Grinding Gear Games had plenty of juicy details for its Path of Exile franchise during this year’s ExileCon. The only IP so far from the New Zealand-based company since its formation in 2006, the game remains with strong numbers and this kept the hype for Path of Exile 2 through the roof since it was announced in 2019. Now the cat is out of the bag, with the Path of Exile 2 closed beta date announcement and other major details surrounding this new game.

The Path of Exile 2 closed beta start is slated for June 7, 2024, which means that fans still have close to a year of waiting to try the online hack and slash RPG. However, there are some great news coming with this announcement that are likely to please everyone.

There’s also a new Path of Exile 2 gameplay trailer released (trailer 3):

The first big reveal is that the Path of Exile 2 closed beta isn’t just going to provide a small glimpse on what is expected to be a game filled to the brim with exciting content; contrary to the videogame industry’s standards that often take a brief slice of a game to whet the appetite of gamers, Grinding Gear Games is sparing no efforts and is going to offer the full Path of Exile 2 game to try during the closed beta. The complete schedule for this beta wasn’t yet revealed, so naturally there may be time constraints preventing players from exploring the entirety of the content available, but we know that it should run for the duration of a normal League. Here are director Jonathan Rogers’ words confirming this to IGN:

It won’t just be like one act or something like that. It’ll be the whole game and we’re going to run it for as long as we would run a league at least, so months, so that we know for sure like what the economy looks like, what everything looks like once it actually shakes out. ‘Cause it does actually take quite a while for people to kind of realize what the most efficient things are, what they’re supposed to be doing.

But there’s another very important piece of information that is bound to make Path of Exile fans burst with joy – Path of Exile 2 is now a full, standalone game. When development started, the plan was to make it a massive expansion and to some extent a revamp of the original game. As both ambition and development grew in scope, Grinding Gear Games had to reconsider the choice and decided to turn Path of Exile 2 into a full-fledged game, supported by a different team and running side-by-side with Path of Exile. As director Jonathan Rogers said:

[We] would essentially be getting rid of a game people love for no real reason.

Path of Exile and Path of Exile 2 will be a shared platform, which means that any microtransactions you have purchased or purchase for one game will work on the other one. There are some exceptions to this rule, however, as some items available in the sequel may not appear in the original game due to the non-existing mechanics.

And now for a few numbers. Path of Exile 2 is going to take players across 100 environments, fight 600 monsters and 100 bosses, unlock 1500 passive skills and 240 active skills, discover 36 Ascendancy classes, and much more. The anticipated RPG is in development for PC, macOS, Xbox Series X, and PlayStation 5, and there’s also a Path of Exile Mobile game under development.