[2023] Happy New Year! A 2022 Retrospective

It's hard to believe that we've already made it to the end of 2022! As we start to welcome in the new year, we wanted to take a moment to look back on the year that was.

In 2022:

• We launched four expansions: Siege of the Atlas, Sentinel, Lake of Kalandra and The Forbidden Sanctum.


• We broke our concurrent player record this year with 270,260 players playing simultaneously on the main realm!


• Zana disappeared, just in time for four Eldritch Horrors to attack.


• We overhauled the Atlas, transforming it from four separate regions to one and by doing so, added yet another huge passive tree to Path of Exile.


• We added the Gem and Flask Stash Tabs to the store, which introduced stash affinities for Gems and Flasks.


• We added Archnemesis to the game.


• We removed Archnemesis from the game.


• We introduced the Kirac Vault Pass, a Battle Pass-like system that awards exclusive unique item skins.


• We hosted a thrilling Boss Kill Event for Siege of the Atlas, with the top prize being claimed by none other than Ben.


• We hosted another Boss Kill Event in Sentinel, with the top prize being claimed again by Ben.


• We hosted a third Boss Kill Event in Lake of Kalandra. You can probably guess who claimed the top prize. (Spoiler: It was Ben)


• We introduced Uber versions of new and old bosses, including the infamous Uber Uber Elder.


• We made it so you could have multiple influences on a map.


• We updated our Challenge Rewards system to give cooler rewards that upgrade when you complete more challenges.


• We expanded our office onto two more floors of the building we're in.


• We fixed the mangled text bug, which had been in the game since 2016!


• We added official controller support for PC.


• We announced Exilecon 2023, which will be held from July 29-30 in Auckland, New Zealand! We're so excited for this, as we get to show off more of what we've been working on for Path of Exile 2 and Mobile!


• We revealed Kalandra, the mysterious entity behind the Mirror of Kalandra.


• We introduced Atlas Memories, a new type of endgame item that lets you explore parts of the Atlas with juiced up encounters and rewards.


• We brought back the Trialmaster fight, letting you challenge him for his Unique rewards.


• We added foil versions of pinnacle boss Unique Items.


• We rebalanced and overhauled over 100 Unique Items.


• We buffed Cleave's radius by +2.


• We banished the bandit Beyond demons and replaced them with the demonic horrors from Scourge.


• We introduced lifeforce to Harvest, making its crafts tradable.


• We caused chaos in the Standard economy by subtly changing what Divine Orbs and Exalted Orbs are valued at.


• We overhauled the Trickster Ascendancy, giving it a bunch of new toys.


• We introduced 8 new Skill and Support gems and 8 new Vaal Skills, including Vaal Cleave. Did we mention that Cleave's radius was buffed by +2? This was very important.


• We introduced the Forbidden Sanctum, our take on a roguelike game mode within Path of Exile.


• We overhauled a plethora of Endgame Unique Weapons, including fan-favourites like Starforge and Atziri's Disfavour.


• We officially released Ruthless, a new game mode in Path of Exile that makes the game more difficult by limiting player power through extreme item scarcity.


• We revived our Build of the Week series.


• We added 49 Unique Items to the game, 13 of them designed by winners of our Boss Kill Competitions (and 5 of them designed by Ben…)


• The uniques the winners designed are:
  
  
  • The Burden of Truth (Ben)
  
  
  • Echoes of Creation (Ben)
  
  
  • Call of the Void (Ben)
  
  
  • Progenesis (Ben)
  
  
  • Dawnstrider (Ben)
  
  
  • The Eternal Struggle (Waggle)
  
  
  • Impossible Escape (Steelmage)
  
  
  • Oriath's End (Steelmage)
  
  
  • Soul Ascension (Zizaran)
  
  
  • Rational Doctrine (rawlnx)
  
  
  • Nimis (Jungroan)
  
  
  • Entropic Devastation (GucciPradas)
  
  
  • Annihilation's Approach (imexile)
  
  
  
  




• We introduced 18 new currency items, including the coveted Recombinators that were introduced in the Sentinel Expansion. A lot of these are still floating around on Standard!


• We posted roughly 2128 lines of patch notes for PC and 1861 lines of patch notes for Console.


• We sold 212587 wetas this year!

Thank you so much for your support in 2022. We look forward to another amazing year for Path of Exile!