BrikoX

Hey, guys, let's talk about Path of Exile 1. Now, when we announced Path of Exile 2, we promised that we would continue to create Path of Exile 1 expansions, and we do intend to keep that promise! But it's certainly been a lot harder to deliver on it than what we expected. Now, the trouble really started after Settlers of Kalguur in July last year. The ideal time to have release 3.26 would have been late October. Before they originally scheduled release of Path of Exile 2’s Early Access, but we just didn't think we could do it. It was too close to the huge circus that was the organization around Path of Exile 2’s launch.

But we also didn't want to immediately launch it right after Path of Exile 2 either. So that kind of ruled out December. So then we're thinking, okay, we can't really have a launch in January due to Christmas, so we're really going to have to do it in February. And this wasn't great. It would mean seven months with no leagues. But we really didn't think it was possible to do it any earlier than that. And we didn't really announce this exactly, but it was certainly something that we had said to quite a few people at over time. So the community became generally aware that that was our plan.

The issue was this, Path of Exile 2’s end game needed a lot of work. Having the guys on the Path of Exile1 team help out for three months on Path of Exile 2, given the 3.26, was seven months away, seemed like a no-brainer. And man, did Path of Exile 2 need it. The problem is, we got to the middle of October, and Path of Exile 2's launch was imminent. And I'll tell you what. Taking people off Path of Exile 2 at that point was just impossible. The endgame was not in a shippable state. But you know what?

We could still do it if the Path of Exile 1 team just kept helping until Path of Exile 2 shipped in late November, we could still do it. Maybe the scope would need to decrease a little bit, but mid-February was still possible. We just needed to ship this damn game first. Get it out of the way. We literally couldn't think about anything else until it was done, but we still had time. The problem is, we were fooling ourselves. Path of Exile 2 was delayed three weeks, making the problem even worse.

And after the game was released, well, of course we had to immediately deal with all the problems. How could we think about making a Path of Exile 1 expansion? We still have hundreds of thousands of people who are having bad experiences in Path of Exile 2. There are crashes. There are severe endgame balance problems. How could I justify taking some of the most experienced developers we have off Path of Exile 2 when it's on fire? Now, after the Christmas break, we had to really admit something to ourselves.

The most urgent priority was getting Path of Exile 2 to a point where it didn't have major issues. And it's hard to even think about what Path of Exile 1 needs when Path of Exile 2 has really obvious problems that need fixing. We needed to get it to the point of stability and balance, and to fix the most severe deficiencies, That Path of Exile 2 has before we can take our eyes off it. So what does that mean? Well, it means that we can't really work on Path of Exile 1 3.26 until Path of Exile 2 0.2.0 has shipped.

And then, being honest, we probably need to support that for a couple of weeks after that as well. Now, in the meantime, we are going to get a bunch of pre-production done on 3.26 with whatever people who are not needed to fix issues with Path of Exile 2, and once 0.2.0 is sorted, I promise we will devote as many resources as are needed from our company to get 3.26 done as soon as possible. Unfortunately, I just can't promise a date right now. I'm really sorry for how this went down. Honestly, I should have predicted the fact that taking the Path of Exile 1 team off Path of Exile 1 would lead to this outcome, and I probably should have resisted doing it. But at every stage I just kept thinking, we still have time, we still have time. And then we didn't have time anymore. Now we still have a lot to learn about how to run two games simultaneously. We were overconfident. We still need to work out how to structure our studio to make this possible, but we do have a solid plan for what we want to do with 3.26. Obviously I can't talk about it yet, but I'm hoping you guys are going to love it. I really want to thank you guys for all your support over the years. You guys do deserve better than this, and we will get 3.26 out as fast as we can.