The pre-sales of Path of Exile 2 are reportedly in full swing. Now the head of the game explains how many players will fit on the server.
Why will there be a rush? The pre-sale of Path of Exile 2 is already in full swing. On Friday, December 6, 2024, the game will launch at 8:00 PM on all platforms in Early Access. Path of Exile 2 is highly anticipated by fans. On Steam, the game is already ranked 3rd among the best-selling games days before its actual release (via SteamDB).
Recent videos – like the nearly 80-minute YouTube video on endgame content with over 3 million views and the gameplay trailer on YouTube with 2.6 million views – reflect the great interest from players.
Developers have it easier, as they can see how many copies of the game have already been sold. The chief developer of the hack and slash adventure now gives a hint about how many may actually be.
Here you can see the cinematic intro of the game:
5 times as many players as Path of Exile
How many players are expected? Game Director Jonathan Rogers mentioned in an interview (via YouTube) that the developers discussed the game’s capacity with service providers. For the launch of Path of Exile 2, the team is planning for one million instances.
An instance is a map that currently exists on the server. In Path of Exile, players could also keep multiple instances active by continuously switching between them. Whether this will work in Path of Exile 2 is still uncertain.
In the interview, Rogers explained that they would expect one million players. That would be about 5 times as many as Path of Exile had at its all-time peak in July 2024 on Steam. At that time, almost 230,000 players were online simultaneously in PoE (via SteamDB).
The developers can already see from the pre-orders how many potential players will try their game over the weekend. Even though the pre-sale on PS5 only starts 24 hours before the release, the team surely already has a good picture of what awaits them at the EA launch.
What if there are more players? In case more than one million players are playing simultaneously, the developers have already spoken with their server providers in advance. While only one million players will find a spot on the servers on Friday, the capacity can likely be increased afterward.
In a test, the development team was even able to create 1.6 million instances before reaching the limit. The creators’ goal is to increase this number to 2 million instances before the game launches on Friday.
However, the head emphasizes that 2 million simulated instances do not equate to 2 million real players. If you want to learn more about the Early Access of Path of Exile 2, here is a summary of the important information: Path of Exile 2 – Early Access: All information about launch, preload, and costs for PC and PS5
