With Path of Exile 2 occupying the lion’s share of resources at Grinding Gear Games, many fans have been left wondering about the first game. Its last expansion and league was Settlers of Kalguur, launched on July 26th. Though there have been promises of the next expansion, 3.26, in February, game director Jonathan Rogers has revealed this is no longer the case.
In a new video, Rogers revealed that the “ideal time to have released 3.26 would have been late October.” This was before Path of Exile 2‘s early access launch. However, it didn’t seem feasible. “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.” Since it couldn’t launch in January due to Christmas, the team targeted February. Admitting it didn’t look good since the game would have gone “seven months with no leagues,” the team “really didn’t think it was possible to do it any earlier than that.”
Of course, the delay to Path of Exile 2 followed alongside issues like crashes, endgame balance, etc. Rogers thus couldn’t pull Path of Exile 1 developers off until they were resolved. The current priority for the team is to ensure the sequel is at a point where there aren’t any “major issues.”
The result is that 3.26 won’t happen until Path of Exile‘s 0.2.0 update has shipped (not counting the weeks needed for support). “In the meantime, we are going to get a bunch of pre-production done on 3.26 with whatever people not needed to fix issues with Path of Exile 2,” said Rogers.
After update 0.2.0 is complete, Rogers says, “We will devote as many resources as are needed from our company to get 3.26 done as soon as possible.” However, he can’t confirm a release date at this time.
He admits that the team “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.” Nevertheless, there is a “solid plan” for 3.26.
Stay tuned for further updates in the coming months and check out our review for Path of Exile 2 here.
