Grinding Gear Games has revealed new information about the next expansion coming to Path of Exile. Called “Echoes of the Atlas”, the expansion is expected to be released on Friday, January 15th. The release of Echoes of the Atlas comes nearly a month after its original planned date. GGG developers felt that sending out the expansion near the release of Cyberpunk 2077 would not be a wise plan.
The expansion announcement comes with a brand new trailer, a content reveal trailer, and an overview of some of the new features coming to PoE players.
- specialize each region of the Atlas with its own passive tree
- craft Watchstones to refine rewards
- select up to 10 map bosses to face simultaneously
- challenge the pinnacle boss: The Maven
- play through 11 new maps
- take part in the Ritual League
- check out the rebalanced Ascendancy class
- experience the rework of the Deadeye, Inquisitor, and Elementalist
Learn more about Echoes of the Atlas on the Path of Exile official site.
As for PoE2, PC Gamer spoke with Grinding Gear’s Chris Wilson who had this to say about the planned game and how COVID has affected the development of the sequel to the popular ARPG.
I hate to blame COVID for stuff, but that is a big part of it at the moment. We have had difficulty hiring internationally because the borders to New Zealand are closed, so that has curtailed the exponential growth of our asset creation team a little bit. The progress of development hasn’t been as fast as we wanted, and so our goal is to bash as hard as we can during 2021 on Path of Exile 2 stuff and see how much headway we make. Trying to get as much done as possible, and that’ll give us a better idea of a good release date we can estimate, which should be towards the end of the year.
Wilson further indicated that PoE2 will likely not make its debut until sometime in 2022. Check out the full interview at PC Gamer.