Path of Exile's thriving community reminds me of MMOs like WoW

Jumping into Path of Exile in 2021 took me several days of preparation. This wasn't my first time with the free-to-play action-RPG, but it had been a couple of years since my last visit. Path of Exile is bewildering enough to wrap your head around as a new player, but even as a lapsed one there's a lot to learn thanks to quarterly events called challenge leagues. These keep the game brimming with new content and loot to discover, but also include new mechanics for players to assimilate into their grinding.

To give you a little context on just how daunting PoE is to a new player, the passive skill tree boasts over 1,300 nodes to pick from every time you level up. Every item is loaded with stats and attributes to check, and many have buffs associated with skills on that baffling passive skill tree. The prospect of starting out in Path of Exile is aggressively complicated.

However, as a new challenge league was about to start (named 'Ritual'), this seemed like the best opportunity to dive back in. New leagues, much like seasons in Diablo 3, offer players an incentive to build brand-new characters and barrel through the game at breakneck speeds.

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