In a climate in which most video game studios are struggling to keep just the one live service game alive, New Zealand-based Grinding Gear Games is in the enviable position of actually thriving while sustaining two online-only action RPGs in Path of Exile and Path of Exile 2. In light of the latter ending its nearly two years long Early Access period and gearing up for a 1.0 release this winter, as announced during Opening Night Live 2026, during gamescom 2026, I got the chance to try the new Duelist class and ask Path of Exile 2 director Jonathan Rogers some questions after doing so.
To start with some gameplay impressions, the demo of Path of Exile 2 I played thrust me into an arena filled to the brim with chimeras, hounds and other nasty opponents. And even though I was unable to change any of the skills or equipment of the level 50 Duelist I was controlling, I still had more than enough in my arsenal to dispatch everything charging at me with relative ease.
And dispatch them I did, as it took me just under 25 minutes, which was the total time I had available to play, to clear waves of enemies and take down the big bad at the end: Thrax, Cyclops of Trathus. Leaving the demo station, I was left thoroughly impressed with the Duelist class. I’ll still stick to playing a Ranger though, but fans of melee combat have a lot to look forward to here.
After the demo, came a short meeting with Path of Exile 2 director Jonathan Rogers, during which I asked him about how the Duelist class has changed in-between the two Path of Exile games, why December 2026 is the best time for Path of Exile 2 to have its full release and more:
Hello and thank you for having me! So, how is the Duelist class in Path of Exile 2 different from the interpretation in the original Path of Exile?
Jonathan Rogers: Well, the primary difference between the two games is that Path of Exile is a very one-button build kind of game. With Path of Exile 2, we are really trying to…I want Path of Exile 2 to be able to compete with the likes of really good action games. That’s our intention here. So, that means that you have to be able to use many skills together and combos and stuff like that.
Now that Path of Exile 2 is fully launching, to what extent do you consider it to be feature complete, especially as, for example, not all the classes are ready just yet?
Jonathan Rogers: So, we don’t have as many classes as we expected when we first announced the game. But, we still have more classes than most other games have. But, the main thing is that the campaign is complete and the endgame is good. Being down a class or two is not really the biggest deal, so I’m not too worried about that. So, yeah, I would definitely consider Path of Exile 2 1.0 to be the full package, absolutely. Honestly, it’s a better package than a lot of games are when they get into 1.0 – there’s a lot here.
What would you say is the biggest lesson learned from Path of Exile 2’s Early Access period?
Jonathan Rogers: So, when we launched Path of Exile 2, quite honestly, we thought, “it’ll be easy”, right? Let’s go to Early Access – we know exactly what we’re doing, we were making parts of Path of Exile for so long, it’s fine! And, honestly, we got completely humbled by it because it was way harder to get Path of Exile 2 into a good state than we expected.
The game being different changed so many more things about it than what we thought, and, we really didn’t get the endgame until a good position until the most recent patch we had. But, we were determined: we were going to remain in Early Access until the point where the players generally think that Path of Exile 2 is very good.
We’ve got a blueprint for how to make a new area and how to make the end game…we know all that stuff now, so that means we’re going into 1.0. We feel very confident that we can make something that’s going to be sustainable and it’s going to last a decade or more, just like Path of Exile has.
Besides the players thinking that Path of Exile 2 is very good, were there other targets that you and the team wanted to hit before going into 1.0?
Jonathan Rogers: Number one: the endgame has to be good and it has to be something people want to replay multiple times. Number two: build diversity has to be very high. We want to be in a position where we don’t just have, you know, two dominant builds that everyone plays. Another thing, as well, is that we had to get in a good position as far as balance is concerned.
I don’t think we’re even quite there yet for some of that stuff, but it’s getting better every time. Every launch that we do, the balance gets more in-line with what we want. It’s tricky cause we have to work out things that might seem stupid, like how much life should a boss have? And, you’d think we’d know from developing Path of Exile, but Path of Exile 2 ended up being so different that it doesn’t learn like that. So, we had to relearn all the lessons we learned about balancing. I feel like a lot of the time I’m relearning lessons that I remember learning in the past.
On the notion of Path of Exile 2 being good: how can you really tell that the game is actually good? Is player feedback the only thing that matters in this sense?
Jonathan Rogers: So, mostly what I care about is my own opinion about the game. That being said, when people are negative about the game, what I have to do is try to find a way to get their opinion. The way that I do that is I have to try to play the game from their perspective and see if I can reproduce what sucks.
If I can reproduce what sucks, then I can figure out how to make it better, right? But, you have to feel the badness yourself because, if you just make a change based on what someone says and you’ve never failed it yourself, you don’t really have a core understanding of what it is that is bad.
Do you have an example of something that player feedback was negative about and that you had to experience yourself in order to make things better?
Jonathan Rogers: When we released the Huntress, there was a lot of negativity around the class. Part of the reason for it is because I had a big blind spot when I was playing it, because I was playing parry builds and really enjoying that. However, a lot of other players don’t like to parry, for whatever reason.
So, if you didn’t parry, the class sucked badly. And the reason why it did was because I just never played it like that. Like, I was assuming that people are going to parry. They didn’t and, therefore, the class sucked. So, I had to consciously decide to unbind parry and experience how the class is without it. But, yeah, it was a total blind spot and sometimes that just happens.
What does Path of Exile 2 going into 1.0 mean for the first Path of Exile? Will you continue to support both games?
Jonathan Rogers: Yeah, of course! So, Path of Exile still gets more players than many AAA games get at their launches. We’d be absolutely insane to kill Path of Exile. We’re getting like 300K concurrent users every time we do a launch. So, right now, Path of Exile is not really growing, but it’s not shrinking either. At this point, we’re effectively just making content for this existing, quite large, player base and we’ll continue to support them for as long as they’re around. This means we’re effectively a studio, now, that supports two live service games: one of which is large and the other one is very large.
Do you think people will migrate from Path of Exile to Path of Exile 2 now that the latter is fully releasing?
Jonathan Rogers: I don’t know about that. There are some players who just don’t like Path of Exile 2 for whatever reason, right? Like, they prefer Path of Exile. And then there are people who have been playing for the last 10 years and that’s the game they want to continue to play, you know what I mean? And that’s fine. That’s absolutely fine!
Similarly, what kind of expectations do you have from the playerbases on console when it comes to picking up Path of Exile 2 when it becomes available over there too?
Jonathan Rogers: I’m honestly not sure. During Early Access, the amount of players on console was definitely not as high as on PC, for sure. The thing I would say about that, though, is that Early Access is not well accepted on console at this point. So, my hope is that, for 1.0, adoption is better. The other thing that’s interesting, weirdly enough, is that we’re releasing pretty much uncontested. No one else is releasing in November because of GTA and then three weeks later we’re coming out. So, by then, people might be looking for a free-to-play game after they’ve spent all their money on GTA! [laughs]
I suppose the only downside to releasing in December is that Path of Exile 2 will unfortunately not be eligible to be nominated for this year’s Game Awards. Was that something you considered at all when setting the date?
Jonathan Rogers: I don’t really care about that stuff. At the end of the day, it’s the players that matter. My only parameter [for success] is the number of concurrent users. That’s what I care about. Our entire company’s history, this is the metric that we ever cared about. All of the other stuff is just noise.
To wrap things up, what’s one thing about Path of Exile 2 you’re most proud of?
Jonathan Rogers: I love the bosses – they’re so, so cool! I don’t think there’s anyone else in the industry delivering bosses like we are.
