Our introduction to Grinding Gear Games' three-man envoy had a tinge of Flight of the Conchords humbleness to it--GGG is the second-largest game developer in New Zealand, but their development team totals just 16 (plus additional contractors). Path of Exile is the studio's first game; a labor since late 2006, originating from their raw appreciation of the genre POE currency trade .
“We've been playing dungeon crawlers for a long time. We've tried to take our favorite parts of action RPGs and improve upon them,” said Chris Wilson, founder of Grinding Gear. “We've designed the game that we would want to play ourselves, and we know hardcore Diablo, Titan Quest and Dungeon Siege players will find the style familiar and addictive,“ Wilson said.
Some basics up front: Path of Exile will be completely free to play (all character classes, quests, chapters, abilities and items are available to everyone). The lads at Grinding Gear say they're committed to only charging for content that alters aesthetics--pretty armor, special particle effects like a dragon head-shaped fireball animation, or changing your character's name. That won't include any items or profile buffs that boost your rate of experience earning, which Grinding doesn't plan to put up for sale. “Some of the free-to-play games out there aren't actually free to play the way you want to--they're free to tolerate," said Wilson. "You can tell some of the games definitely want you pay money at regular intervals, and they'll punish you by having long grinds that you could be skipping--we just skip that entirely by not having the ability to buy those things. You can dress up your character if you'd like to. The other thing is that our game is made by western developers for a western market--hopefully that counts for something.”
There'll be six character classes, all of which (like existing dungeon crawlers) are independent damage-dealers--Exile won't include specialized support classes like a priest. The Marauder and Ranger are the two that've been revealed so far: the former is a tank-melee class (smartly, but hopefully not to buy POE divine orbs the aid of griefers, character models can't pass through each other in Exile, meaning you can use a Marauder to block a doorway while a ranged character tosses projectiles from a safe distance), the latter approximates Diablo's Rogue.
