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

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.

Grinding Gear also fixed a few pesky login bugs, including a rare and strange issue where players somehow could log into accounts owned by other players as the servers shuddered beneath the load. To keep character info stable, the studio simply switched off Exile's servers until it whipped up a fix.

The high turnout probably has something to do with the satisfying results of clicking a zombie's head into paste for shinies or the web-like skill tree that ought to win some sort of award for its sheer size.

Omri Petitte is a former PC Gamer associate editor and long-time freelance writer covering news and reviews. If you spot his name, it probably means you're reading about some kind of first-person shooter. Why yes, he would like to talk to you about Battlefield. Do you have a few days?