First it was the Russian Realm that closed down. Now on the 14th of November Garena is closing down the Singapore Realm:
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POE Singapore and Malaysia Server Closure and Migration
Dearest Exiles of Singapore and Malaysia Realm,
Over the past 4 years, your passion and energy have helped to build this amazing community that we see today. We at Garena, especially the Path of Exile team, will like to thank all of you for your continuous support throughout this 4-year journey.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and it is with a heavy heart that we announce that Garena will stop operating Path of Exile in Singapore and Malaysia on 14 November 2016. From then on, Exiles from Singapore and Malaysia will be transferred over to Global Realm for Path of Exile operated by Grinding Gear Games, the developer of Path of Exile, where you can continue your adventures in Wraeclast with all your progress intact, with the added benefit of being able to interact with an even larger community of Path of Exile fans.
GGG and all top PoE players can dismiss this and claim that PoE is healthy and doing well. But these closures are warning signs that PoE has peaked in popularity and is now in decline. There have been a number of popular PoE streamers that have thrown in the towel and quit playing PoE this year as well.
No amount of hype train can convince me that PoE is in a good place right now. Why? Because after 3 years (almost 4 for me) GGG has not improved the endgame and in many ways such as xp nerfs has made it worse. In my own case I've gone from playing PoE on weekends from 5 to 6 hours each day down to 1 maybe 2 hours at best. This Saturday morning is a good example, I was super tired last night so I went to bed early and woke up at 5:20 am. Early morning is usually the best time to play PoE as lag is minimal to Dallas and it's before real life needs to be attended to. But this morning I watched a little tv and then went back to bed. I got up after 10:00 am to have coffee and cereal, update the wiki and spreadsheet Daily Deals, read other news stories, and then finally scan the PoE forums. PoE has gone from an "I'm exited to play arpg" to a "MEH" at best, all because the endgame grind has finally taken it's toll on me. After 4 years even this drop:
in Essence league was more of a "well I'll be damned" moment for me as I've come to expect nothing from grinding maps for the last year that finally when I do get a great drop I'm way past the point of wild enthusiasm about it and any theory crafting on how I might best use it to "I finally got a once in a blue moon drop... that's nice... next one is in January of 2018." I just sat there in more of a shocked disbelief that I actually got this drop at all than in any feeling of excitement.
That's the way PoE plays for most. We love the basics of the wide open build sandbox that allows for millions of combinations of builds, gear is usable on any character class, the passive tree is great (most like it other than the life nerfs), and even the Ascendancy sub-classes are good even if what we have to do to get the points is bad (Lab runs). Beyond that the major problems of PoE, namely trading and endgame mapping have not changed. Trading is still bad and the veneer that the Atlas places on endgame mapping is just that, a surface gloss on top of the same endgame map grind for leveling xp. The function of the endgame, running maps to accrue xp to level up, is still the same only much worse this year because GGG has decided that the < 1% top elites that race a build to 100 in 2 weeks need to be stopped and thus have nerfed xp to increase the map grind.
I wonder just what the devs do with all the feedback they get from the non-elite players? Do they just dismiss it and go on coding PoE for the top elites that are farming The Shaper?
In the end we now see a 2nd Realm closure as more and more non-elite and elite players pull the plug on PoE and move on to find fun elsewhere and thus revenue is going down. Maybe GGG will see the handwriting on the wall (from the non-elite players) before it's too late and Act 5 will be more than just doubling down on Act 4 difficulty and more of the same endgame map grind for little xp or maybe not. Only time will tell.
Signed,
7 PoE non-elite loyalist
Please, tell me more on how you play 4 hours a week and expect to get extremely rare unique rain from the sky!
Path of Exile can only die if something comes up to takes it place... there really is no ARPG out there atm to compete with this game. Some people play D3 or Grim Dawn but they never seem to play them for very long.
So while the Lab is poorly designed for this game, immunities on bosses suck, melee life builds struggle, endgame mapping system is hit and miss, prophecy could be utilized better but isn't,threshold jewel system not expanded upon, great white beast quest still exists, and list goes on to over 100. Desite all things that can be irritating, PoE is the top dog for the few things they might do right.
But as I said... if another ARPG came a long and proved itself as a solid game, thats when you would see people potentially leave PoE...
I've played in the Singapore realm. It was "dead" then, too, at least, compared to Global. The difference? PoE Garena was marketed through their general gateway, which operated similarly to Steam, acting as a menu containing hundreds of gaming choices in a variety of genres. A player who might try PoE out of curiosity might not stick with it when he could play FIFA or GTA.
The PoE Garena community was very small even when I was involved years back; now? It's clear that Garena no longer considers it profitable, and GGG has invoked a "take back" clause in their contract to at least bring all the remaining players into the Global fold, so that they aren't left out in the cold.
GGG hasn't lost anything; Garena is who couldn't sustain PoE. ='[.]'=
