News Tag: Path Of Exile 3 26

During the period of Path of Exile 2 Early Access, do players still remember POE 3.25, which was released in July last year? Yes, Settlers of Kalguur league lasted for over 6 months, but we still had no news about the next league.

However, recently GGG finally responded to this issue. Unfortunately, they did not specify the release time of POE 3.26, but brought the bad news that the next league will be postponed indefinitely. Yes, this league postponement is indefinite, and it may last for a long time.

Therefore, here we are mainly to help you understand the actual future of POE 1, and why I think you should be prepared for POE 1 to be completely closed after patch 3.26.

The Player Group Split Between POE 1 And 2

Two weeks after the release of POE 2, there are a few things that you should be able to see clearly. On the one hand, there is a clear split in the players, and on the other hand, there is a rather large difference between POE 1 subreddit and POE 2.

Looking at the data from the past few years, the number of players in POE 2 Early Access is on average higher than any POE 1 league. There are more than 1 million people registered for Early Access on Steam alone, which is at least $30 million in revenue, and that’s considering people pre-ordered the minimum $30 Supporter Pack.

However, for GGG, it’s not just about money, they have to keep players happy to retain them. Of course, they can also afford to lose players, because these people will still participate in POE 1.

What we want to emphasize here is that there are actually two types of players who have diametrically opposed views on the game. Some POE 1 players like the fast-paced endgame experience, with wide explosions appearing on the screen, blowing up the map one after another, and they only need to wait a moment to click on POE Currency and rare items dropped by the boss. But there is another group of people coming from games like Elden Ring who want the endgame to be like POE 2 campaign. These are completely different audiences.

POE 2 Bugs Appear Frequently

At the same time, there are some serious issues with POE 2 that affect the gaming experience and need to be resolved urgently. I mean some of these issues may even make your computer explode, turn your GPU into a smoke screen, or you will wake up to find that your account has been hacked.

The most serious problems are not game balance, but bugs and crashes. One of the things is the careless Windows 11 24H2 update, which caused a lot of CPU problems in the game, especially a serious crash on our loading screen. When players open portals between maps, we have to enable and disable multi-threading, or sacrifice half of the CPU capacity to run this game.

We must understand that it will take Microsoft a few years to replace the useless DEI to solve these problems. Anyway, we can only hope that GGG will be able to fix their game after this bad Windows update. After all, it is just one of the serious problems they are currently solving.

1.5 months have passed since Early Access release, and POE 2 players are still eagerly waiting for a ton of fixes and endgame issues that need to be changed.

POE 1 Might Be Ready To Terminate?

Meanwhile, POE 1 subreddit is on the verge of a nuclear explosion, because more than 6 months have passed since GGG released POE 3.25 update, and we have never seen such a crisis.

Before, the developer was crucified for testing a new idea in a few leagues, but now suddenly everyone wants to see him resurrected. To be honest, we do live in the age of prophecy, and maybe we may see it soon.

But what’s worse is that more people suspect that this may be their farewell to Path of Exile 1 development. Because unless the two development teams are completely separated, you can’t maintain league updates for 2 games every 3 to 4 months. Chris Wilson himself admitted this as early as 2019.

Developers May Be Stretched Thin

You can feel the pressure from embedding the core content of the old game into the new one. They had less than a few weeks to make the endgame, which they have been working on for years.

I mean, it’s probably been 5 or 6 years since we saw a snippet of POE 2 Act at ExileCon 2019. And the carefully polished 3 Acts we see today took 6-7 years. Rumor has it that there will be more details on these contents after the official release.

So, like we mentioned before, GGG made millions of dollars from POE 2 Early Access, but their only ongoing income comes from POE 1 League, which also requires development and maintenance costs. It’s a gray area to draw the line between which one must take priority now.

After the release, the developers have clearly shown less enthusiasm for completing the remaining 3 Acts of POE 2. Honestly, ask yourself which is more important? POE 2 endgame or POE 2 Acts 4, 5, and 6?

I believe most people want to fix the endgame and continue its development. But this is where I am deeply critical. If you want to make a brand new game, then why bring back the endgame mechanics from the old game that require you to kill and clear quickly? Many POE 2 players want the endgame to be slowed down, but these mechanics are the same requirements of the old game. So, GGG must decide which group of players they must cater to. If they want to separate the game, then they should completely avoid the content from POE 1 in POE 2.

My point is that if GGG pushes hard now, both games have quite strong momentum, they will succeed in winning over both player bases. This is an opportunity that cannot be missed, and this has been proven many times.

The Success Of POE 2 Sacrificed The Development Of The Previous Game

There are many people who are deeply concerned about POE 1. Because Settlers of Kalguur is the best state of POE 1 league update so far, many players returned because of the update of patch 3.25.

But the thing is, currently GGG is still using developers from POE 1 team to develop POE 2. These developers are literally the best developers in any action RPG.

Nevertheless, GGG has good reasons to allocate more resources to POE 2 at the expense of the expansion of POE 1. Like I mentioned before, POE 2 currently has more players and everyone is a paying customer. Second, POE 2 has been a tremendous success at the beginning. Despite the criticism, once they start adding crafting, endgame mechanics, and challenge leagues, the scope of success of POE 2 will be much larger.

Final Thoughts

However, this is not a priority at the moment, GGG can always balance the game, but for a large group of POE 1 players say, 6 months without any content, it’s really hard! So it is recommended that GGG first put all resources into fixing the major issues in patch 0.2.0, and once that is done as soon as possible, they can save the rest for the release of POE 3.26. In this way, Path of Exile can keep the momentum and effectively complete both without losing more players.

In short, prioritize the right things and let the right people do the right job to improve efficiency. This may help the two games run at the same time. GGG must decide and plan the overall strategy to usher in a better future. Looking forward to seeing the early arrival of POE 3.26!

Hello Exiles, we are in the season of spoilers for Path of Exile 2 recently, and a lot of content about this new sequel has been revealed, but our topic today is related to POE 1, namely the possible release date of patch 3.26, the end time of the current POE 3.25 Settlers of Kalguur expansion, the recently announced new Settlers of Kalguur Event, and how we can prepare for it.

To be honest, this event may not bring any exciting new content, but with POE 3.25 league cycle already more than halfway through, it may be an interesting new event to attract many players to return. Here, let’s take a closer look.

Why POE 3.26 May Be Released Next Year?

Let’s first take a look at the possible update time of POE 3.26. Before Grinding Gear Games pushed back the release date of Path of Exile 2 Early Access from November 15th to December 6th, many players had been speculating that patch 3.26 would not be released this year.

The reason for this is simply because of its commercial reality. Because GGG wants to launch their biggest release ever in POE 2 Early Access, they don’t want to release a minor 4 weeks later to steal their limelight. With this factor in mind, it will be difficult for you to see the news that POE 3.26 will be released on December 13th if it follows the previous update cycle.

And because of Christmas holiday, you will also most likely not see them release it around December 20th or 27th. So it is also expected by many people that Path of Exile 3.26 will be released next year. And GGG’s recent post has proved that this speculation is correct, but not just next year.

But honestly, next year is late enough that even a decline in player interest in POE 3.26 is unlikely to be a factor in delaying it to next year. So we’re going to hazard a guess that they never planned to launch Path of Exile 3.26 this year.

We think the developers originally planned to launch it in the 1st or 2nd week of January, but now it will be the 4th or 5th week of January instead. It’s worth noting that they haven’t locked in specific numbers yet. They hope to achieve it in late January, but this is by no means a firm promise. This means that POE 3.26 may also be delayed until February. And depending on the progress of Path of Exile 2 Early Access, maybe it will be brought forward to mid-January. We just know that it won’t be this year.

New Settlers Of Kalguur Event

In any case, this means that Settlers of Kalguur League will be extended until 2025. But one thing GGG knows is that once players get everything they want in this league, these people tend to stop playing, which is part of the reason why Standard League is not as popular as Temporary leagues. Of course, although not everyone who plays Settlers of Kalguur league gets everything they want, many people do.

In Temporary leagues, it is more realistic for players to get the next upgrade, while in Standard, few people reach that point in Settlers of Kalguur, which makes them feel that the next upgrade is out of reach and they are just waiting for something new to do. So, in order to bridge the gap and give players a brand new experience, the developers also took the opportunity to launch the new Settlers of Kalguur Event.

This is a fresh start with a twist, and it will bring some content that differs slightly from the base game. This Settlers of Kalguur Event will start soon. If you are in a similar time zone in United States, it will start on November 7th, but if you are in Australian time zone, it will start on November 8th.

What Are The Features Of The New Event?

This new-look event offers a brand new economy and ladder reset that functions very similarly to the base version of Settlers of Kalguur. On top of that, it also includes enemy modifiers for each zone, which was a key feature of the previous Necropolis league. However, unlike Necropolis, these modifiers only grant rewards, including bonuses to aspects such as POE Currency or item drop chance and enemy pack size.

The addition of this Necropolis mechanic will be a positive change, and their main impact will be for more casual players, as they will make gear drops faster. Especially if you’re the type of player who still wants to get a lot of Chaos Orbs while advancing Atlas, running this event will definitely make you earn a lot of money.

This new league event will run in parallel with the existing Settlers of Kalguur league, so you can continue to play with your current character if you wish. However, if you choose to participate in the new event league and reach level 50 on any character, you will receive a mandatory Settlers Mystery Box, which includes a random cosmetic selected from the new additions in POE 3.25. If you already own all of them, you will receive two Polaris Mystery Boxes instead.

As for the available game modes for this event, when it was originally announced, there were only two versions, namely Softcore Trade and Solo Self-Found Hardcore modes. But later, GGG changed the announcement and added Hardcore and Solo Self-Found versions.

It is worth noting that it does not look like there will be any support for Ruthless mode. Of course, there will not be much demand from the player community for this, so this is unlikely to change, and it looks like there will only be four different versions running.

How To Prepare For The New Event?

If you plan to participate in Softcore Trade version of the event, then here are some tips that may help you.

You can try to play with your partners as a cooperative group, use the guild warehouse to trade resources between each other, and try to prepare each other to pass milestone encounters to obtain a large amount of wealth. At the end of a period after the group has run a few times, maybe 10 days, or maybe the end of the second weekend, you can go your separate ways and split the loot at that time. However, you have a lot of things to do to make this happen, because making it as fair as possible is key.

Anyway, that’s all we know about the possible release date of POE 3.26 and the upcoming Settlers of Kalguur Event. If you’re interested in being a part of the event, then grab your chance and prepare early!