Path of Exile 2 is a ton of fun and racking up hundreds of thousands of concurrent players on PC a night. It is also very much unfinished, and players may be wondering when it might come out of its Early Access state.
Some games might technically stay in Early Access for years, but that is likely not to be the case for Path of Exile 2. We have two points of info where we can narrow down a window of time.
- Way back a full generation ago, the original beta realm of Path of Exile ran from August 2011 to October 2013, just over two years.
- However, Path of Exile 2’s official FAQ when Early Access launched said it would be at least six months until Early Access ended, but they also think it should be done by the end of 2025, which would certainly be much less than the 2+ years of the first game. That’s not a guarantee, but at worst, would be something like 13 months if that 2025 date pans out. But it would be at least until May 2025 before it ends.
While there will be balancing and feature updates with the continuation of Early Access at times, there will also be significant content additions. The plan from GGG is to effectively double the size the game is over the course of Early Access and into release, which will include things like the other three Acts of the campaign, six more classes with Ascendancies and more skills, gems and items which are currently very obviously missing from the game.
Another question was that if all this stuff is being added, will there eventually be a character wipe during Early Access to reset everything when big things are added? The answer is no, no wipes during Early Access, but they will not even wipe your character when the game launches, though they will be moved to a separate “league” just for that batch of characters. In any case, 6-12 months later, most players would probably be fine starting over with the fully released game.
Path of Exile 2 is a serious competitor for Blizzard’s Diablo 4, one of that studio’s last remaining major ongoing games outside of WoW and Overwatch. It’s already putting up enormous numbers in Early Access, and when it launches it will be free-to-play, which Diablo 4 is not. Diablo 4 has indicated that in addition to its ongoing seasons, unlike Diablo 2 and 3, it will keep making expansions, possibly yearly, like we just saw with Vessel of Hatred. I do wonder if they are seeing the response to Path of Exile 2 and considering any changes. Though they may want to stay the more “casual” alternative to the harder core D2-throwback. We’ll see.
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