Path of Exile Message Board

The entire internet has filled up with discussions, videos and arguments about the Diablo III beta this week. Just to even things out, I’m reserving this little corner to talk about a different line of hacking and looting RPG though. Path of Exile, which will be free to play at launch, is also in a playable beta state at the moment and I’ve been walking its desolate beaches with naught but driftwood to protect me. I’ve brought back thoughts.(more…)

We last wrote about online-only, free-to-play ARPG Path of Exile in April and it was already looking like an interesting proposition. It’s in closed beta now and there’s a terribly agonising countdown clock on the website to inform the world of when another lucky player will be allowed in. It’s like a cruel competition that I never win. Has anyone had any luck and if so can you bring back any reports from the entirely lootable dark and gritty world (that’s the official description) in which you have found yourself? There’s several feature length films worth of beta footage after the jump as well as a trailer for the Templar class.

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Who knows when Diablo III is coming out? At this point your guess is as good as ours, but there is hope in the short run. Enter Path of Exile, the upcoming free-to-play Diablo clone that offers just enough twists on Blizzard's formula to make it unique, while staying true to the same mouse-button-destroying gameplay that we all love...

Gameplay of the templar class in action!

I’m loving the swell of action RPGs in development at the moment. Another we’ve recently discovered is Path Of Exile, from independent developers Grinding Gears Games. It’s to be an online-only, free-to-play game (no, wait, come back! – this one looks very different), which they describe as a “competitive online action RPG”. So while the game’s hubs will have very many players, the randomly generated instances will be played by smaller teams, capped at 4-8 people (they don’t seem to have decided yet.) And most interestingly (to me, at this stage) is the darker, gloomier tone. We’re not in cheery Torchlight any more. I’m also intrigued by the sound of “ethical microtransactions”.

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Meet the duelist, a lone wolf warrior who wields a mighty staff.

Look what washed up on shore! Something wicked indeed.

A man with a lightly-accented voice taps my arm as I wander the PAX exhibition hall.

"Excuse me, but what media outlet do you represent?"

"Joystiq," I tell him, and he lights up, says he's been looking for me and insists he has a game he needs to show me with a title I've never heard of. He starts pressing through the throng of people and I follow as best I can, stifling the fear that he's taking me to some remote corner of the convention to rob and murder me.

My preview of Path of Exile was not, in case you've never covered a convention, how these things normally happen.

Grinding gear games announces free-to-play online action RPG coming in early 2011.

Your path leads you to these screenshots.

It begins on a beach of exile covered in zombies of exile.

A nostalgically dark, free-to-play action RPG from New Zealand.