After years of hope, fans finally received a release date for the long-awaited action RPG sequel Path of Exile 2 in August of this year. During Gamescom, Grinding Gear Games revealed that the title will land on November 15. However, with only a couple of weeks left to go, the studio has slapped a new delay onto the experience, pushing it back by three weeks.
Announced in 2019, the sequel was originally supposed to replace the original Path of Exile (like Overwatch 1 and 2), but Grinding Gear changed that plan in 2023. The title is now coming as a standalone sequel. Most items players have purchased for the original game will still carry over to the sequel. This is also where the cause of the three-week delay has stemmed from.
Path of Exile 2 game director Jonathan Rogers says in a new developer update video that while the studio is meeting launch goals with the game itself, it"s the server-side infrastructure that"s lagging behind:
"Now, one of the key promises we made is that all your microtransactions will work across both Path of Exile 1 and 2. In order to do that, we have to integrate the account systems for not only Path of Exile 1 and 2, but also for the console realms as well. This meant changing a lot of things. Not only do we have to create a bunch of new systems, we have to make sure that only old data is backwards compatible with them as well."
The studio says it is currently working on resolving issues with the databases to make sure everyone gets the items they paid for in the original game Path of Exile 2.
"We have to get everything perfect so that nobody loses anything they paid for, and nobody has their account broken," adds Rogers. "At the same time, because we’re changing all this back-end code, we have to do a lot of load testing to make sure the whole thing doesn’t fall over when they could get the huge number of players that we’re expecting at launch."
Path of Exile 2 launches in early access across PC (Steam and Epic Games Store), Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5 on December 6. Grinding Gear will have a livestream showing off what will be included in the early access release right before launch, including endgame content.