Since Path of Exile's expansion has been delayed, players are instead getting a month-long event featuring 'whacky ideas that never quite made it off the brainstorm board'

Path of Exile dev Grinding Gear Games bit off more than it could chew when it promised to maintain Path of Exile just like it had always done, even while it was dealing with the Path of Exile 2 launch. But reality is a killjoy and the studio has been reassessing things, resulting in a PoE1 expansion delay, which hasn't gone down well with the original game's stalwarts.

The current plan is to delay PoE 3.26 until after the release of PoE2 0.2.0, but there's no date for it yet. "I'm really sorry for how this went down," said Path of Exile 2 director Jonathan Rogers. "Honestly I should have predicted the fact that taking the PoE team off PoE1 would lead to this outcome."

Unsurprisingly, this announcement led to a lot of drama, with some players going so far as to call GGG's promise to support both games a "scam" just because an expansion has been delayed. But the studio is still planning to give PoE1 some love, in the form of a one-month event. GGG says it will feature "some of our whacky ideas that never quite made it off the brainstorm board".

This will include some weird changes to Ascendency classes—advanced classes with their own skill trees—it says. "What does Path of Exile 1 look like when the 19 Ascendancy classes you know and are familiar with are all of a sudden replaced by a different 19? What does Path of Exile 1 look like when you get to play a Witch and ascend to become a Harbinger? These are the questions our design team asked each other and in this event will provide you with some of our answers."

GGG promises more details about the event soon, and that it's "really looking forward to seeing how the community reacts to some of our more unhinged ideas".

Maintaining the original game's update cadence while GGG was also dealing with PoE2's early access issues was always going to be a tall order, but clearly the studio is still very invested in PoE1. And while it's not the same as an expansion, this event sounds like it could be a good time, keeping players busy while they wait for 3.26.