Walk the Path of Exile during the public stress test weekend

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Weekends were designed for relaxation, catching up on chores, and dicing up the various spawn creeping out of the underworld. Path of Exile can help with two of these. The dark-and-bloody action RPG is throwing its first public event and that means you're just a click away from hours of demon-slaying entertainment at the beautiful price of free.

Set to release this year, Path of Exile brings the clicking mayhem of Diablo II to the instanced world design of Guild Wars. Towns act as giant trade hubs and combat areas are instanced to provide full and individual challenges to small groups of players. Among those challenges are hordes of enemies that need dispatching via one of six classes like the Maurader (strength-based zombie dicer) or the Witch (intelligence-based demon cooker).

The team at Grinding Gear Games has been working on the closed beta since August, but now they need your help with seeing how the game stands up to larger load of players before open beta. They're allowing complete public access to all the closed beta content during the weekend. All you have to do is sign up on their website and download the game (link will be available via their website tomorrow). The servers will go live at 5pm PST Friday, March 30th (01:00 GMT Saturday) but this event is a stress test so be prepared for some patching and downtime while you check out what the game has to offer.

If you want more info, check out our earlier preview or visit their website for details on the public stress test weekend