I spent around half my weekend playing through the Open Beta weekend for New Zealand-developed game Path of Exile, produced by Grinding Gear Games. And I wasn't the only one: according to Producer Chris Wilson, some 47,000 people downloaded the game and joined in.
Path of Exile is an RPG, similar in style to Diablo, based around completing quests and acquiring skills. Skills are gained through a skill tree when you level up and also via gems that you can slot into equipment, which give you additional powers. I found it darker and grittier than Diablo, and while it takes a short while to get used to, the gameplay is addictive and the amount of rare and specialised equipment makes deciding what to wear important, and maximising skills to suit your playing style is lot of fun.
By any measure, the Open Beta was a success. The servers, which are located in Europe and the US, started out with a limit of 5500 players, which meant queues of up to 90 seconds, but as the weekend progressed, Grinding Gears extended the number of logins to 7400. Wilson says that the peak was 7310 players, at around 8am Sunday morning. I was one of those 7310, and the game didn't lag at all, despite the large number of simultaneous players.
Part of that can be put down to the way that Path of Exile breaks each Act of the game up into sections, and generates maps for each player only as they enter an area. This helps reduce load. Wilson says that Grinding Gears found three issues that it wants to solve, but overall were pleased that the servers were able to handle more than 7000 concurrent users without problems.
At any given time, there were several of Grinding Gears staff on hand answering questions in the global chat. Wilson says that chatting with the players was great, and that Grinding Gear is "taking on board suggestions (there are some diamonds in the rough!)".
I also noticed that several questions were repeated, such as "How do I get my new quest?/where can I see my quests?", "Can I re-do my skills? I stuffed up.", "How do I level up my gems?" and "Why won't my gem level up?". Wilson concurs, "The most important information was hearing what parts of the game the users found confusing. It was really interesting to see the same 10-15 things repeated over and over. Those things will definitely need more communication."
Grinding Gear Games plans to let users donate to be able to access the closed beta, which will continue for the next few months before Path of Exile goes to full Open Beta. Wilson says they will announce details of how to donate and get a closed beta code in the next few days.
Path of Exile is an RPG, similar in style to Diablo, based around completing quests and acquiring skills. Skills are gained through a skill tree when you level up and also via gems that you can slot into equipment, which give you additional powers. I found it darker and grittier than Diablo, and while it takes a short while to get used to, the gameplay is addictive and the amount of rare and specialised equipment makes deciding what to wear important, and maximising skills to suit your playing style is lot of fun.
By any measure, the Open Beta was a success. The servers, which are located in Europe and the US, started out with a limit of 5500 players, which meant queues of up to 90 seconds, but as the weekend progressed, Grinding Gears extended the number of logins to 7400. Wilson says that the peak was 7310 players, at around 8am Sunday morning. I was one of those 7310, and the game didn't lag at all, despite the large number of simultaneous players.
Part of that can be put down to the way that Path of Exile breaks each Act of the game up into sections, and generates maps for each player only as they enter an area. This helps reduce load. Wilson says that Grinding Gears found three issues that it wants to solve, but overall were pleased that the servers were able to handle more than 7000 concurrent users without problems.
At any given time, there were several of Grinding Gears staff on hand answering questions in the global chat. Wilson says that chatting with the players was great, and that Grinding Gear is "taking on board suggestions (there are some diamonds in the rough!)".
I also noticed that several questions were repeated, such as "How do I get my new quest?/where can I see my quests?", "Can I re-do my skills? I stuffed up.", "How do I level up my gems?" and "Why won't my gem level up?". Wilson concurs, "The most important information was hearing what parts of the game the users found confusing. It was really interesting to see the same 10-15 things repeated over and over. Those things will definitely need more communication."
Grinding Gear Games plans to let users donate to be able to access the closed beta, which will continue for the next few months before Path of Exile goes to full Open Beta. Wilson says they will announce details of how to donate and get a closed beta code in the next few days.
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