Path of Exile gets a new endgame with Atlas of Worlds on September 2

You can customize Path of Exile’s weapons and gear, socketing in gems and making other tweaks as you battle map after map of monsters. But in what could be one of the most interesting innovations for action-role-playing games in years, Grinding Gear Games also lets you customize maps, adding new areas and bosses for the endgame. Now the endgame finally getting more love from the studio — and a real story.

When the Atlas of Worlds expansion comes out on September 2, the slice of Path of Exile’s 14.2 million players that have played through all of the action-RPG’s content will find a new endgame experience that adds a narrative, 30 maps, 19 new bosses, a gaggle of new items (including some made by Path of Exile’s community), a new league, and a significant tech improvement: multithreaded engine support, giving the online game’s performance a big boost. Path of Exile ranks 19th in the worldwide free-to-play massively multiplayer online game market, says research firm SuperData, and new content and systems like this help such services retain their players — and find new ones.