grinding Gear Games prepares Path of Exile for launch.

The game, which takes its inspiration from Blizzard's iconic title Diablo and expands upon it greatly, was funded pretty much entirely through crowdfunding.  Because of that, those behind the upcoming title have been hard at work to ensure that the game's supporters get their monies' worth.  In fact, since January the developers have released 25 crowdfunding-backed content patches to the game.  That's nearly two per month for a game that's still in its beta phase.

"The main reason we had to do it is because our company needed the money," joked Jonathan Rogers, Lead Programmer on Path of Exile.  "Like, basically the community is funding the development of Path of Exile."

GeekParty interviews Path of Exile’s Chris Wilson on microtransactions and pay-to-win.

Path of Exile is a free-to-play game that has been funded in part by a very successful crowdfunding campaign, and has continued to gain funding by cosmetic microtransactions. PoE‘s lead developer and GGG managing director Chris Wilson has taken a pretty firm stance on allowing real world money to buy in-game power.

"We don’t want to sell anything that affects the game economy or provides a competitive advantage for one player over another. We try to completely divorce our microtransactions from the game balance. Selling items that affect a player’s stats, or can be traded, or provide some type of gameplay boost (e.g. experience potions) are examples of things that we feel would be pay-to-win."

The free-to-play model of game publication is still fairly new, creating a sort of Wild West atmosphere without firmly established norms. Games like Riot’s League of Legends have garnered huge fanbases with their model, but Wilson says that GGG are set on finding their own path.

"We’ve been really careful to try to design our microtransaction model ourselves and haven’t investigated how other popular games are handling their microtransactions (because they’re generally pay-to-win, which we don’t want)."

A few players have charged that some of the account features offered, namely stash space for storing items, violate this stance. Wilson disagrees.

"The reason that we sell storage space is because players are able to create additional free accounts that come with a reasonable amount of space each. If players want additional space but don’t want to pay, they can create more free accounts."

It has been a while since I posted news about Path of Exile. The games forum has news of a new patch.

We're expecting to deploy 0.11.5 in two days (Thursday, NZ time). We've prepared an early version of the patch notes that we're including in this news post to get feedback. If anything's unclear or confusing, please let us know!

They have also released a new trailer showing off the the skin transfer that's part of the patch.

Path of Exile announces it's third season of signature events including brand new mode callled “Descent.”

Descent will reward players who have already sped through the core Path of Exile game a few times with a brand new setting. In Descent, you cannot return to town or use waypoints or portals to travel. A completely solo experience, Descent will feature its own economy of high-powered loot and monsters that exist only for the duration of the league. At the end of the event, all characters and items are destroyed.

It’s a bold move from Path of Exile, and it runs contrary to the traditional model of clicky-click-click action RPG games. Because the focus in Descent is not on building a character or collecting gold or items, developer Grinding Gear has designed Descent to be more like a traditional single-player RPG: explore a new world and experiment with new builds to survive the harrowing landscape.

Descent events will last an hour each and are the Signature Event for season three.  About 50 of them will take place over six weeks beginning on June 29. Check out Path of Exile’s website for a full schedule, to be posted next week.

According to a new article on IncGamers Path of Exile has managed to raise $ 2.5 million off their support packs. The packs help fund the game, and make sure it doesn't become pay to win.

Today they revealed that the sale of the supporter packs alone has helped fund the game to the tune of $2.5 million which I think you’ll agree is a decent chunk of change. Since the open beta began they’ve been working on new pack options for players to help continue the development funding.

New packs have also been launched for anyone who wishes to support and fund the game’s development as they continue to finish Act 3 before the game releases later this year. Players of the game can get anything from a simple Baby Rhoa pet and soundtrack for $30 right through to the Ruler of Wraeclast pack for $12,500 which allows you to design your own monster in the game and all the other extras

The packs that have been put together by GGG illustrate that a game can be supported by a strong community if the game catches their imagination. If POE steers clear of a pay to win model with community support then that can only be a good thing for ARPG games.

Grinding Gear Games announced that the latest major content update for Path of Exile will be released on Wednesday, June 5th. This will begin the second phase of it's Beta.

We're now halfway through Path of Exile's Open Beta and have deployed 9 major patches and 24 minor patches in the 0.10.x series. For a while, we've been planning a major patch to herald the second phase of the Open Beta. This patch is 0.11.0 and it contains new four-month leagues with special rules, exclusive Challenges with prizes, major balance changes relating to monster damage and player life values, the introduction of item allocation options, toggleable mini health-bars, a new currency item and many other changes

Please note that this page is not the 0.11.0 patch notes! It's a list of various features we're including (which may change slightly by the time the patch is deployed). Full patch notes will be posted before deployment and linked from here when available.

Games.On.Net has an interview with Grinding Gear Games Chris Wilson about Path of Exile.

GON: Chris, you’ve been in open beta for a little while now, since January in fact — can you tell us a little bit about how everything’s progressing?

Chris: So we’re now at 2.46 million registered users. So we had a large surge of people who became interested in the game, and who have joined our community, which has exceeded our expectations. Most of the game’s performance so far has exceeded our expectations, and this has raised some issues with how do we handle all these users, but thankfully the tests we’ve done prior to open beta were very optimistic in terms of user numbers so we were (barely) able to handle the amount of people that flooded our servers. And it did cause a few weeks of instability while we dealt with issues that only manifest when you have more than 50,000 people playing at once. But we we have those under control now.

GON: So what is your peak concurrent player count?

Chris: We’ve hit 70,000 in the first week of release. We’re very pleased with that. There was an awful lot of stuff combining at the same time with the game being very new and a lot of people talking about it which caused us to really strain the servers, but thankfully it’s dropped a bit to a more maintainable rate at the moment.

GON: Have you identified any issues in the beta that you’ll need to address going forward before launch?

Chris: We have found a lot of things based on player feedback and our own analytics that we can improve. There are various systems that we’ve been working on with the players to find better solutions to. For example loot allocation in the game, a lot of players would like it to be a bit more forgiving and less free-for-all, so we’ve been looking into a variety of options which will hopefully launch by the end of the month.

A video was posted online showcasing almost one hour of the game Path of Exile.

"My First Hour In" is a segment where I play a new game for an hour to see if it makes me want to keep playing. Why only an hour? Because I have a lot of games to play, and an hour is all you get to hold my attention.

Digitally Downloaded interviewed Grinding Gear Games' Brian Weissman about Path of Exile.

DD: What challenges have you found in launching a new company and developing an entirely new IP?
BW: Probably the biggest challenge overall has been raising awareness of the company and of the game itself. It seems like mundane thing, relative to actual game development, but it's probably the most important. The game development industry is extremely competitive, moving along so quickly that it's easy to get ignored or passed by. The failure rate for new companies in gaming is astoundingly high.

People may not realise it, but a huge part of PoE's success has been our constant, varied avenues of promotion. From the very first media outreach we did at PAX 2010, we have worked tirelessly to promote the game. We've done hundreds of interviews, travelled tens of thousands of miles, written thousands of articles and forum posts. The sum of this has grown PoE into what it is today, but it hasn't been easy.

The next biggest challenge has been assembling our team. New Zealand is a very small country, population-wise, with 4.4 million people. That's not even half the population of New York City. Finding a set of people with the wide range of talent PoE's development requires has taken tremendous effort and time. We haven't been short of interested candidates, especially recently, but very few have the necessary skill set to work for us. Acquiring skilled programmers locally has been the greatest obstacle to meeting our long term design goals.

Outside of promotion and personnel, the next greatest challenge has been implementing our vision for the game. We stepped into a genre that contains some of the most beloved gaming titles in history, so comparisons are inevitable. Throughout our development, we've received thousands of opinions on how our game should look and play. Everyone thinks that they understand the genre best, that their design is ideal.

In the face of so much feedback, it is very tough figuring out when you're right, and when the fans are right. If you cleave too much to your vision, you risk appearing as a hardliner, alienating a lot of players in the process. If you compromise and give in too much, you dilute your vision, and come across as weak. It's a tricky dynamic we're still learning as we move further into Open Beta.

From a week or so back just before it was announced 1Up would close they have an article titled Path of Exile Provides Interesting Solutions to Diablo III's Problems:

One look at the official website for Path of Exile and you can tell the developers at Grinding Gear Games have a beef with Diablo III, and, to some extent, Torchlight. They never say it outright, of course, but the site's marketing copy is filled with statements like, "The game is completely free and will never be 'pay to win,'" and, "We're sick of the recent trend towards bright, cartoony RPGs."

In interviews, Grinding Gear co-founder Jonathan Rogers has been much more specific about the studio's feelings toward Blizzard's game. "Diablo III was obviously going for a huge number of sales and they really succeeded in doing that, but we really wanted to stress character customization and sort of interesting builds and that kind of stuff," the lead programmer told VG247 last month, continuing, "Diablo III didn’t really deliver that for me, personally. I personally prefer our game, obviously. "

You'll find this attitude reflected in Path of Exile's design at almost every turn. Name something Diablo III players complained about and you're likely to find it addressed here in some respect.

By eliminating currency altogether, for example, Path of Exile doesn't struggle with gold farmers the way most online RPGs do. In place of a traditional economy, the developers have opted for a pure barter system; players trade gear for other gear, determining for themselves what their loot is worth, while NPCs exchange unwanted equipment for useful stuff like town portals and orbs that randomly adjust the stats on magic items.

Path of Exile has kicked off their open beta, though unsurprisingly, their servers are struggling:

The Open Beta patch (0.10.0) has been deployed and is ready for download (just patch your existing Beta client or download a new one). The game servers will come up when the countdown timer hits zero. You can queue for login before that time if you'd like. The Closed Beta kiwi packs have been removed from the site. If you're quick you may be able to email support@grindinggear.com before the countdown hits zero to arrange a manual purchase. We can't sell any more after that deadline though.

Grinding Gear Games sent us this press release, announcing an open beta for Path of Exile later this month:

Path of Exile Launches Open Beta on January 23

"Best Upcoming Indie Game" unveils 50 percent more content in Act 3

Auckland, New Zealand-January 10, 2013- Grinding Gear Games announced today that the highly anticipated action role-playing game (RPG) Path of Exile will enter Open Beta on January 23. The game is currently in Closed Beta but has already raised over USD$1.8 million in crowd-funded support, with those supporters gaining early access to the beta. Act 3 of the Path of Exile story will also be unveiled, in which players will explore abandoned docks, markets, temples and sewers in the ruined city of Sarn to further uncover the dark truth of their exile.

"We're excited to have reached the point where we can finally throw open the doors and invite everyone in," said Chris Wilson, producer for Grinding Gear Games. "We have one of the best and most supportive communities on the Internet, and their input has been invaluable in making Path of Exile what it is. We hope they'll be delighted with all the new content."

Current players have until the Open Beta to purchase the special in-game kiwi bird pet. The permanent pet is the national symbol of New Zealand and is exclusively available to Closed Beta players. Additionally, there will be no further character wipes once Open Beta launches.

Path of Exile was recently named "Players' Choice Best Upcoming Game" by Indie DB. Over 78,000 readers voted in the awards.

Path of Exile is a PC online action role-playing game set in a dark fantasy world. Featuring ethical microtransactions, the game is free-to-play, but not pay-to-win. Playing as one of six character classes, players find themselves banished for their past misdeeds to the dark fantasy world of Wraeclast. There, they will encounter hundreds of species of opponents laden with loot and mysterious artifacts as they explore the abandoned continent.

Key features of Path of Exile:

• A dark and deep action RPG
• Build unlimited unique characters on a gigantic skill tree
• Combine over 110 skill gems to create unique combat strategies
• Explore a dark and gritty world rendered from a fixed 3D perspective
• Download and play for free, but never 'pay-to-win'
• Explore randomly generated levels for extreme replayability
• Craft weapons, magic items and even end-game maps to become more powerful
• Cooperate or compete with thousands of other exiles in a persistent online world
• Ascend online ladders in every game mode
• Battle in PVP tournaments for worldwide recognition

View gameplay footage at   www.youtube.com/grindinggear, or HD trailers are available from www.pathofexile.com/video  

IncGamers interviews Brother Laz on his work as item creator for Path of Exile, his Median XL mod and Diablo 3.

IncGamers: Planned obsolescence for items is a big deal while leveling up characters. Developers want players to find items that feel awesome and can be used for a few levels, until something better is found. In Diablo III this system is inexorable, with item stats cranking up so that anything found at level 40 is underpowered by level 45 and useless by 50. This differs from the system in Diablo 2, where lots of low and mid level unique remained useful even in the end game. How do you approach that obsolescence balance in PoE, and how do features like item enchanting and enhancing and socketing factor into it?
 
Laz: D3 made the mistake of balancing items based on the WoW paradigm of linear progression, which works well in a game that is about taking one character and developing it for the next two years but not in a game where rerolling is a thing. It is absolutely necessary to have a chance to find something awesome at low levels, otherwise you feel like you are wasting your time. This something awesome tends to come in the form of uniques (or powerful binary affixes like +skill levels).

Awesome low level uniques may include Johnny uniques like Springleaf in PoE and Thinking Cap in D1. The idea is that these items are so unusual they cannot directly be compared to regular items and therefore do not get overshadowed at higher levels. They could also take the form of a “Spike Jr.” item that is intentionally designed to be overpowered when you find it, then fall off later. Everyone likes stomping faces for 30 minutes.

Very high level items should generally be more Spike and less Johnny. Those one in a million items should be useful for people who actually optimise their character for the purpose of farming one in a million items, while build enablers should be widely available at low levels so the player can actually implement that build before the earth gets hit by [DATA EXPUNGED].

Path of Exile has been prevewed at IncGamers, who look at Act III:

The Battlefront

Outside the Solaris Temple, the Ebony Legion wages war against a mindless army of floating, red tapestries known as the Ribbons. The shredded remains of soldiers and Ribbons alike litter the ground about the makeshift fortifications and burning incendiaries that sketch the fluctuating front lines of the ongoing battle.

By summoning a massive thaumaturgical barrier at the end of the bridge, the Legion have gained control of the only means of crossing the great river that divides the city of Sarn. It also provides them a secure foothold for their invasion of the Temple.

Games On Net talked to Chris Wilson, the designer and producer for this game.  In the interview they talk about the skill tree, post-launch content, his reaction to the competition's offering, the recently announced Act 3,  and much much more.

A quote about the level structure:

GON: How does that affect your level structure? You’ve already got a skill tree – or should I say a skill forest – that many users find terrifying. In a good way, obviously. How do you balance that and keep adding expansions? Chris: So the endgame that we have is somewhat separate from the actual act content — we have these randomised map areas, which is a separate topic I guess, but in terms of balancing the levelling it’s actually a very difficult question adding in another because, when people have established characters, where do the levels fit in?

A quote in how potions work in the game:

GON: Can you give me an example of that?

Chris: A good example of that is the potion system. In a lot of ARPG’s, Titan Quest, Torchlight, you buy a ton of potions and every time you’re hurt you drink one and it’s just a big homogenous stack. In Path of Exile your potions are in set flasks that are actually items that you have to upgrade, and they can be used multiple times, and they become part of your build. If you want a flask that extinguishes fire if you’ve ever been ignited, then that’s part of the way you build your character rather than just a number of potions you bought from the shop last time you were in town.

Grinding Gear has sent us information on the details from act 3 of Path of Exile.

The Mysteries Deepen in Action RPG Path of Exile’s Third Act

AUCKLAND, New Zealand – 17 October 2012 – Upcoming dark and deep indie action RPG Path of Exile has unveiled details of its Act 3 expansion. Set in the ruined city of Sarn, players will face those who exiled them to Wraeclast and how it was corrupted.

Act 3 will become available when Path of Exile enters Open Beta in December. The game is currently in Closed Beta but has already raised over USD$1.2m in crowd-funded support, with those supporters gaining beta access.

PvP arena combat will be introduced in the next major patch, making the wait for Act 3 more bearable but bloodier. The game’s gigantic skill tree and skill gem combo system means thousands of unique character builds will be able to challenge each other.

“Act 3 adds an extra 50% of content to Path of Exile’s world,” says Grinding Gear Games producer Chris Wilson. “Our already gritty game gets a lot darker as players explore Sarn and witness the full extent of the corruption and cataclysm. High-level characters will really enjoy some of the enemy encounters and combat challenges.”

Path of Exile’s lore and mysteries deepens as you explore Sarn’s abandoned docks, markets, temples and sewers. For reasons unknown, General Gravicius and the Ebony Legion have sailed from your homeland Oriath to scour Sarn for its secrets, joining Piety of Theopolis in a race against the player to plunder Sarn’s tombs for wealth and power.

In the Solaris Temple, a magical army of floating constructs known as the Ribbons continually sterilize the temple even as the centuries wear on. Even though thaumaturgist Malachai the Soulless is long dead, evidence of his dark experiments remain.

In addition to undead, magical constructs and corrupted horrors, players will encounter some unlikely allies. An encampment of exiles survive on the man-made island in the middle of the river, led by wise and well-spoken Karui warrior Maramoa.

When released, the game will be free to play, but not ‘pay-to-win’. The game is currently in a Closed Beta, but fans who pre-purchase at least USD$10 of credit for the game’s ‘ethical microtransactions’ receive a beta key. Beta keys are also regularly awarded to random community members.

To take part, sign up at www.pathofexile.com

About Sarn: A shattered city, a sinister mystery, a land tainted with insanity.
You’re standing at the edge of Sarn, the ruined capital of the Eternal Empire. Not so eternal now. Its citizenry is gone, taken by death and undeath in equal measures. Where hawkers shouted their bargains, ladies browsed for silks, young lovers walked hand in hand... creatures of nightmare stalk and feed. Beasts born of corruption. The restless dead, bitter and lethal. A cursed city of painful promises and preternatural peril.

You are an exile, banished for your crimes to Wraeclast, and given a life sentence in the land of the damned. But Wraeclast wasn’t always like this. It was once an empire of ten million souls, a beautiful and bountiful continent that prospered for more than a thousand years.

Something happened. A cataclysm. A corruption beyond reason. Wraeclast took itself off to bed one balmy evening and, come morning, it failed to wake. It slumbers, tossing and turning in the perpetual nightmare that enslaved it during the darkest hours.

Players must fight their way through the necropolis to answer a question: Who murdered Wraeclast?

You’re not alone in your curiosity. Others explore the twisted capital city of the Eternal Empire. The Ebony Legion has sailed from Oriath to scour Sarn for its secrets... avaricious maggots on a fecund carcass General Gravicius plunders its tombs for wealth and power.

Piety of Theopolis harnesses corruption like a lover to her bedhead. Her lovely visage hides an imagination most monstrous.

Is everyone and everything in Sarn out to kill or maim you beyond recognition? Pretty much... with a few exceptions. As a fellow exile, Hargan, will tell you: “Welcome to dirty, old Sarn, the metropolis of opportunity. The opportunity to make something of yourself or the opportunity to have a very messy death.”

Key features of ‘Path of Exile’:

• A dark and deep action RPG
• Build unlimited unique characters on a gigantic skill tree
• Combine over 110 skill gems to create unique combat strategies
• Explore a dark and gritty world rendered from a fixed 3D perspective
• Download and play for free, but never ‘pay-to-win’
• Explore randomly generated levels for extreme replayability
• Craft weapons, magic items and even end-game maps to become more powerful
• Cooperate or compete with thousands of other exiles in a persistent online world
• Ascend online ladders in every game mode
• Battle in PVP tournaments for worldwide recognition

View gameplay footage at www.youtube.com/grindinggear

HD trailers are available from www.pathofexile.com/video

A Build of the Week, episode eleven, has been released for this game on Youtube. It features a level 63 Marauder which uses the Righteous Fire Skill. You can watch the video here.

There's a new Path of Exile Open Beta Weekend coming up this weekend:

Indie Action RPG Path of Exile Hosts September Open Beta Weekend

AUCKLAND, New Zealand – 11 Sept 2012 – Dark and deep indie action RPG Path of Exile is holding another Open Beta Weekend this coming weekend, 14-16 September.

So far, the much-anticipated game has raised over USD$1,200,000 in a Kickstarter-like campaign from fans buying access to the closed beta, virtual pets and pre-purchased game currency. This weekend is the opportunity for anyone to try to game for free, without having to buy a supporter pack.

The Path of Exile Beta servers will open for public access at 5pm PDT on Friday, September 14. Public access will end at 11:59pm PDT Sunday night, September 16. A full FAQ about the public weekend is available at www.pathofexile.com/publicweekend/.

When released, the game will be free to play, but will not feature ‘pay-to-win’. A previous public weekend in July attracted 55,000 players.

The latest patch adds new skills such as Arctic Breath and Ghost Reaver, additional quests, greatly improved minion functionality and a new look for item hovers.

A host of unique items have been added, including several designed by Brother Laz, author of the popular Diablo 2 mod Median XL. Over 90 fans who have purchased the USD$1000 ‘Diamond Supporter’ pack also get to design unique items for the game.

While the game is currently in a Closed Beta, fans who pre-purchase at least USD$10 of credit for the game’s ‘ethical microtransactions’ receive a beta key.

Grinding Gear Games’ producer Chris Wilson says “We find these open weekends extremely valuable, because the feedback from the general gaming public provides a different perspective than that of our Closed Beta testers. We’re really pleased to see that many public weekend players choose to join the Closed Beta to continue playing after the weekend events.”

The Open Weekend will also feature special events, such as two hour ladder races and competitions to clear areas first. To take part, sign up at www.pathofexile.com

Here's a short preview on Path of Exile from Forbes:

It features instanced areas so that parties (or loners) can traverse and loot and quest on their own. So far, what few quests I’ve done have been interesting and fun. The combat is described as “visceral” on the website, and that’s a fitting description. There’s some similarities with other top-down hack-and-slash games but I found the combat to have that extra oomph that can make (or break) an action-RPG. The graphics are nothing to write home about, but they do the trick. The world is certainly a bleak and colorless one, much more reminiscent of Diablo II than Diablo III.

VoxClamant looks at Grinding Gears' intriguing online 2D hack'n'slasher Path of Exile from the perspective of a solo player and finds much to like. Producer Chris Wilson also provides additional insight. A snip:

The standard label for PoE is "top-down RPG, single player (not party-based), client-based (4 GB download), hack-and-slash."  Path of Exile is designed to be equally accessible and playable for solo play, or for groups.   It is ironic that most reviewers will inevitably compare PoE to Diablo 3.  Yet my $60 (USD) copy of D3 lies idle and bored on my hard drive (a dumbed-down, linear, boring rehash of old ideas in a glitzy new box), while this new free game would be worth every bit of the premium prices charged by the recent releases in RPGs. 

Read it all here.