If the 2nd expansion sells well enough, they'll even consider a 3rd xpac, which might be a bit too much. But it's the best ARPG on the market right now, and it ain't close.
Fallen Gods isn't coming till Fall / Q4, so either get it now, play it and enjoy it, then do it all over again for the xpac, or wait till the 2nd one comes and rip through it all.
You are right, it is not even close to Path of Exile in quality or popularity.
Path of Exile is tainted by its always online nature, from the lag that makes risky to make a hardcore character, the way more stingy policy for items drop (Grim Dawn is far more generous) and the setting while being kinda similar to Grim Dawn, Path of Exile isn't as successful into making use of it, you know, having an alien spirit invasion that are taking women, connecting their bodies on a grotesque fashion to a huge biologic factory and impregnating them to spawn deformed and monstrous babies over and over so they can have an army is the kind of very fucked up setting idea the I enjoy alot on Grim Dawn.
They will probably add a sort of map/endless high level content mode for the game on this expansion what will make it even better. Path of Exile has its advantages like the sheer amount of content and the Leagues but alot of its content is more quantity over quality.
Always online is not a huge deal now as they did a lot to make it all much better. At worst your computer can lose its internet at the wrong moment. But hardcore playerbase that will chose a lesser SP aRPG over a better MP one is miniscule at best.
I agree on items drops being more stigny but that is nothing that cannot be solved by healthy amount of grinding and some trading. On the other hand GD might never drop that one Legendary item you want and trading with others there is basically cheating as you will never know if they used trainers to spawn items.
I would say Path of Exile setting is at least as interesting as GD one and it has way more lore. There are way more factions and groups in PoE all fighting for themselves.
PoE
Act 1: Deformed creatures consumed by dark energies, a golem like creature made around power stones infused by same dark energies in the middle of the act and Squid like transformed female that takes other life forms and transforms them into its servants as an end boss. You meet your true adversary in the act for a brief moment.
Act 2: 3 way tie of Bandit Lords fighting to control the whole area (one of them infuses its minions with destructive explosions that has them blow themselves up Alak Akbar style whenever they see you). In the background an ancient civilization slumbers and waits for someone to awake it. You get to fight your way through a pyramid of awoken constructs and undead elemental creatures until you reach the top and fight a Construct of great power from a bygone age. During this act you also get another glimpse of the adversary and get to chase her around a bit trying to stop her plans.
Act 3: Ruins of a lost civilization built on ruins of any even older one. A desperate people defending a small part of those ruins ask for your help and when you do you run into your adversary and get to see her do her crazy experiments on humans. You now get to chase her through these ruins filled by undead, mutated creatures and undying creatures that fear the light that were once humans before they started combining their bodies with power stones before the city fell to ruin. You then get to fight a horde of Blackguard troops fighting for their God-Emperor. You get to meet animated statues from lost age led by one last sane inhabitant of the city that it once was. She gets to be your unlikely ally vs your adversary, against the God-Emperor and his Blackguards. You then get to witness the horrors brought upon all surviving humans by your adversary as she transforms each and every one into a horror one worse than the previous one.
In the end you get to fight her, then the God Emperor and find out they were just pawns to an ancient Horror.
Act 4: You decide to face the Horror, the Beast behind all the evil and dark corruption. Transformations are getting worse now, humans are now both animated and transformed, creatures both flying and hopping are turned into horrors, even walls themselves spawn dark golems of poisonous power. Humans that once worked the mines that gave the power stones are not forever bound by the Beast to be its deformed servants and guardians. You get to discover the madness of one man that brought about the end of Love, Life, Friendship and Civilization in his mad quest for Knowledge and Salvation. He corrupted everyone along the path and in the end destroyed himself in the most terrible of way. You get to fight the Beast that is both the ultimate creator and destroyer of everything humans have accomplished for a long time. Along the way you get to meet the adversary again and have unexpected interactions with her.
Act 5: Beating the Beast seems like an accomplishment that would be sung about for eons but alas it seemed to start an unexpected chain of events. New power has awoken in the land of the God-Emperor you beat previously and you must investigate. Now there is a glistening city here, unlike anything you seen before but it is filled by newly awakened fanatics, people that are so sure of their purity they would do anything to prove it. But they don't prove it to themselves or to a mere mortal, they prove it to their God, Purity itself. Do you dare face a God? Can you survive the divine cleansing fires?
Do you know your act gets to awaken something even worse. Purity is only thing that keeps Hunger in check. By your hand Hunger awakens and its followers willingly scar themselves, eat their enemies and bathe in the blood of everyone else. Eldritch horrors join them in tearing the city apart. You get to face this new threat but even the slayer of Beast is not up the task. You are saved at the last moment by humanity last ally, a God of Sin.
Act 6 to 10:
You are now again at a beginning of your journey that stretches for next 5 Acts and has you face elder God after elder God, get to see how their influence affects the world you already saved once and then absorb part of their power while getting ready for a rematch with the God of Hunger. All the while you get to find out how it all began and why Gods disappeared and age of Humanity got to exist.
After Act 10: You beat the last God that posed a threat to you and humanity but now you find out that this world is just one of many, and there are creatures beyond your power that invade, intrude, breach, portal or open abysses into your world or even those other worlds. You get to face endless horrors and all those creatures, even travel to their domains to beat them until you can find out what Elder Horror is eating at the edges of your sanity and fabric of the multiverse trying to consume it all. Or you can spend your time entering hidden realms of your world ancient civilizations, even get to meet their ancient rulers that bathed in blood of virgins while building their pyramids with blood of their followers. You can even travel through time to unravel even more hidden mysteries of ages past.
Sorry but GD is nothing even close to what PoE offers.
