If you were thinking that Path of Exile 2 was moving very quickly toward its early access on November 15th, you weren’t wrong: Just before midnight EDT last night, Grinding Gear Games announced that it’s delaying the early access launch.
“We have to delay early access for three weeks,” GGG’s Jonathan Rogers says. “The new date is the 6th of December. I’m really sorry about this one. People plan time off and things like that around our launches, but we just have to do it.”
So does it mean the game isn’t ready? Not really; GGG characterizes this as just needing more time to make the two Path of Exile games cooperate with each other as planned.
“Well, it turns out that it isn’t really the game itself that we are behind on. It’s a bunch of server side infrastructure work that has taken us a lot longer than we expected. Now, one of the key promises we made is that all your microtransactions will work across both POE 1 and 2. In order to do that, we have to integrate the account systems for not only POE and 2 but also for the console realms as well. This meant changing a lot of things. Not only do we have to create a bunch of new systems, we have to make sure that all the old data [are] backwards compatible with them as well. And when you start migrating databases that are this old and with this much data, you find all sorts of strange demons in there. How do multiple accounts get the same name? How do multiple accounts get the same email address? How do multiple accounts have the same Steam IDs? Why is this person’s account name just random gibberish that doesn’t even decode? We have to get everything perfect so that nobody loses anything they paid for, and nobody has their account broken. At the same time, because we’re changing all this back-end code, we have to do a lot of load testing to make sure the whole thing doesn’t fall over when we could get the huge numbers that we’re expecting at launch.”
Ironically, Rogers says he thinks GGG could’ve made the launch plan, but with mistakes he’d rather not make. “So with that in mind, we have decided to delay,” he says, taking responsibility for the move. “I just didn’t leave enough time to make sure we could get it done. And I’m really sorry.” (Hey game execs! This is how apologies are done!)
GGG promises a big livestream in four weeks with even more info and reveals. The new early access launch date is now December 6th.
In order to ensure a smooth launch, Path of Exile 2's Early Access will be delayed for 3 weeks. The new date is December 6th PST. Statement from Game Director Jonathan Rogers below. pic.twitter.com/Bk8Ti8u94d
— Path of Exile (@pathofexile) October 29, 2024
