Creator’s Note
(The intention is to move this note to the end of the post in future, or remove it entirely)
I saw the Path of Exile 2 news on the weekend, and @czc’s post today, then checked and saw that we do not have an official thread for this game on MEW. Do we have any PoE regulars on here?
There appears to be an open question regarding Path of Exile servers coming to South Africa, and latency appears to affect gameplay a lot more than in your average ARPG. More on that at the end, though.
Path of Exile: The Blurb
Here’s the spiel, straight from the Path or Exile website.
About
Path of Exile is an online Action RPG set in the dark fantasy world of Wraeclast. It is designed around a strong online item economy, deep character customisation, competitive PvP and ladder races. The game is completely free and will never be “pay to win”.
The game is free-to-play and funds itself with cosmetic microtransactions. (This line added by the OP)
Skill Gem System
Action RPGs have always been about two things: devastating skills and valuable items. Skills in Path of Exile are items - gems that grant abilities when socketed into equipment. A wide range of support gems allow the behaviour of skills to be modified. You can augment your Fireball to chain from enemy to enemy or split into multiple flaming projectiles. Up to five support gems can affect a skill at any time. Because gems level up independently and some are hard to find, they can be very valuable in trade.
Passive Skill Tree
All of Path of Exile’s character classes share its vast passive skill tree. Starting at one of seven distinct locations dictated by their chosen class, players can focus on the core specialities of their class or travel across the tree to build complex combinations of skills from various disciplines. Scattered across the tree are Keystone passives that drastically alter the way a character is played. Resolute Technique removes your ability to get critical strikes, but also prevents enemies evading your attacks. Necromantic Aegisgrants the properties of your shield to your minions rather than to you. Craftable Jewels allow you to dynamically modify the tree itself, adding custom properties or influencing the effects of nearby passive skills.
The World of Wraeclast
Wraeclast is a dark, brutal continent. Scarred by mysterious catastrophes of the past and inhabited by creatures of nightmare, the very environment challenges exiles who dare explore it.
We’re sick of the recent trend towards bright, cartoony RPGs. The art style we chose for Path of Exile is dark, gritty and realistic. Wraeclast is terrifying, and we’ve tried hard to do it justice.
In Path of Exile, replayability is key. All world areas including outdoors ones are instanced for your party and randomly generated, right down to the magic properties of the monsters that dwell in them and the treasure they guard.
Item System
Path of Exile is completely designed around items. Any game systems that can be itemised with random properties have been. Our flasks are persistent items that have mods. Our end-game areas can be found as Map items that have mods altering their challenges and rewards. We’ve gone as far as removing gold as a currency and basing our trade economy around orbs that can randomly reroll the properties of other items. We have carefully constructed our item system for veterans of the best Action RPGs.
Leagues and Events
One of the things that’s most fun about playing a competitive online Action RPG is taking part in a levelling race on a fresh server. In Path of Exile, we wanted to capture this feeling without constantly resetting our main economy, so we’ve created a set of race leagues that are run frequently as separate game worlds with their own ladders and economies.
In addition to regular races, leagues can substantially modify the game rules. In an Ancestral league, ancient totems exist alongside groups of monsters, augmenting their abilities. In Turbo leagues, monsters move and attack 60% faster than normal.
Varying in duration from one hour to several months, players can enter these leagues to show off their mastery of the game and compete to win valuable prizes.
Latency, and Path of Exile servers for South Africa
Googling around, it seems as though latency from South Africa has been a concern for some time for players who progress beyond “casual” in the game.
There is apparently something in the design of Path of Exile itself that makes 200ms latency a real pain when you’re playing certain content.
The lead dev said 2 years ago that there was a 50% chance that they would launch a server in South Africa.
Here’s a recent comment on Reddit that links to every other Reddit thread they could find where someone asked for a South African server:
Just to bring a bit more attention to this:
- Here’s the time Chris himself responded to the question (with a positively Dread Thicket themed answer)
- A
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- F
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- J
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- L
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This is just a cursory search. There are dozens of us. Dozens!
Seriously though. A server would be just the best. Doesn’t even have to be here - Just something closer than London would be lovely.
Here’s a petition started back in 2017 to try and get Grinding Gears Games’ attention. On 18 November 2019 it had garnered all of 70 signatures:
Path of Exile 2
This is not a sequel, but a rework and expansion of the Path of Exile campaign. Here’s @czc’s post on it:
