Path of Exile

INTRODUCTION

Hello folks,

at first, let me introduce myself (atleast I heard I need to do this in the very first Blog-Post :P). My name is Christian "noirlama" M., I'm 23 years old and live in southern Germany. I'm playing Videogames since I was like 4 years old (started with Rayman on the PlayStation - my first Computergame was Doom II (that seriously fucked up my head at that time)). After a few other games, I started with Diablo and played Diablo II and Lord of Destruction since release at a really high Endgame-Level (had many characters at Level 93+ and countless reaaaally rare uniqe items). After that I started my Counter-Strike 1.6 career till 2004, then moves on to World of Warcraft, played it till the late Cataclym Expansion ( Comeone Blizzard, really? ) and switched over to Diablo 3.

DIABLO 3 - GOOD GAME, BUT NOT AWESOME

Yea ... Diablo 3 ... it was so freaking hyped after Blizzard announced it on Blizzcon, we couldn't wait for the Beta to start - and finally it was there. At this point let me say: I think Blizzard did a good job with Diablo 3, but thats all. Let me tell you some things that where not so cool:

- Levelcap at Level 60, also it was much to easy to reach it. When you reach max. level, it feels like "oh ok... that's it, I don't get any experience anymore". Yea sure, you could finish off Inferno Mode or even play on Hardcore (disconnects say hellooo). But that was just not enough motivation (for me personally). Note: Blizzard recently added the Paragon-Level-System (Patch 1.0.4) for players at max. level and it really looks great, but it just came to late!

http://media.diablofans.com/images/news/2012/sept/100.jpg

(Alkaizer - first player to reach Paragon-Level 100)

- The droprate of Uniques are far too low, especially in low-levels. Remember Diablo 2? You played a new toon from 1 to like level 20 and you found a good load of uniques, sets and rares, this kept you motivated to go on. Even on end-game content you found a unique or set every few runs - but most times it was useless (not a bad thing!). I don't say, that I want free uber-awesome uniques every Act 3 run in Diablo 3, but before patch 1.0.4 it just felt bad. Again - Blizzard did something, but it was a little bit late.

- The bigges point why Diablo 3 is not the game for me is the ... wait for it ... wait ... ( I think you can guess it already ) ... is the auction house. Diablo is just not the game for an auction house. It's a game where you have to actually find items to trade these items for better items. This way you can work your way up to the top, without having to farm endless amounts of gold, just to purchase one single upgrade from the auction house.

I know this Blog isn't about Diablo 3 but I just wanted to share my opinion about the recently released game. This is where "Path of Exile" kicks in.

WHAT IS PATH OF EXILE?

Path of Exile is a Diablo Clone - not Diablo 3, but good old Diablo 2 and this IS A GOOOOD THING. It's like how Diablo 3 should have been!

Sooo, to introduce you to this really great game, I just quote the developer (Grinding Gear Games) on this one:

A dark fantasy action RPG with visceral combat

In Path of Exile, the player has been exiled from their homeland to the corrupted and deeply hostile continent of Wraeclast. Alone, or with other exiles, they must develop their skills and discover powerful magical artifacts in order to survive the challenges of a cutthroat post-apocalyptic fantasy world.
Path of Exile immerses the player in a gritty and realistic art style that goes against the current industry trend of cartoony RPGs.
Our combat is especially visceral, with plenty of blood and gore. Position matters a great amount in our combat system. You can dodge projectiles and be blocked in by monsters.

A persistent online world with instanced gameplay.

Path of Exile has been designed from the ground up as a secure online game. Characters and items are stored on our persistent servers, and great effort is being taken to make sure that the game economy is not destroyed by exploits or hacks.
We do not classify Path of Exile as an MMORPG. It is a competitive online action RPG, and has little in common with games that are typically given the MMORPG moniker.
Our realms can support arbitrarily large numbers of players. We intend to only segregate realms based on large geographic locations (realms for North America, Europe and Oceania, for example).
World areas are instanced, meaning that each party gets its own private randomly generated copy of a given area. The random templates for these areas have been designed with a low player cap in mind (potentially in the region of 4-8 players per instance), to make the areas exciting and challenging for small groups. Areas supporting player vs. player combat (PvP) have larger player caps, so that multiple teams can fight against each other.
Communal areas such as towns do not have low player cap limitations and serve as a hub for trading and finding other players to group with.

Completely free to download and play. Supported by ethical microtransactions.

Path of Exile is completely free to play - no upfront costs or monthly fees are required to enjoy 100% of the game content.
To fund the development and maintenance costs of the project, we plan to let players purchase aesthetic perks for their characters such as:

Additional character animations (for example, taunts or PvP victory animations)
Dyes and item skins
Alternate spell effects
Social pets

We will also offer some optional paid services such as:

Inter-realm/inter-account character transfers
Character renaming

You’ll notice nothing in the list above confers an actual gameplay advantage.

Randomly generated levels and items for extreme replayability

Path of Exile features randomly generated indoors and outdoors areas, a quality that ensures long term replayability. RPG fans we talked to expressed extreme disdain for having to replay identical game areas over and over, so we're confident we've made the right design choice. We know that hardcore online gamers play for extreme lengths of time, and we want to make their thousandth hour in Path of Exile as exciting as their first.
Our item system is also extremely diverse. Action RPG fans will be thrilled by the depth and nearly infinite customization of items.

Player vs. Player combat

In addition to the solo and cooperative content, Path of Exile has been designed from day one to offer a competitive PvP environment where players can display their dominance in a variety of ways. We intend to support tournaments and world PvP for both small and large teams of players.

Dozens of combinable skills

Full details of our skill system can be read on the skills page. Because no particular skill is limited to a specific class, everyone will enjoy tremendous variety and individual customization. Additionally, skills can augment each other in a complementary fashion, to create unbelievably powerful, elaborate effects. Want to set a trap that hurls multiple venomous fireballs? Want a critical hit from your weapon to cause the enemy to fly back stunned and frozen? That's just the tip of the iceberg in Path of Exile's revolutionary skill system.

Release schedule

We’ve been developing Path of Exile since late 2006. It has been in Closed Beta since August 2011 and will enter Open Beta in late 2012.
There is a long roadmap of free expansions planned, and we anticipate releasing both feature and content upgrades periodically for many years.

Sounds great, doesn't it? I'll write more stuff tomorrow ( Level Caps, Endgame Content, how you can join the Beta and so on)

I hope you liked my first post, I would like to read your opinions in the comment-section!