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Grinding Gear Games

Path of Exile "mini-expansion" arriving March 5

Tom Senior at

Path of Exile is a game about meeting lots of monsters and then punching out all their blood so you can steal their stuff. As action RPGs go, it's great, and I called it things like "compulsive" and "exceptionally generous" in our Path of Exile review. When people say things like "all free-to-play games are poo" I like to materialise, wave an arm in Path of Exile's direction and whisper "look! All the free blood-punching you could ever need!" and then vanish in a puff of smoke.

For those already hooked on Path of Exile, good news. There's going to be more of it according to a post on the Path of Exile site.

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Path of Exile achieves 3.7 million sign-ups, details first patch of 2014

Phil Savage at

Clearly in a reflective mood, Grinding Gear Games have revealed some new statistics on the popularity of free-to-play ARPG Path of Exile. Officially released this October, after an open beta that began at the start of 2013, their numbers state that over 3.7 million have signed up to play the game. Given the click-heavy nature of the genre, it looks as if 2014 is going to be an extremely good year for the makers of heat packs.

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Path of Exile hits 250,000 daily users one month after launch

Emanuel Maiberg at

New Zealand-based developer Grinding Gear Games has reason to celebrate. Only a month after launch, its free-to-play, clicky-click action RPG Path of Exile enjoys more than 250,000 daily users, and over 4 million registered users. 1.5 million unique players logged in following the end of its open beta.

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Path of Exile gets a post-launch patch, seven more before March expansion

Patrick Carlson at

Action RPG Path of Exile sees its first post-launch patch go live this Wednesday, the first update of seven planned before Grinding Gears releases an expansion in March 2014. While the 1.0.1 update includes its share of mysterious new items to try out, it's also set to kick off the free-to-play game's fifth season of competitive events, according to lead designer Chris Wilson.

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Path of Exile leaves beta today, adds new class and challenge leagues

Phil Savage at

Free-to-play action RPG Path of Exile will emerge blinking from the beta dungeon later today, its bugs slain and features looted. With the game levelling up to v1.0, developers Grinding Gear will be dramatically expanding the game, adding a new class, areas and enemies, and new challenge leagues for those players looking for some advanced mouse-driven biffing.

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Path of Exile gets October 23 release date, new Scion prestige class

Tom Sykes at

Path of Exile has been in beta for roughly 8,000 years, but its journey is finally about to come to an end. As revealed to Shacknews, the free-to-play action RPG will escape open beta and emerge blinking into the real world on October 23rd, accompanied by a new prestige class.

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Path of Exile gets Twitch livestreaming capabilities, more gore

Katie Williams at

The next game to haul itself onboard the Twitch livestream bandwagon is Path of Exile. The ARPG will allow streaming from within the client, Twitch chat—the whole shebang.

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Path of Exile update 0.11.0 brings new leagues of Onslaught and Anarchy

Phil Savage at

One day, a more interesting patch naming format will be agreed upon. Until then, we'll have to make do with the current numerical Wild West of marking important development milestones with arbitrary numbers. Path of Exile is about to begin the second phase of its open beta, so naturally the free-to-play MMO ARPG is calling this major revision 0.11.0. Just rolls off the tongue.

Whatever the patch is called, it will release this week, on June 5th, and introduce two new experimental leagues: Anarchy and Onslaught. They're due to run alongside the previous Standard and Hardcore leagues over the next four months.

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Path of Exile's Season Two race schedule revealed, kicks off tomorrow

Phil Savage at

Path of Exile's Race events are an interesting idea for the free-to-play ARPG. They're short-form transitory leagues - anything from a few minutes to a month, depending on the event - that require a fresh character and prioritise quick-fire levelling and high-placed class rankings. So either a fun bit of competitive monster mauling or a weaponised carpal tunnel generator, depending on your perspective. Either way, devs Grinding Gear have announced the second season of click-crazed races.

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Path of Exile devs plan yearly expansions, full release in six months

Omri Petitte at

Path of Exile. It's dark and moody. It's free to download and play. Its web of skill trees is scarier than any towering boss demon. Most importantly, it seeks to be the spiritual Diablo 2 followup purists want. Open beta commenced back in January, and the game's community has swelled immensely since then. Developer Grinding Gear is now looking at launch plans and beyond, and speaking to Joystiq, co-founder Chris Wilson says it will release in six months and get yearly expansions.

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Path of Exile hits 2 million registered accounts

Omri Petitte at

Path of Exile's community looks to be quite formidable even before the free-to-play ARPG's full release. It's been in open beta since January, pulling in some impressive numbers from players seeking a return to Diablo 2-like loot and XP mechanics. Topping that is Grinding Gear's announcement today that it's amassed 2 million registered accounts since the open beta began in January.

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Path of Exile open beta hosted nearly 70,000 players over weekend

Omri Petitte at

Grinding Gear's free-to-play ARPG Path of Exile entered open beta last week, and gamers eager for a top-down dungeon-crawling experience akin to Diablo II flooded the servers. 69,850 players, to be precise. In a forum post yesterday (via PCGamesN), Grinding Gear Lead Designer Chris Wilson stated the deluge crashed Exile's account system and servers over the weekend, but the team quickly brought everything back online today with stability and bug fixes.

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Free-to-play ARPG Path of Exile enters open beta

T.J. Hafer at

If you haven't been keeping track of it, Path of Exile is an indie, top-down, loot-based RPG looking to fill the niche a vocal portion of the community feels is unserved by the cartoonishness of Torchlight and the host of oft-maligned changes to the Diablo franchise between its second and third installments. Developer Grinding Gear Games announced on its forums that the open beta should be going live right around the time this article is posted. Check out the trailer above to get a sense of the brooding moodiness.

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Path of Exile's open beta dated

Phil Savage at

Grinding Gear have announced the date for the open beta of their free-to-play Diablo-ish ARPG-cum-MMO, Path of Exile. While the developers had originally targeted a December 2012 date - and actually believe they can have the game ready this month - they've decided to delay until after the new year, when staff will be back from their Christmas break.

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Walk the Path of Exile during the public stress test weekend

Gavin Townsley at

Weekends were designed for relaxation, catching up on chores, and dicing up the various spawn creeping out of the underworld. Path of Exile can help with two of these. The dark-and-bloody action RPG is throwing its first public event and that means you're just a click away from hours of demon-slaying entertainment at the beautiful price of free.

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