Path Of Exile 3.26 & Path Of Exile 2 Current Status Comparison: Why Is The 3.26 League Showing A Backward Trend?
Posted: Jul 14, 2025 Views: 38
It has been a month since the official release of Path Of Exile 3.26: Secrets Of The Atlas. How do you think this expansion performs, which has made everyone wait for nearly a year? Is it really worth your expectations?
To be honest, the response to POE 3.26 expansion is generally not ideal. Although this update brings a lot of new content and Atlas expansion after nearly 3 years, most players have a bad gaming experience because of update delays and performance issues.
More importantly, the developers seem to always think that Path Of Exile 2 takes precedence over the original game, which can be seen from the repeated postponements of the 3.26 update. It can even be said that the sequel is so successful now because the previous game was suspended for too long, which made most players turn to POE 2.
Current Comparison Of POE 3.26 And 2
According to the current data from Steam, the number of online players in POE 3.26 is about 32,000-33,000, with an average of about 67,000 online players in a month and a peak of about 68,000. In contrast, the number of online players in POE 2 is about 53,000-54,000, with an average of about 11,700 online players in a month and a daily peak of about 10,000 online players.
But from a broader perspective of active players, POE 3.26 has about 349,000 daily active players and a total of about 53 million registered players, while the sequel has about 437,000 daily active players and a total of about 31.7 million registered players.
Therefore, we can clearly see that since the release of Secrets Of The Atlas, users have been more active in PoE 1, but PoE 2 may have a wider user base on the overall platform. However, compared with its predecessor, PoE 2’s real-time user activity is still much lower.
Because basically since the early access release of PoE 2 last December, the number of daily online players has been shrinking, but it has gradually stabilized between 10,000 and 15,000. This means that although the release of the sequel was discovered by more players because of the popularity of the original, it still retains some players with its own gameplay and style.
What Is The Difference?
However, with the release of Path Of Exile 3.26 league, the difference between the two games has become increasingly significant, and basically most players have a clear preference for them.
Although PoE 3.26 and PoE 2 are closely related, whether because of the series of games or because the development team itself may be temporarily formed and the personnel overlap, if you actually experience them, you will find that they are completely different.
Path of Exile 3.26 is more suitable for some veteran action role-playing game players who are familiar with complex systems. Especially for players who are keen on custom builds and like to spend a lot of time trying out unique skills or builds that are not well known, you will find unique fun here.
As we all know, POE 1 has always been famous for its complex currency economy system, passive skill tree and huge Atlas system, and the newly added mercenary mechanism and memory loops in 3.26 have deepened this feature.
Therefore, if you like new mercenary partners, deeper production mechanisms and flexible league economic systems, and are happy to earn countless POE currency with your own strategies in a short time, then Secrets Of The Atlas will provide you with a rich and satisfying gaming experience.
However, if you like streamlined and easy-to-use gameplay, smooth combat experience and fascinating storyline, then believe me, the 3.26 expansion may only bring you pain, instead POE 2 may be a better choice for you.
Although POE 2 is still in the early access stage, the current updates can show that the developers want to continuously improve the Path Of Exile series universe through it. Because this sequel has not only updated the combat and storyline, but also the game performance and visual effects to make it more in line with the needs of players at all stages.
It’s clear that Path Of Exile 2 is aimed at beginners of the series, who often felt overwhelmed by the original, but prefer to explore the story, visuals, and real-time gameplay. The sequel offers a smooth combat experience and a deep but easy-to-understand progression system, allowing them to experience a challenging campaign without being bound by complex mechanics and outdated tutorials.
As a result, Secrets Of The Atlas now seems to be more focused on veteran players and continues to be designed for players who have supported it for the past decade, while PoE 2 attracts new groups of players, of course, there is also a certain degree of crossover.
Why Did Many Players Leave PoE 3.26?
To be honest, before the release of the 3.26 expansion, most veteran players had high expectations for it because the previous Settlers of Kalguur league was so popular. As expected, at the beginning, when POE 3.26 was released, the peak number of online players surpassed Settlers of Kalguur, indicating that this classic game still has a very active player community, but the subsequent situation is not optimistic.
Due to a large number of server problems, delays and frequent DDoS attacks, the growth of players has been greatly hindered. In addition, although a lot of new content has been added in the 3.26 update, it is still centered around the typical farming equipment game style, and the playability has not met the expectations of players, which has caused a large number of players to leave.
Although the developers are trying to solve the problem of server instability and are committed to improving the overall DDoS protection of the server, this has caused some legitimate traffic to be blocked, resulting in some players being unable to play the game. In addition, various account thefts and visual flickering issues have a negative impact on the user interface for some players.
The frequent occurrence of these problems has led to constant complaints in the player community. Many people said that they might restart the game later, but definitely not now!
In fact, since the release of POE 2, the developers have been slowing down the update speed of the original game. However, the team is still continuing to support the old game, and hopefully these issues will be resolved soon.
Final Thoughts
In general, Path of Exile 3.26 has been hit hard by frequent connection issues after a major update. However, PoE 1 has been around for a long time, and the previous Settlers of Kalguur league never had such server crashes.
And I have never seen any development team not communicate with players during a serious DDoS attack, or even respond so casually to a server problem that has lasted for nearly a month, which may be the real reason why the feedback on the 3.26 update is getting worse and worse.
On the other hand, although PoE 2 did not perform well, this highly anticipated sequel is still in the early access stage, and the overall gaming experience is still smooth. Therefore, all reviews are still positive for players.
Therefore, as far as the current situation is concerned, Path of Exile 3.26 is already in a situation where it is obviously lagging behind the sequel. This may be because the updated content did not meet the expectations of players, or it may be the negative impact caused by many problems, but in the final analysis, the developer ignored the feelings of a large number of old players because of the release of the sequel.
If the developer does not want to destroy the foundation of Path of Exile series of games, it is best to rebalance the parallel development of the two games, otherwise it will only lose everything.
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