This is the last news from 3.17 livestream:

"We really expect hard mode to be in some form of early testing before the next livestream, or will be releasing it at the next league"  


source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uSnEEtF8Q0&t=3290s&ab\_channel=ZiggyDGaming

They are not working actively on it. It's a few devs who has to work on it in their own spare time.

So development is most likely slow, and some times non-existent. So expect no official news about it any time soon.

As far as I know they put it on the shelf due to the late-game atlas rework and the whole balancing stuff after the meltdown that was 3.14. But its still on as an independent mode.

He talked about it too much for it to be just an internal tool. Also, I can hardly imagine why a hard mode could be even needed for internal testing.

Baeclast 61 around the hour mark he is talking about hard mode being an internal tool for devs. The guys ask about it being a new game mode to which he says while we have no plans to give this to the players. We will certainly look into it maybe as a private league modifier

I believe during the interview it was almost exclusively for internal testing at the time and was never intended for general use. Let me see if I can find the video I know it's part of a Chris Wilson baeclast

yeah dude, nothing better than to completely abandon the game and the roadmap so in 18 years we can betatest poe2, im pretty sure nobody is going to completely leave the game because feature freeze  /s

i'm not shitting on a gamemode.  i'm encouraging not spending resources on anything that doesn't contribute to the main game; remember, we already have a multi-year, very invested 'game mode' in development (poe 2), and GGG has often cited how much effort, time, and money has to be devoted to running short, relatively pre-canned events like flashbacks (much less another permanent league that requires independent balance).  often this sort of argument is easily swept away with 'well the people who work on X don't work on Y so it's not wasting resources' but in this case it would seem to be very much the same people.

I feel like this is the 2 sides of the coin issue, you may not want this to happen but I am sure there is a decent amount of people who actually want this to happen. I can understand why you don't care about said gamemode, but no need to shit on it if you do not want it. :)

> I feel as if its just not happening.

what good luck that would be

Future Chris here.

Its still something we are developing as time allows and we hope to have more information to share with the community a later time.

Yeah, here's to hoping we get a definitive answer.

Timeskip 26ish hours till Q&A. I suspect Ziggy will ask about the status of hardmode.

Chris talked about it in 3.17 reveal interview, said he will push for it for 3.18, if at all possible, due to existing plans.

ull hear about it when this expansion fails

Time and time again they put it as "it'll happen when it happens", if they said they were putting any development time into it people would freak out that the time could be better used on the league - even more so if the league has problems.

i'd rather have hard mode than poe2 which is just a meme by now. exilecon was in 2019 and poe2 that will miraculously fix everything is nowhere near done.

With new leagues coming out every 3 months, endless MTX, POE 2, and POE mobile... don't expect much tbh

Has there been *any* communication as to if this is still even happening? It was brought up in 3.15 and its now 3.18. I feel as if its just not happening.

Any news about Hardmode?