Grinding Gear Games will take a quality-first approach for Path of Exile in 2023 as the game enters the 10th year of development. Path of Exile is enjoying a relatively stable time as The Forbidden Sanctum expansion has managed to hit all the necessary checkboxes for players. Taking the feedback of the player base, Grinding Gear Games is looking to keep the ball rolling with the same design philosophy in future expansions, and they have just the plan to do so.
The previous year started relatively strong with the launch of the Siege of the Atlas expansion and Archnemesis league. But Path of Exile soon ran into a problem that took months to fix. In an unprecedented decision, Path of Exile incorporated the Archnemesis system into the existing game when Sentinel league launched, making the rare enemies ridiculously strong. The situation was further hampered by the arrival of the Lake of Kalandra expansion, where loot drop rates were changed, and the player-driven economy was hurt severely. This move, coupled with the Archnemesis changes, led to Path of Exile having the lowest player retention rate in years. Fortunately, Grinding Gear Games reworked the Archnemesis system and tweaked the loot drops back to a healthy state in The Forbidden Sanctum expansion.
With the experience of a rough year in mind, Grinding Gear Games is finally ready to talk about the future. In an official forum post, Grinding Gear Games has outlined a plan for 2023 where it will release at least two new expansions and hold its much-awaited ExileCon. The post states a new expansion will launch in early April, which means the Sanctum league will be extended by another month. The developers have confirmed that the extra month will help their development cycle of the 3.21 expansion, and they will do something special to keep that downtime exciting. After 3.21, the focus for the studio will be on ExileCon solely.
ExileCon is an annual event centered around Path of Exile, where Grinding Gear Games showcase future projects. This event will showcase Path of Exile Mobile, the 3.22 expansion, and the highly-anticipated Path of Exile 2 alongside its beta dates. While Path of Exile 2 and Path of Exile Mobile might still take some time to arrive, the 3.22 expansion will release soon after ExileCon ends, likely within two weeks. Thus, any fans traveling to New Zealand for ExileCon should make plans accordingly, so they don't miss out on the 3.22 expansion.
Recent times haven't been particularly easy for Grinding Gear Games, but Ruthless mode and The Forbidden Sanctum expansion have brought back player faith. With Diablo 4 launching soon, Last Epoch working on a multiplayer mode, and Path of Exile showing a promising roadmap, fans of the ARPG genre have nothing to worry about the future of the genre.
Path of Exile is available now for Mac, PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Source: Grinding Gear Games
