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ExileCon will return in 2023 with playable Path of Exile 2

After a lengthy pandemic, ExileCon is ready to return to New Zealand and will feature playable builds of Path of Exile 2 and Path of Exile Mobile.

Ozzie Mejia

August 11, 2022 1:21 PM

Path of Exile

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Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, Grinding Gear Games took on the Herculean task of putting on its own convention. ExileCon was dedicated to all things Path of Exile and it's an event that the fanbase came to love. It also came just in time, because COVID-19 devastated live events for years afterwards. Live events are just now starting to return to a state of normalcy, just in time for GGG to announce that ExileCon will also make a comeback with a playable build of Path of Exile 2 in tow.

The news came prior to Thursday's Path of Exile: Lake of Kalandra reveal. ExileCon 2023 will take place on July 29-30, 2023 from Auckland, New Zealand. The issued press release from Grinding Gear Games confirms that playable builds for both Path of Exile 2 and Path of Exile Mobile will be on the show floor. There was no further information given on the current state of Path of Exile 2 or Path of Exile Mobile's development, as the Grinding Gear Games team will wait until the big convention to offer an update.

Coincidentally, ExileCon was a big topic of conversation when Shacknews spoke with Grinding Gear Games CEO Chris Wilson during Shacknews E6 2022. After asking about all the work that went into putting on a live convention, we had asked Wilson if the team had considered putting on a second ExileCon.

"A day before ExileCon, if you'd have said to me, 'Is there going to be another one of these,' I would have said, in the peak of stress with the event about to be the next day, I would have said, 'Absolutely never again are we going to do this!'" Wilson told Shacknews during E6. "If you'd have asked me a day afterwards, I would have said '100 percent it's happening in 12 months,' ready to announce that kind of thing. Then COVID happened and, to some extent, that was a good thing, because the problem with running annual conventions is you need something cool to talk about and we're not able to make a game of Path of Exile 2's caliber every single year. The COVID pandemic has forced us to delay a potential second ExileCon until the point where we have a lot of stuff to talk about again, which realistically is close to Path of Exile 2's release."

That last sentence is one worth analyzing, as the ExileCon 2023 announcement came less than two months after Wilson said this to Shacknews. In theory, ExileCon 2023 should fall at a point where a Path of Exile 2 release date is finally ready to be discussed. Whether the release window falls in 2023 or falls to 2024 remains to be seen. For now, the news that the action RPG sequel will be playable on the show floor should excite the Path of Exile player base.

Those interested in getting a first look at Path of Exile 2 at ExileCon 2023 should circle Thursday, August 25 on their calendar. That's when tickets will go on sale from the ExileCon website. We'll continue to follow any breaking news from the realm of Path of Exile here at Shacknews and we'll report back on any major updates.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?