It's always fun to look back at things as they were, to remember without the vaunted "rose-colored glasses" at how it used to be. In the spirit of the turn of the year, the Path of Exile team has taken players down a pretty fun walk down memory lane by showing off some of the game's earliest moments in visuals and in patch notes. Come along and see what it's all about.
Welcome 2017 By Taking a Look Back
Grinding Gear had a big year this year, both for Path of Exile itself but also for the company. In fact, in a brief post on the site, it was said, "we've had the best year so far" and that's saying something, isn't it!
Here's why:
- We launched four challenge leagues: Perandus, Prophecy, Essence and Breach.
- We absorbed the Russia and Singapore Garena communities.
- We introduced cloaks!
- We released our two largest ever expansions: Ascendancy and Atlas of Worlds.
- We launched more purple leagues than any previous year.
- We set a record number of players online with the introduction of the Breach challenge league.
- We launched a successful alpha and beta release in China. Path of Exile is currently listed as #1 on the most anticipated upcoming games list on the popular Chinese news site 17173.com.
- We expanded from 60 to 92 staff members.
- Chris shaved his beard.
- We deployed 76 updates/patches to our realm.
- We posted 313 news articles - an average of 6 posts per week.
- There were 40% more hours played of Path of Exile on our realm in 2016 than 2015. This is a buff.
- Massively increased average game performance (by triple for many users).
- Grinding Gear Games celebrated its 10 year anniversary!
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Well, Would Ya Look at That!
The Path of Exile team started last week off with a visual reference to the past by posting a retrospective look back at how the game has evolved since its announcement in 2010. By Showing PoE's earliest trailers, players can see just how far the game has come in the intervening seven years. In the first installment, it's possible to see the announcement trailer from September 2010 all the way through the cinematic release trailer in October 2013.
The second installment, published later in the week, goes over the next series of trailers beginning with 2014's Sacrifice of the Baal trailer and ends up with the most recent video for 2016's Breach, launched late in 2016.
For those who love historical moments like these, the full internal patch notes have been posted that run the gamut from alpha all the way through 0.8.7. Going in reverse order, the Legacy Patch Notes Part 1 covers 0.8.0- 0.8.7, while Part Two goes from 0.5.0 to 0.7.2. For the budding game historian in you, it's well worth a visit to these two pages for a look-see!
Thoughts from Game Designer Nick
Grinding Gear Game Designer 'Nick' became the first subject of an in-house interview to find out more about his history with the company, what it is exactly that he does and what some of his favorite moments working on Path of Exile have been:
As the main developer who writes flavour text for the game, do you have any favourite snippets? Is there anything you have to keep in mind while writing these?
At the risk of tooting my own horn, I really enjoyed writing the flavour for the Breach uniques. Breach and Beyond both thrive story-wise on what is left unsaid, so I wanted to try to give each Breachlord and its followers a distinct sense of culture through the names and flavour of the monsters and items without giving away the sense of lovecraftian mystery and eldritch horror it leans upon.
I'm also a fan of irony in flavour text (like The Brass Dome's), so if an item has contrasting ideas in its flavour, it's pretty likely I worked on it.
Nick wraps up his interview by promising that there is "so much to look forward to" that he hardly knows where to start in giving a peek at the future. According to the interview, the company is working on the "coolest content" ever. Guess there is a lot to look forward to throughout the year!
