Between Diablo 4, its expansion Vessel of Hatred, and the full arrival of Last Epoch, it's been a good couple of years for the ARPG. Path of Exile 2, originally due for release on Friday November 15, is set to be the next big hit in the genre's recent resurgence, but developer Grinding Gear now confirms that the early-access launch for PoE 2 has been delayed. Naturally, it can be a little frustrating when a big, highly anticipated game gets pushed back, but the creator of Path of Exile 2 has a very good reason for asking players to wait. The plan is to move all items and in-game purchases from PoE 1 to PoE 2. In order to ensure a smooth transition, Grinding Gear needs another few weeks.
The Path of Exile 2 release date is still coming pretty soon, and we'll be able to play the new RPG before the end of 2024. Building on the beloved original game, which was launched all the way back in 2013, Path of Exile 2 introduces a new six-act campaign, a fresh skill system, 100 endgame maps with their own bosses, and other, smaller tweaks like the addition of a dodge roll. PoE 2 will also let players carry over their accounts from the first game, alongside their inventory and paid-for in-game items. To get this right, Grinding Gear needs to delay the game by three weeks.
"I am really sorry about this one. People plan time off around our launches, but we just have to do it," game director Jonathan Rogers explains. "It turns out that it isn't really the game itself that we're behind on. It's a bunch of server-side infrastructure work that's taken us a lot longer than expected.
"One of the promises we made was that all of your microtransactions would work across PoE 1 and 2. This meant changing a lot of things. Not only did we have to create a bunch of new systems, we have to make sure that all the old data is backwards compatible with them as well, and when you start migrating databases that are this old and have this much data, you find all sorts of strange demons in there.
"We have to get everything perfect so that nobody loses anything they paid for and nobody has their account broken. I actually believe that we could have made the original launch date, but I'm not all that confident that we could do it without making mistakes, and these are the kinds of mistakes that we just can't let happen. This one's totally on me. I just didn't leave enough time to make sure that we could get it done. I'm really sorry. This one really hurts."
The new Path of Exile 2 release date is Friday December 6. You can find it on Steam right here.
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