Many people have been wondering how early access for Path of Exile 2 will work. In today's article, we have a quick update. We've received some information from GGG after a period of silence. First, the early access date is delayed for three weeks, and the new date is December 6th, 2024. Let's see what things have changed.
A lot of people have been asking how to get access. As expected, it will function similarly to how the Fall of Oriath expansion open beta test worked. There will be a supporter pack costing about $30. If you buy that, you will get a key. I think they will also send out free keys once a day to a few thousand people, so you might get lucky. But you can also buy your way in. For longtime supporters of GGG, people who have spent over a certain threshold will also get in. I'm not 100% sure what that amount is, but I'm guessing it's probably around $500. You will also get in if you bought one of those $480 packs.
In about a month, a live stream will give us a full update on all the content available in PoE 2 early access. We got some news a couple of days ago through the grapevine. GGG did an interview at an event in Tokyo, and it doesn't sound like we're going to be getting the full campaign for PoE 2. A lot of us, including myself, might have had slightly unrealistic expectations. I was expecting a full campaign, a lot of endgame content, and maybe a few missing classes and maps. But it sounds like we are only going to be getting three Acts for PoE 2 on early access release.
It's a major bummer, but at the same time, it is early access, not the full game. GGG needs to knock it out of the park with this because it is going to be fairly accessible. It needs to be good because this is going to be like a soft launch for the game. If early access sucks and people play it and do not like it, they are not going to come back for the full launch. So, I'm expecting what is in the game to be very polished, but it won't be as much as expected.
That being said, we are still going to get new classes, presumably Ascendancies. They did mention some endgame content, so it's probably a limited mapping system. We're not 100% sure. From there, they will be releasing consecutive acts, maybe at a rate of one a month. That's the speculation at this point—one new act a month. So, tons of new content will be coming out fairly rapidly. The full release is most likely about six months after December, so it will probably be in June.
I don't know what you think about that. I played PoE 1 in closed beta when it was two acts, and I loved it. I had a great time, but having a lot more endgame content would have been cool. Three acts and presumably eight out of the twelve classes still provide a lot of stuff to play with. I'm looking forward to it. I will have some more updates as I get more into PoE 2.
