Path of Exile: The Year in Review Published

SBFord · December 2013

The Path of Exile team has posted a short and sweet letter on the game's official forums to lay out in detail all of the exciting happenings in and around the title.

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.

Source: Path of Exile site

Benkestok · December 2013

Well deserved. I tip my hat for people like this.

Arskaaa · December 2013

Great job!:)

MikePaladin · December 2013

So you're doing so badly that you need to lure players with numbers. Played alot in this game but melee builds are not viable so it was a waste of time for me got 5 charcahters to 70 + non viable for melee so yeah cool game

STILL GLASS CANNON OUT OF RANGE Buids are viable?

Jakobmiller · December 2013

Melee builds are viable. Not all builds, but there are builds that works. + This game is for team play mainly, not solo. Find a guild and do maps together.

Squishydew · December 2013

I dont play often anymore, but thats really just because of the lack of respecs.

I just don't want to start from the beginning anymore just to try new things, gets kind of old.

My favorite ARPG ever next to Diablo 2.

Bulkathos · December 2013

love GGG

niceguy3978 · December 2013

Originally posted by Robokapp
Originally posted by Vutar
Game sounded interesting. So I followed these steps:

1. Downloaded and installed

2. Logged in

3. Realized there was no WASD movement

4. Logged out

5. Uninstalled

One day these lazy developers will realize that there are certain gameplay elements that are non-negotiable. WASD movement is one of them.

in Sanitarium I can mouse-move just fine and I loved that game. but it has no combat...for games where you fight wasd is important.

yes, mouse-movement is ideal, but some like to swap between the two instnatly and many times throughout a fight.

Is there an ARPG that has WASD movement? I thought mouse movement was the only option in arpg's.

Iselin · December 2013

Great indie development story. The sleeper hit of 2013 without question.

Well done!

pyrofreak · December 2013

My PoE rage quit can be summed up in one word:

desync.

Solar_Prophet · December 2013

It's a good game, for an amateur production. I'd play more if respeccing were easier & the 'crafting' system weren't a completely random, garbled mess of RNG. Seriously, people who complain about Diablo 3's drops then go on to praise PoE are smoking something pretty potent if they think its loot system is any better, or even as good.

Make melee builds more viable, get away from 'cookie-cutter' builds & give the skill system actual depth to match its looks and make it more flexible, let us zoom out the camera more, fix the damned desync already (hardcore is nigh unplayable), and fix the horrible RNG grind that is end-game, and it'll be a 9. As of now it's about a 7, but at the price of free with one of the best cash shops in the business, 7 is pretty good.

Oh, and add a story of some sort. Random, garbled bits of information on people & places with little to no context or clues as to relevance isn't a story. A shame, because the overall setting is interesting.

Hrimnir · December 2013

Originally posted by MikePaladin
So you're doing so badly that you need to lure players with numbers. Played alot in this game but melee builds are not viable so it was a waste of time for me got 5 charcahters to 70 + non viable for melee so yeah cool game

STILL GLASS CANNON OUT OF RANGE Buids are viable?

Melee Builds aren't viable?

Interesting, i have an 83 Scion that uses 2h axes and i solo level 72 maps with no issues whatsoever (and no i dont have ridiculously uber gear either).

My Best Friend runs an 84 Duelist using Dual Claws and is even better than me. He can wade into entire rooms full of blues and regular mobs and lay waste to them and barely every drop below half health.

Hrimnir · December 2013

Originally posted by Solar_Prophet
It's a good game, for an amateur production. I'd play more if respeccing were easier & the 'crafting' system weren't a completely random, garbled mess of RNG. Seriously, people who complain about Diablo 3's drops then go on to praise PoE are smoking something pretty potent if they think its loot system is any better, or even as good.

Make melee builds more viable, get away from 'cookie-cutter' builds & give the skill system actual depth to match its looks and make it more flexible, let us zoom out the camera more, fix the damned desync already (hardcore is nigh unplayable), and fix the horrible RNG grind that is end-game, and it'll be a 9. As of now it's about a 7, but at the price of free with one of the best cash shops in the business, 7 is pretty good.

Oh, and add a story of some sort. Random, garbled bits of information on people & places with little to no context or clues as to relevance isn't a story. A shame, because the overall setting is interesting.

Yeah, so i dont smoke anything, and while you are correct that the crafting system is pretty RNG based, its still nowhere even REMOTELY as bad as Diablo 3. My friend and i literally put over 100 hours into inferno act 4, and not once, not even once, did either of us get a single item that we could use. Not only did we not get any items, we didnt get any that we could sell on the market to buy a good item. I dont remember how much magic find i had, but it was a crap ton.

PoE Has better drop rates for items, AND you can get currency items which you can use to either buy decent items, or craft decent items. Again, it does have its problems, but its still so vastly better than D3 i can't even put it into words.

Brynn · December 2013

It's a great game for most. But, when I hit the area where I couldn't walk two feet without being aggroed by a dozen monkeys, I lost interest in the game.

rodingo · December 2013

Those guys at Grinding Gear are really what makes a great example of an indie dev team with a passion for what they love. It's a solid game that does a great job of paying homage to D2.

lucyluffy101 · January 2014

If you like the game look like ARPG with WASD movement and more crafting try to play War of the Immortals.

Sengell · January 2014

You don't have to move with mouse clicks. I move with pressing a button and the character moves towards the mouse cursor. WASD makes no sense gameplaywise. It's fast paced with 2 dozen mobs around you. Either you close in or move out, following the cursor.