New Path Of Exile Expansion War For The Atlas Releases Quickly For PC And Xbox One

Path of Exile, the free-to-play on-line action RPG (and our 2013 PC game from the year winner) continues to be going strong--following the Fall of Oriath expansion earlier this year, there's currently a further expansion around the way. Known as War for the Atlas, the focus this time is on expanding the end-game encounter for longtime players. The developers dropped by the GameSpot office earlier this week to show off a speedy preview of a few of the new regions and functions you'll come across inside the expansion, which you'll be able to check out within the video above.

"In this expansion, a great deal of the new content material is for the existing players, mainly because that's its distinct slant," explained Chris Wilson, managing director at Path of Exile developer Grinding Gear Games. "However, the content material that does impact low-level layers are four new ability gems...all four with the new talent gems we're adding are necromancy-themed, but created so it is possible to use them on other characters also. They don't need to be utilized by summoners."

In addition, there will also be six new help gems, that Wilson says "are developed to change how virtually each ability inside the game operates. And that delivers much more create customization and stuff for new players to experiment with." As for anything else the expansion will add, here's a very short rundown:

A story where you select to fight against the forces of either The Elder or The Shaper
32 new randomized maps inside the end-game
New end-game gear: Shaped products and Elder Products
50 new Unique things.
The Abyss Challenge League: An area to battle a brand new class of foe that seems even though playing through the game--they will reward Abyss Jewels

"The challenge league that we've added can also be obtainable throughout the entire game, Wilson stated. "It's not only accessible within the end-game. The way challenge leagues work, it is like the chance for a fresh begin, basically a new server. And we encourage every person to begin a brand new character within the challenge league."

The War for the Atlas is coming to Xbox One and PC on December 8, and like other Path of Exile content material, it is free-to-play. For European players who've wanted to buy cheap Path of Exile Items have into the game in their native language, this expansion will also introduce German, French, and Spanish language selections for the game.

The developers also passed along additional stats for the game such as:

A "58% boost in hours played in 2017 over 2016"
"The typical Path of Exile play session is 5 hours long"
"3.5 million players played Path of Exile's most recent expansion: The Fall of Oriath"

And as for how lengthy it took to bring place this expansion with each other: "This expansion here was made in 13 weeks," Wilson mentioned, "and it is bigger than the initial game, which took us years. The first seven years of Path of Exile's improvement was using a tiny team, throwing our life savings into it, learning how to make games. And we've created, in 13 weeks, substantially more content material at a a great deal greater quality level, that is sort of scary."