(*2*)
Work on Path of Exile’s subsequent seasonal replace is basically on maintain till after a significant replace for Path of Exile 2 has been delivered, developer Grinding Gear Video games has introduced.
In a video message, Path of Exile 2 sport director and Grinding Gear Video games co-founder Jonathan Rogers defined the state of affairs. Final summer time, a lot of the PoE 1 improvement staff was shifted to PoE 2 with a purpose to assist the developer hit its deliberate early entry launch date. Grinding Gear Video games had promised to maintain updating the unique PoE after the discharge of PoE 2, and internally slated a brand new “league” (PoE’s model of seasons) for February. Rogers stated he believed the staff had time to each get PoE 2’s endgame prepared for early entry whereas making ready the brand new PoE league for February.
Sadly, that is not what occurred. Rogers stated they “had been fooling themselves” considering that plan would work. After PoE 2’s early entry launch was delayed a number of weeks, the PoE 1 staff continued to work on the sequel. Even after PoE 2 launched, it continued to run into issues, and Rogers stated he could not justify taking the PoE staff off the venture till the fires had been put out.
“How might we take into consideration making a PoE 1 enlargement, after we nonetheless had a whole bunch of hundreds of individuals having dangerous experiences in PoE 2?” Rogers stated.
It was after the developer’s vacation break that it determined the purpose was to get PoE 2 to a state the place it did not have main points earlier than shifting ahead with full improvement of PoE’s new league. In consequence, main work on PoE replace 3.26 will not occur till a number of weeks after the discharge of PoE 2 replace 0.2.0, Rogers stated. PoE 2 is at present on replace 0.1.1, with no given launch window for when 0.2.0 would possibly arrive.
“I am actually sorry for the way this went down,” Rogers stated. “Actually, I ought to have predicted the truth that taking the PoE 1 staff off PoE 1 would result in this end result, and I most likely ought to have resisted doing it. However at each stage I simply stored considering, ‘We nonetheless have time, we nonetheless have time.’ After which we did not have time any extra.”
The silver lining is that some pre-production work on PoE replace 3.26 is at present underway, and Rogers stated as soon as replace 0.2.0 is out the door, the studio will commit as many assets as potential to releasing the brand new PoE league as quickly as potential.
“We nonetheless have lots to find out about the way to run two video games concurrently,” Rogers stated. “We had been overconfident. We nonetheless have to work out the way to construction our studio to make this potential. However we do have a strong plan for what we need to do with [update] 3.26.”
PoE 2’s launch has largely been a significant success story for Grinding Gear Video games. The anticipated ARPG sequel noticed greater than 1 million gamers pay for early entry even though PoE 2 will ultimately be free-to-play, and it is usually one of many top-played video games on Steam.
Its launch hasn’t come with out some unexpected penalties, nonetheless. Grinding Gear Video games said its help workers was wildly unprepared for the quantity of help tickets associated to PoE 2’s early entry launch, and has needed to double its help staff to higher meet demand.