Celebrating Seven Years Since Open Beta

Thanks for the best ARPG on the market GGG!

I remember playing back when the game was regionlocked on steam, and I had to ask a friend to add it to my account to play, fun times.
The ship character selection, the joys of not zoom-zooming across the map in under a minute, helping Elreon defend a relic or whatever it was, and everything else.

:D

it's cool for you, it's the party

So where to begin, let's start with the journey I've taken to find Path of Exile and the lessons learned along the way. It all started 30 years ago when like so many others I woke up and found under that beautifully lit Christmas tree that Santa had delivered on my wish and swooped down the chimney to bring me my first Nintendo and the evolution of a die-hard gamer was born. As time went on sports was my obsession not knowing what I was missing in the other gaming genres and as they grew, became better I remained hard-headed only sticking to sports and then FPS such as COD. What an absolute waste of time looking back on it all.

Finally, after some years and one gaming wife later, I was now delving into RPG's. WoW was the first, I was hooked and never looked back. FPS and sports games became a thing of the past. I was genuinely upset for not picking up this genre sooner as it was the most fun id ever had playing games since I was a kid. Enter mainstream triple AAA gaming in its current state and gaming over the past 5 to 10 years has been an absolute drag. WoW followed suit and destroyed everything that made the game great in my honest humble opinion this game was no longer playable. So the search was on, let's find a game like WoW that not only piqued my interest but kept me playing.

Onto Destiny (after its horrible release) and back to having a blast, until they went down the same road as so many others. Cater to the casuals, dumb down the game to such a state it almost becomes unplayable, because the executives want everyone to be on the same playing field, so no one feels left out and everyone gets a trophy, so they can make more money. I digress, as the search for something I loved to play continued I came across gems like Rust, but the community was absolutely awful and having a solid community I found was a huge factor for me enjoying a game.

I started to question if I was just over gaming, growing out of it if you will. But as time went on I knew this couldn't be the case, it's in my DNA my love for gaming was still there its just these games are shells of what they used to be, over monetized and everyone equal.

Throughout most of this, I was diagnosed with an extremely rare medical condition that has gotten progressively worse and has now left me on disability (no pitty just important to the story). Hence, gaming has become even more important in my life, as a once extremely active person who loved to play sports, camp, etc everything changed and the things that I loved to do I could no longer partake in. Gaming became just about the only thing that I could do that didn't cause pain. Well in a physical sense anyway, lol. Gaming has become my sanity without it and with this BS condition mentally I might have lost it and with the quality of games out there today this was not too far off from reality.

Enter Path of Exile and my love for gaming was reborn. My fuse was re-lit and burning brighter than ever. GGG allowed me to believe in gaming again and I absolutely cannot get enough of the game. The honeymoon stage is well over and I still cannot get enough of this master crafted piece of art. This is the most fun one could ask for in a game and the depth is something other game studios should take note of.

This is a thank you to GGG for producing this masterpiece! Life has been a huge up and down battle for me lately, but finding this game has been extremely helpful, more-so than you can imagine. I cannot thank the people that put everything they have into this game to make it what it is enough, words do no justice. Path of Exile is a true gem, especially in today's gaming climate. This is the most fun I've had gaming in the 30 years I've been at it. So again, I thank you GGG you have sparked the love I have for gaming again and I couldn't be more grateful. Thank you to anyone who made it this far I didn't expect this to be this long. Much love and respect to all and congrats GGG on 7 years.

Big thanks for all your work, great game, lot of fun (and lot of legacy items too ^^) :)

Big thanks to the GGG team !

OMG Its Jousis

Of course Sunderboi had to be in there :D

You'll never let him hear the end of it, and we love you for it Beaks ;)

UI and UX are seven years old, yep :)

all sarcasm aside, grats on transforming the arpg genre and being this successful.

And i hope i can enjoy the next 7 years with ya guys too :D