ExileCon 2023: Path Of Exile 2 Is Now A Standalone Sequel, Closed Beta Coming June 2024
It's been nearly four years since our last significant dose of Path of Exile 2 news, but Grinding Gear Games took to the stage today to finally pull the veil back on the ARPG sequel during today's ExileCon 2023.
The major news first: Path of Exile 2 is no longer going to be integrated as an expansion with Path of Exile 1, as was initially announced back at ExileCon 2019. The sequel to Grinding Gear Games' award-winning ARPG will now act as its own stand-alone product, as game director Jonathan Rogers said during ExileCon today, the sequel just got bigger and bigger.
Gone is the shared endgame and client between Path of Exile and Path of Exile 2. Instead, the sequel will be a stand-alone product. The good news is that microtransactions will still carry over across games, meaning purchases aren't left behind just because you want to play the shiny new ARPG.
«It's far more than an expansion with a new campaign,» Rogers said during a playthrough session of PoE 2. «It's entirely new monsters, skills, mechanics, classes, everything you would expect from the next generation of Action RPGs. [...] This thing is freaking huge. There was a point where we realized that our plan to replace PoE 1 with PoE 2 would essentially be destroying a game that people love for no reason. So we made a decision. Path of Exile 1 and 2 would be separate, with their own mechanics, balance, endgames, and leagues.»
The gameplay demo takes place in Act 3 of six acts in the Path of Exile 2 campaign. Described as During the demo, Rogers talked about the various classes of Path of Exile 2, stating that the goal here was to create classes that fit builds with every attribute combination:
The demo started with the Monk, highlighting the new class and some of
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