Video Games

Path of Exile 2 warns players of login queues as it passes a million pre-orders

Fans continue to upstage the developer’s plans

Marco Wutz

Grinding Gear Games

The Early Access release of Path of Exile 2 is coming up and developer Grinding Gear Games announced that the game surpassed one million pre-orders ahead of its launch – a success to be sure, but one that comes with some drawbacks for the studio and players both: It’s looking like it’ll be a very busy release weekend. 

In the message announcing the fantastic sales milestone, Grinding Gear Games warned users that they may have to deal with waiting times when attempting to log into the hack ‘n slash over launch weekend. 

“We’ve just reached 1 million Early Access redemptions,” the studio stated. “The support you have all shown for Path of Exile 2 Early Access is far beyond anything we could have ever predicted. However we want to be upfront with you all and let you know there may very well be queues over the weekend.”

Path of Exile 2’s release date has already been pushed to December 6, 2024, from an earlier date due to the developer having to put more work into its server infrastructure – but with the interest from the gaming community yet again outpacing Grind Gear Games’ expectations, it looks like it’ll be a straining couple of days for the team and the hardware.

Jonathan Rodgers, the game director, added in a video message that the team “really didn’t expect to have a million people online at the same time.” He explained that more capacity is already ordered and will come online soon after launch, but shared his concerns about the studio’s backend services to handle the potential onslaught of players.

“We quite frankly don’t know what our backend services are going to be able to handle as we go above a million users. We are really not sure what kinds of limits we might hit,” he said.

Several hours ahead of release, thousands of players are already waiting on the login screen for the moment the servers will go online – it’s like the good old days of camping outside a store to grab a game copy during a midnight release, only far more comfortable.

Path of Exile 2 is coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S as an Early Access title on December 6, 2024.

Published
Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg

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