Bex Confirms ExileCon is the Jumping-Off Point for Path of Exile 2's Marketing

The takeaway from my discussions with Chris post sell out was that the safety net Tencent provided was a major factor. Especially for GGG's employees. So I am not just throwing weird or wild ideas around here. It was not a takeover -- there weren't mass layoffs or a change in regime. Sure, some left for their own reasons but Tencent knew not to fuck with what was clearly working.


Diabloski: you are welcome to factor the pandemic into your overall understanding of the delay to PoE 4.0 any way you wish. Just make sure you do. Even if only a little bit. Everything you said, from the strict NZ hiring laws to the post mortem non-starter that was Exilecon 2019, was affected. Kinda hard to bring in new talent when fucking flights are rare as kiwi's teeth doncha think?

I of all people am not going to give GGG a pass on much at all, but in this case you should consider the razor and go with it. Whether that's Occam's or Hanlon's...that's up to you.

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la_blue_girl wrote:

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ongZ wrote:

Since they said that old and new campaign will both lead to the same endgame. Just a different path. I find it hard to believe they would keep old and new heroes, when the new systems (as we can see on the last two trailers) requires new designs.

This is 3.5 year old info at this point tho. If I had to guess they've decided it's not worth the effort to balance/update the old stuff anymore and they'll just shaft it with the release of POE 2.

Ok. I am pretty sure they will stick to the plan. How much graphics they will update, I don't know, but all the PoE2 systems will be present (because they are not going to balance to separate systems).

1453R is correct.

It's funny how much this thread sounded like Last Epoch discussion when they announced their final delay to the 0.9 multiplayer patch.

OMG THEY'RE GONNA MISS THEIR WINDOW THEY NEEEEEEED TO RELEASE ON THE 3RD SATURDAY BETWEEN POE LEAGUE AND D4 OPEN BETA WEEKEND OR THEY'LL MISS THEIR WINDOW AND NO ONE WILL EVER PLAY IF THEY DONT RELEASE EXACTLY WHEN I WANT TO PLAY THEN IM NEVER PLAYING THIS GAME ILL BE BUSY PLAYING X INSTEAD.

a whole lot of working themselves into a frenzy and taking the launch day they would personally prefer and extrapolating that to 'game can't succeed if it doesn't release on the schedule I'd pick'.

It's fine. The worst thing they could to is release a bad product. Make it good, then when its ready if you want to bump it by a week or two to avoid something big or capitalize on something (vacation availability, competitor oopsie) then do that but you don't rush a 5-6 year project out the door 12 months early just to hit some nebulous window of opportunity that may or may not even be real like holy fucking christ. That's a great way to throw a decades worth of work in the dumpster.

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MourningBlade wrote:

I think it's smart for a little delay. If it's launched in a year or so a lot of new D4 fanboys might be tired of the game if Blizz does not keep updating the content...and now new seasons require fresh chars? Think I just read that...

Emphasis mine.
Maybe this might be a gamebreaker for "new D4 fanboys", who are presumably going to be more casual anyway and can't bear the thought of continually relevelling.

But in that case I really can't see them being attracted to PoE, where new leagues (seasons) have required new characters since they began in 2013.

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ongZ wrote:

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la_blue_girl wrote:

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ongZ wrote:

Since they said that old and new campaign will both lead to the same endgame. Just a different path. I find it hard to believe they would keep old and new heroes, when the new systems (as we can see on the last two trailers) requires new designs.

This is 3.5 year old info at this point tho. If I had to guess they've decided it's not worth the effort to balance/update the old stuff anymore and they'll just shaft it with the release of POE 2.

Ok. I am pretty sure they will stick to the plan. How much graphics they will update, I don't know, but all the PoE2 systems will be present (because they are not going to balance to separate systems).

1453R is correct.

And I'm pretty sure they won't. If they've done a bunch of stuff why haven't we seen it so far? We also haven't gotten the "re-balance" for acts 3-10 yet. Which is very weird. Maybe they stuck to the plan for a while(which is why we got a new Brutus fight and some new voice lines) and then dropped it because they realized it would take up too much time and resources.

We'll see in 35ish days, tho. My money is on them dropping most of the old stuff completely.

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la_blue_girl wrote:

And I'm pretty sure they won't. If they've done a bunch of stuff why haven't we seen it so far? We also haven't gotten the "re-balance" for acts 3-10 yet. Which is very weird. Maybe they stuck to the plan for a while(which is why we got a new Brutus fight and some new voice lines) and then dropped it because they realized it would take up too much time and resources.

We'll see in 35ish days, tho. My money is on them dropping most of the old stuff completely.

Let's see what happens. Pointless to discuss whether they have backtracked on things they have promised. I am just having fun guessing what will happen. You owe me 5 chaos orbs if I am right ;-)

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1453R wrote:

Look. I get it. Pandemic happened, it seriously undermined Grinding Gears' workflow, shit happened.

My objection is not that it took 5+ years to get to this point.

My objection is that it's going to take multiple MORE years before we get any hint of Path of Exile 2. They're announcing the announcement of the announcement at ExileCon the Second and tryin'a get everybody riled up for a thing we won't get until...what? '26? '27?

Nobody at GGG said anything like that.

I will be very surprised if you guys aren't playing some form of PoE 4.0 by the end of 2024. "Path of Exile 2 arrived a year after Diablo IV" just sounds a LOT better as a quote than "Path of Exile 2 arrived a few years after Diablo IV". And please disabuse yourself of any notion that the gap between the two won't be a talking point come press time.

We are already playing PoE2 in "some form", and have been for many leagues. It's really the expectation management that I've beaten to death in this thread, that is the problem.

I was hoping Exilecon would clear things up, but now we know that won't be the case. Which is super disappointing. Like really really a bummer.

Maybe the beta will be "good" but a truncated, focused, limited beta, doesn't do a whole lot beyond control what players see and feel.

I will reserve judgment until we know a bit more, but right now, being skeptical and pessimistic is totally understandable imo.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

I was hoping Exilecon would clear things up, but now we know...

No, we don't. What we do know is 3.22 is not the 4.0 beta. Anything other than that is baseless speculation. Just go and read the gd tweets.