Gamers in the biggest untapped market for ARPGs are finally going to be able to get a taste of the world of Wraeclast with the launch of an official port.
South Korean video game publisher Kakao Games (Black Desert Online, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds) is working with Grinding Gear Games to fully translate the game and even bring localized servers online to massively reduce latency. This way, any new and existing players in the region won’t have to connect through gateway servers much farther away.
GGG has been working hard to bring Path of Exile to new audiences, so this seems like a natural expansion. Ever since the acquisition by Chinese firm Tencent, the New Zealand developer has been working hard to expand the reach of the best ARPG out there, and it appears to be working.
In terms of what’s actually included in the Korean port, here’s a rundown:
- No Pay-to-Win economy or other gameplay changes
- Full Korean localization
- Local gateway servers to reduce lag
- Full cross-play with other regions
In addition to this major new port, GGG also revealed their plans for the upcoming 3.6.2 patch to POE. There’s a handful of bug fixes relating to Synthesis, like addressing spawn bugs and making it clearer where certain things are on-screen. The team is also improving certain aspects of Betrayal League content in the core game that players have complained about, like lag spikes and the difficulty of gaining Intel.
Here are the tentative patch notes for the update:
- Fixing various issues where monster packs in Fragmented Memories and the Memory Void didn’t contain the correct Rare monsters. This also fixes the issue that many players are having where they can’t find the Rare monsters required for the “Defeat Synthesis Monsters” challenge.
- Adding labels to Synthesised Chests.
- Reducing number of additional monsters that spawn during Betrayal Intervention encounters. Monsters will respawn less frequently as well.
- Fixing various issues where Niko would not show up in areas for some players, preventing Sulphite from being spawned.
- Increasing the amount of Mastermind Intelligence gained at the completion of a Safehouse.
- Adjusting Intelligence gain values from Betrayal encounters.
- Further changes to address lag and client freezes during Intervention encounters.
- Adding a “release” option that players can select if they don’t want to make a choice at the completion of a Betrayal encounter.
- Intervention targets will now deal less damage for a short duration after they have spawned. This is intended to give players more time to react and to re-position as needed.
- Areas prior to Maps will only spawn a single Betrayal encounter. Map areas will continue to spawn three encounters. While we understand that players have been able to somewhat deterministically find Betrayal encounters by repeatedly creating new instances of areas such as The Quarry or The Foothills, we don’t want this to be the correct answer. It is both bad for server load and not exactly the intended avenue to gather Intelligence. We are adjusting Intelligence-gain values towards Safehouse unlocks and Mastermind unlocks which should give players quicker access to these without having to resort to creating the same area repeatedly.
- Transportation encounters require you to be closer to them before they’ll begin. Previously, they began when you were further away than felt correct.
- Fixing a bug where Intervention encounters could not occur if you had already completed another Job in the same area.
- Fixing a bug where Sulphite Veins in an area affected by the Monstrous Treasure prophecy would not give any Sulphite.
- Fixing a bug where various Sextant modifiers spawned their monsters or barrels inside of Fragmented Memories.
- Adding the ability to toggle visibility of map modifiers on or off.
Source: Path of Exile Site