Patch 0.11.0 for Path of Exile drops today, and brings with it two new leagues: Anarchy and Onslaught. For the next four months, these leagues will run alongside Standard and Hardcore leagues.

In Anarchy League, you’ll encounter enemy NPCs who are “corrupted exiles” — in other words, they have the powers and abilities of player characters but are controlled by the enemy and, naturally, trying to kill you. Grinding Gear advises that “if you manage to kill one, they drop a lot of items including a magic or above for each equippable slot.”

Meanwhile, Onslaught League is for people who find the existing Hardcore League too easy. Attack, cast and move speeds are all increased, resulting in the deadliest experience yet.

For more information on these leagues and other things coming in the patch, hit up the official announcement. And to learn all about Path of Exile‘s new AU server, why not read our interview with the developers?

With the news that Path of Exile were launching a gateway to bring down the lag for players in Australia and New Zealand, we called Grinding Gear Games’ Chris Wilson to get the low-down on where the F2P-ARPG is at, why now is the right time for a low-ping gateway, and their plans for the future.

Grinding Gear Games have announced that they are testing an Australia/New Zealand gateway for Path of Exile, to give players much better ping in their free-to-play (and very popular) ARPG.

“We also have an Australian Path of Exile gateway (connected to the rest of the worldwide realm) in testing and will probably turn it on for public testing next week as well,” writes executive producer Chris Wilson on the Path of Exile forums.

“This will hopefully also offer much better performance for New Zealand.”

Source: Thanks, Dave

In real life, I’m a planner. I think through everything, weighing up the pros and cons of any given situation before committing myself. I’m not exactly spontaneous, if you get my drift — I’m more a “measure seventeen times, cut once” kind of person.

When it comes to games, however, I’m far more likely to adopt a “suck it and see” kind of mentality, jumping in with both feet, doing what seems fun and damning the consequences. Sometimes this works well — there is fun to be had with randomised characters that force you to play differently from how you normally would, and there are rarely any game breaking problems by casually misusing a couple of stat or skill points in most RPGs.

After spending a week or so with the beta of Grinding Gear Games action RPG Path of Exile however, my opinion of taking a haphazard approach to character design has changed rather drastically.

Since launching Path of Exile’s open beta in January, Grinding Gears has attracted more than two million player registrations.

In before all the usual “yeah but how many are active and “yeah but it’s free-to-play” to remind you, gently, that Path of Exile was put together by a brave team of Kiwi indies, who seem both gratified and surprised by its success.

“We’re really pleased with Path of Exile’s reception It blew our expectations out of the water and continues to grow every day,” producer Chris Wilson said. “The continued feedback and support from our fans has been great. We expect to add a lot of new content and features during the open beta period as we approach full release later this year.”

Also: it’s actually pretty sweet. Check it out for yourself.

Source: PC Gamer

Path of Exile is, as you know, a very impressive ARPG from New Zealand developers Grinding Gear Games. But did you know Path of Exile also holds race events, where players can compete in leagues either on their own or as a team, to see who can get the furthest in the game or score the most points for specific objectives?

Some of these races last just for an hour, while some can go as long as a week — and at the end, winners can expect to be rewarded with sweet, sweet prizes.

The first of these events to take place during the beta is about to kick off in just ten hours, and it’ll be an hour-long race, and there are heaps of prizes on offer. The player with the most experience overall can win a prize, as can the player with the most experience by class, as well as quest prizes and full-clear prizes for completely clearing specific areas.

If you’d like to take part, make a new character (make sure you assign it to the right league when asked) and get ready to play. Character creation for these event leagues opens up about 30 minutes prior to start time. Click here for more info on how it all works.

If you haven’t got Path of Exile installed, I’ll bet you can grab it from our file library and have it going before the race begins.

What if I told you that right now, you could be playing an action-RPG with the quality of Diablo, completely free of charge? Well, you can: Path of Exile, an online action RPG from New Zealand’s Grinding Gear Games, just entered open beta. I spend the better part of this weekend playing to see how it’s shaping, looking at whether it’s worth spending your time on.

And did I mention it’s free?

UPDATE: Cas has just replaced the old file with a new one compressed down to 2GB instead of 5GB. The links below now go to this new file!

Now that our overnight download of Path of Exile‘s open beta client has finally finished, our main man Cas has whacked it up on the File Library for you all to download and save yourself a) 5GB of quota, and b) from having to thrash Grinding Gears’ servers over and over like everybody else.

So! Click here to download the Path of Exile open beta client from our file library. Enjoy!

“What the hell is Path of Exile,” you mutter? Watch this trailer and be enlightened (then, come back here and download it).

Path of Exile is New Zealand’s answer to Diablo — a free-to-play online ARPG built from the ground-up by hardcore Diablo fans who just wanted to make the perfect monster-killing loot machine. And as of right now, the open beta has kicked off and you can get in on the ground floor.

As of right now, their patching servers are under extreme load as every man and his dog tries to update the game, so please be patient and hit up the official site to log in and download your client.

If you’re a previous Path of Exile player, please note that all your characters have been reset back to level 1. You may also want to familiarise yourself with the full patch notes, which can be found here.

Check out the open beta trailer to see why Path of Exile deserves your attention, or read our massive interview to get a feel for why these guys are throwing down the gauntlet to Blizzard and Runic.

New Zealand-developed ARPG Path of Exile has released a new trailer to remind everybody that its open beta begins on January 23. Handily, it also serves as a very nice showcase of exactly why Path of Exile is looking amazing — watch the trailer below and tell me it doesn’t get your Diablo senses tingling.

Get yourself over to the official website for more on the game and info on exactly when it all kicks off.

If you’ve been itching to play the New Zealand-developed ARPG Path of Exile, you only need wait 12 more days. Path of Exile has just announced that they’ll be heading into open beta on January 23.

The final character wipe, and deployment of patch 0.10.00 (including Act III) will occur then, also. Here at games.on.net we called Path of Exile “one of the most promising Action RPGs around”, so if Diablo and Torchlight aren’t cutting it for you, then head over to the official site come the 23rd.

When we spoke to Path of Exile‘s Chris Wilson in our massive interview, he explained they were expecting to leave beta within 3-6 months and head out to a final launch. The game will launch free-to-play, supported by a microtransaction shop.

The open beta phase of New Zealand-developed Path of Exile has been delayed until next year, reveals a post on the official forums.

“A few months ago, we estimated that we would enter Open Beta in December 2012. Although we believe that we can have the build ready by then, we’ve decided that it’s too dangerous to launch the Open Beta over the Christmas period and Southern Hemisphere summer holidays when many of our staff will be away,” writes Lead Designer Chris Wilson.

“We have therefore decided to enter Open Beta on January 23, 2013, US time. The final character wipe and deployment of patch 0.10.0 (including Act Three) will occur then.”

What should you do while waiting? “Over Christmas we’ll be ramping up the number of events that we run for the community in preparation for the quantity we plan to run during Open Beta,” says Chris. “If you enjoy participating in these events, you should find the schedule rewarding.”

For more on Path of Exile, check out our massive interview with Chris.

Source: Ausgamers