The new action RPG from Grinding Gear Games, Path of Exile 2, opened to early access on December 6, 2024, and quickly encountered a series of technical issues that hampered the release. Originally announced in 2019 as a parallel storyline that would share the same endgame as the original release, Path of Exile 2 was later revealed as a separate game with its own campaign.

Path of Exile 2's early access launch was delayed from its original November 2024 date, with the developer citing the carryover of microtransactions from the first game as requiring major infrastructural server work that had taken longer than expected. While the company has met its new promised early access target, it's become apparent that a few issues still need ironing out.

Through a series of live update posts on the game's forum, Grinding Gear Games kept players abreast of the issues during the launch day. The company was working to deploy database improvements to handle the "overwhelming amount of Exiles" queuing up to log in to the game, a condition heralded by the significant numbers of players redeeming Path of Exile 2 early access. Unfortunately, the issues continued to mount, with another crash discovered. That evening, players were being granted access in batches while the company monitored the backend. Later, it was discovered that players accessing the game through Steam were having issues logging in, a problem that was resolved before the end of the day.

Given the range of new features promised for Path of Exile 2's full release, it's understandable that some glitches will be present. The developers cited the recent addition of the new database shards required to support the large number of expected players as the root of the issue. Database sharding is a practice of storing a large database across a number of servers to avoid the bottlenecks resulting from numerous simultaneous instances of user access. As of December 7, 2024, the early access update forum page listed the Path of Exile 2 servers as "undergoing maintenance," noting that some features are still unavailable.

Despite the technical difficulties, many initial reviews of Path of Exile 2 have been positive, with critics citing the refinement of earlier systems, quality-of-life enhancements, and updated graphics as being welcome improvements to the original game. Players willing to support the game by paying for early access may have a bumpy ride ahead of them, but from most indicators, it may be a fairly enjoyable one as well.

Posted: Dec 10, 2024 12:33 pm
Related Forum: PC Gaming Forum

Source: https://gamerant.com/path-of-exile-2-servers-status-steam-problems-fixed/