Let’s cut straight to it: Path of Exile is an isometric roleplaying game that gets me all hot and bothered. The game servers effectively get wiped once every three months, with players starting back at square one. This wipe is accompanied by a new league, which is a content patch that changes the core way that the game is played. It addresses imbalances to the gameplay experience that were drudged up during the previous content patch. While experiencing new content is what brings a lot of players back into the fold every few months, another chunk of players come back to exert their will on the newly-minted economy.
The games’ market is effectively a microcosm of what an unregulated free market would look like in the real world, churning out all the ridiculous scenarios that you would expect to result. You have your market savants that try every trick in the book to accrue more wealth, one-man currency exchange operations, petty grifters that try sleight of hand to make a quick buck, and all the normal people in-between. It’s akin to watching people try to make their mark in the Wild West, and I love seeing the ridiculous things they come up with to feed that need to watch the numbers rise.
Initially, I REALLY wanted to write about how the developers’ implementation of commodity money as currency has created one of the most robust economic systems I’ve seen in a game, but it’s surprisingly hard to truncate a five page overview into something both clear and alluring, so instead I’ll leave you with this: Path of Exile is a great game that is well-loved by its community. It is initially intimidating for most people due to the number of choices it gives you and how deep the underlying systems that affect those choices go, but that is ultimately what keeps it exciting. It’s also worth noting that it is completely free to play, so go give it a shot.