Path of Exile 3.13 delayed to January amid a strange year. “We were previously targeting a launch date of December 11 for our 3.13 end-game expansion,” said GGG in the announcement. That has now changed.
The delay is a strange one, as it’s come about in the weirdest way. The expansion isn’t being delayed for a reason you might think. It seems that GGG was on track to get the game content out on schedule. The Path of Exile 3.13 expansion was stated as “in a very stable and polished state.” Developer Grinding Gear Games made the call to push the game past the holiday season for two reasons it seems.
One thing is that it would give their staff a much-needed break without having to rush early hotfixes that will inevitably crop up. Players will likely be happy with this as complaints about Heist League and bugs continued to crop up consistently. The developer has said that the new team will be on track to finish the expansion before release and polish it well. The work on the next expansion will begin soon as well.
The other reason also makes pretty good sense. The company doesn’t want to have to compete with the already slam-packed holiday gaming season. The recent delay of Cyberpunk 2077 very much had some impact here. That game was pushed back to December, meaning that POE players would have to choose between two very hyped up releases. New Leagues always get a flurry of new players, so it does make sense to move releases around to make room.
“We do not want to put our players in a position of having to choose between these two games, so we have decided to step out of the way and delay the release of Path of Exile 3.13 until January,” Grinding Gear Games CEO Chris Wilson wrote in a post on the POE forums.
But not to be left out, the developer is putting something out at the end of the year. “So that you still have some interesting Path of Exile stuff to play over the Christmas/New Year break, we’re planning to run at least one multi-week event (for example, Flashback),” wrote Wilson.
These flashback events will likely include a new chance to engage with old league content for returning and new players. I would bet the new folks will enjoy that chaotic mess of fun.
