It has been a strange few years for Path of Exile. Ever since Grinding Gear Games announced Path of Exile 2, fans of the original have watched the release schedule wobble, Atlas expansions dry up and, at one point, the game go almost a year without a new league.
Things have been changing, though, and Path of Exile creator Dreamcore believes the first game is about to enter another golden age. With patch 3.30 launching next month and GGG's own developers talking up the game's future, there is a pretty convincing case to be made.
3.30 Arrives Right After ExileCon
GGG has already locked in the timeline for the next expansion. Patch 3.30 will be revealed at ExileCon 2026 and launches one week later, on November 13.
The ExileCon livestream kicks off on November 6 at 12:30 p.m. PST, with the convention itself taking place in Auckland, New Zealand on November 7 and 8 local time. The current Curse of the Allflame league ends at 1:00 p.m. PST on November 9, so anyone still chasing challenges has a little under two weeks left.
The same event will also cover Path of Exile 2, which leaves Early Access and goes free-to-play with its 1.0 release on December 11. That release has a lot to do with why the future looks good for the first game.
More Developers Are Coming To PoE1
The biggest reason for optimism comes from GGG itself. In an interview with creator Crouching Tuna at Gamescom, game director Jonathan Rogers said the studio is not scaling down once the Path of Exile 2 campaign is finished. Instead, the developers who have been building that campaign will move onto endgame work for PoE2 or onto the original game, and the PoE1 team is expected to grow.
That is a big deal. GGG has only had a dedicated PoE1 team since around patch 3.27, and before that, developers were jumping between both games to get each release out the door. A larger team should mean steadier releases and bigger updates.
3.30 Is Shaping Up To Be An Endgame Shakeup
We also have a decent idea of what 3.30 is going for. In an interview with creator Zizaran, GGG developer Octavian described the update as a major rework of the endgame.
"330 is planned to be a extreme shakeup of the endgame," Octavian said. "We plan to get to as many existing league mechanics as possible and give them all something new, something interesting, something different from before because one of the problems that we see is that the endgame has just gotten stale."
Octavian pointed to scarabs and strategies that have barely changed in years as examples. Fellow developer Andrew added that the changes will not just be limited to maps, hinting that bosses and other content outside of maps will be touched as well.
That lines up with what PoE1 game director Mark Roberts said back when patch 3.26 brought Zana back. He described that update as the first part of a new endgame story arc, and suggested the next endgame update could be "a bit more transformative." Dreamcore believes all of this points toward a return to regular Atlas expansions, the same pattern that defined the game's best run between patches 3.10 and 3.17.
What About A Path Of Exile 1 Patch 4.0?
Dreamcore also floated the idea of a patch 4.0 for the original game. Path of Exile 2 started life as a "4.0" update before it grew into its own game, and several of its ideas have already trickled back into PoE1 in different forms, like Bloodline classes and the socket color rework in 3.29.
The one feature he considers essential for any 4.0 is WASD movement. GGG has said it wants to bring WASD controls to PoE1, but doing that means porting a huge library of microtransaction effects first. Because of that, Dreamcore thinks a 4.0 announcement would be for a more distant update, possibly around the end of 2027, if it happens at all.
The Timing Is Not Ideal
There is one obvious problem. 3.30 is launching in an incredibly crowded window, with World of Warcraft: Forever launching on November 4 and other giant releases nearby. Some players on GGG's own forums have even joked that the studio should skip the league entirely.
Dreamcore's point is that the real payoff comes after 3.30, once the bigger team is in place. If you are planning to jump into Path of Exile 2 first, GGG is still running its full release registration rewards until December 11, and the Early Access supporter packs are leaving soon.
Do you think Path of Exile 1 is about to enter another golden age, or has Path of Exile 2 taken over for good?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.