PoE 1 Surpasses PoE 2 in Player Count

Path of Exile’s Legacy of Phrecia event brought a record number of players back, considering it was only an event and not a new league. It brought so many players back that it toppled Path of Exile 2’s concurrent players on Steam at launch. 

Path of Exile peaked at 91,948 concurrent players on Legacy of Phrecia’s event launch, while Path of Exile 2 had 80,879 concurrent players at that time. PoE 2’s concurrent count didn’t suffer at all with the PoE Legacy of Phrecia event, so where did these players come from?

While PoE 1 might never break PoE 2’s peak, it is still shocking that PoE 1 managed to overtake PoE 2’s concurrent players, even for a short time. There are many reasons for that, and we’ll surely see something like this happening in the future again. 

Path of Exile 1’s Longest Content Drought

Path of Exile has consistently released massive content updates as new leagues around four times a year. With their Path of Exile 2 early access nearing its release, they had to use their PoE 1 team to work on PoE 2 to make the early access launch run smoother. 

This is the first delay for patch 3.26, which would be the league after Settlers of Kalguur. After the holidays, they addressed a few more issues they needed to correct in PoE 2 and announced they’ll still be using the PoE 1 team to work on PoE 2 until patch 0.2.0 arrives.

This angered most PoE 1 players because Grinding Gear Games has always been consistent and transparent with the community, and this was the first time they let anybody down in a massive way. 

It has been seven months since Settlers of Kalguur was released, and no new league was in sight. At this point, players weren’t expecting 3.26 to come soon since they knew no one was working on PoE 1 until PoE 2’s 0.2.0 patch went live. 

It has been the longest PoE drought, and players are starved. A few days after the announcement, they released the Legacy of Phrecia event tease with a post about what will come. 

To appease the players, they will release a 1-month event that completely shatters all the current classes and replaces them with new game-changing ascendancies. 

All 19 ascendancies were completely reworked, which came out of nowhere. Basically, the team has been working on these experimental designs and scrapped the old ones.

Why Path of Exile 1 Didn’t Reduce Path of Exile 2’s Concurrent Players

While both games might be in the same genre and have the same unique systems, they are still miles apart. Path of Exile 1 has decades of updates and quality-of-life upgrades that a new title couldn’t catch up to regarding content depth in such a short span.

No ARPG comes close to Path of Exile’s depth and level design, but Path of Exile 2 was still the closest to it. It is confusing why PoE 2’s endgame fell flat since they had much of the same data from the first title to determine what players wanted.

This caused discord among players as most PoE 1 players loathed PoE 2’s endgame. While they are hopeful that things will improve and PoE 2 has a lot of potential, it doesn’t give the same energy PoE 1 gives players when running endgame content.

Path of Exile 2 had a staggering number of players, reaching 578,562 concurrent players at one point. However, that figure crashed to 50,000 to 150,000 in the last month alone. While the dip in players is normal for any game, Path of Exile is a different breed of game.

One of Path of Exile’s most impressive feat is its ability to retain players for a significantly longer time than other games. Settlers of Kalguur reached 228,398 concurrent players on July 1, 2024, PoE 1’s current all-time peak. At the end of July 2024, it reached 163,118 concurrent players. While other leagues might not have the same retention, it was still close.

PoE 2 had amazing retention but was not even close in comparison to PoE 1. However, it is hard to compare since PoE 2 had a continuous influx of players throughout the first month of early access, being a new game. It had a lot of new players, especially newcomers to the ARPG genre. This should’ve helped the retention numbers, but they still fell short compared to PoE 1.

It looks clear as day that a big group of players who loved PoE1 returned for the event, but most of them weren’t a fan of PoE 2’s endgame. Popular content creators like Zizaran, Ben, Kripparian, Mathil1, and others have voiced their concerns about PoE 2’s endgame, and most agree that PoE 1 is currently way better.

However, many players still love PoE 2, and it’ll be interesting to see if its content can capture the love of all PoE 1 veterans once again. From day one, they clearly want their players to keep switching between PoE1 and PoE2 seasons so they don’t run out of content. Currently, they are still ways away from that.