Two years of early access ends on December 11, and the $30 entry fee ends with it. Grinding Gear Games used Opening Night Live to finally date Path of Exile 2’s 1.0 release, and the announcement came bundled with the two things the community has been asking about longest.
The first is the Duelist. Swords are coming to Wraeclast, and the 1.0 trailer showed several sword skills including a reworked version of Cyclone. Per the character backstory GGG shared, the Duelist was raised as an orphan in the slums, trained for the Grand Arena, then fled during the Fall of Oriath and now fights for people who cannot defend themselves. The second is the campaign itself: 1.0 adds the final two Acts, completing a story that has been arriving in pieces since December 2024.
The business change is the bigger deal for anyone still on the fence. Path of Exile 2 has been sold as a paid early access product, and on December 11 it becomes permanently free to play across PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, funded through cosmetic microtransactions exactly like the original Path of Exile has been since 2013. New and existing players can register at pathofexile2.com for launch milestone rewards, including cosmetic effects and a pet that unlock as more accounts sign up.
GGG has not published a full patch note for 1.0 yet, and multiple outlets covering the reveal describe it as the largest update the game has received. The studio has also indicated it plans to run a shorter league focused on class balance before 1.0 arrives, which is the sensible move given it is dropping a brand new weapon type and class into an economy two weeks before the holidays.
We covered Jonathan Rogers saying back in May that the 1.0 date would be set by readiness rather than by what else was launching, pushing back on community theories that GGG would dodge the crowded second half of 2026. A mid-December launch into the busiest retail window of the year, in the same quarter as a stack of Gamescom-dated releases, is about as literal a proof of that statement as you could ask for. GGG has also framed December as the start of a long support cycle rather than a finish line, with support continuing well into 2027.
For PC players specifically, free to play plus a completed campaign is the combination that turns a lot of lapsed early access buyers back into active ones, and it lands at a moment when almost nobody is upgrading hardware. Path of Exile 2 has always been generous with what it will run on compared to its visual fidelity, and an ARPG that does not demand a new GPU is well positioned for this particular winter.
Discussion
Join Discussion →No replies yet. Be the first to reply on the forum.