From what developers said it is a proper beta where players help to find bugs etc and not just a marketing beta.
The interesting thing is how desperate people are to get into it. Some are offering games like Dead Island or Warhammer 4000: Space Marine for a code.

I am confuse.

I thought a beta was when you let the world into a timed demo a couple of weeks before launch as a marketing exercise, right?

What's this talk of missing stuff and crashes?

I searched for "Path of Exile" yesterday and not a damn thing came up, so I made my own thread...

I hate GOG's thread search so damn much.

Anyhoo, I digress, I really want a beta key but I don't have one yet. It's the skill forest that makes me want one so bad. XD

The patch from yesterday cleared up a lot of the stability issues I was having. This game gets better and better as I play it.

Socketing gems for your skills is epic (and then you have to use them to level the skills).

I've played Duelist and Witch up to 10 or so, the Witch is amazingly fun to play.

People actually come into the chat channel and celebrate when they get one of these. Everyone already there can understand why. I just started a Marauder before the servers went down for whatever maintenance, I'm only here because I'm waiting for a reboot.

Sounds like it is going to be the new League of Legends. It is funny, a couple of years ago I would have never considered a free to play game because of the difference in quality. Now the quality between this LoL, Firefall (possibly) and DDO it is getting where the free games actually surpass the retail releases on a lot of points.

Personally I'm not in a huge hurry because I want to finish Mass Effect 2, Nox, Crusader (if I can get the damn controls down) and a couple of Neverwinter modules before it hits open beta (late this year I heard somewhere) or a Guild Wars 2 beta. Whatever comes first will probably be eating up the majority of my time.

I never played much LoL, but if I remember right you could gain advantages through spending money. Characters and such.

If the website for Path of Exile is to believed, you can't pay to get bonuses. You just can pay money to get silly hats or other status symbols.

I could be wrong, but that was my impression.

I don't think they're 100% settled but they do say just character customization (Firefall is doing that and loot boosts for resource gathering in PVE). Between Firefall and Path of Exile I might not have any other games that get played the last few months this year.

There is a beta key giveaway here: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/7899

LoL is more of a 'pay to get what you want quicker'. Everything, minus the cosmetic skins, are unlocked through just playing.

If you want to hit the max level quicker (no real difference except you get matched with better people and get more options for certain things), get the currency to buy stuff from the store faster (ironically these points can also be bought for $ so this one is sort of moot) or just flat out unlock a character you spend $$.

It will never be a competitive game like HoN or DotA but for what the game is you can't do any better. I've spent $30 for the 'boxed' copy that gives you a bunch of crap and I never felt behind the guys who drop $10 every 2 weeks on a new hero (lol),

I was picked at random a couple of days ago and I am very impressed so far. PoE has definitely taken the Diablo genre to a new level, IMO. The skill and augmentation system has so much potential. I'm actually really curious to see how well Diablo 3 competes.

Congratulations! I've been waiting for a while now.

Thanks, I know how it feels; I was on the list for over 8 months. From what I understand, invite keys are given to beta participants to hand out in the same way. You have to win the lottery twice.

Soon the people inside will have a few keys to hand out to friends. Never fear!

As far as comparing to D3 I'm actually of the opinion it might be better. The skill tree is really cool. They gotta fix hybrid caster classes so people don't just go pure caster with them, that's my only gripe (Templars are basically the male Witch since casters can amp up their damage so much with crit rating and extra crit damage).