14 DAY TRIAL // Developer Grinding Gear Games has announced that its action role-playing game Path of Exile now has 7 million players who have tried their luck on the unforgiving continent of Wraeclast.
The developer has noted that the recent launch in Taiwan, a major free-to-play market, helped the company reach the milestone. Path of Exile went live in Taiwan on August 14, and it managed to get one million players to register in less than a month.
In addition to this, the recent launch of the game’s second big content expansion, Forsaken Masters, also helped boost the user count significantly.
A brand-new expansion
Forsaken Masters went live on August 20, adding a bunch of new stuff to the action role-playing game, including new skill and support gems, as well as some balance tweaks to the massive skill tree, the game’s most recognizable feature.
The expansion also introduced Hideouts, customizable abodes that each player can decorate to display their achievements in the world of Wraeclast, and seven new Masters that will send you on various quests, train the worthy in new skills, and award various Hideout customization tiles and gear mods.
The expansion is, like the rest of the game, free, and also comes with new Challenge Leagues, a PvP spectator mode, revamped boss fights, a heap of new loot, including new unique items, and a lot of other additions.
A great overall game
The main thing Path of Exile does differently from other similar titles is the fact that each time you level up, you get to spend one more point in a sprawling web of passive nodes, offering various bonuses ranging from minuscule bonuses to damage or attack speed, and going all the way to using health instead of mana for casting spells or making you immune to a certain type of elemental damage at a great penalty to your health points total.
The active skills come from gems socketed in armor and weapons, with the only limitations being in character level and stats such as intelligence, agility or strength, instead of the usual class-specific restriction imposed on abilities.
It went live at the start of 2013, and after a few months of customizing builds, we came to the conclusion that it was worthy of the Game of the Year title, in the massively multiplayer online video game category.
In case you haven’t yet given it a try, you can sign up and play for free on the Path of Exile website.
