Anyone checked this out yet?  It's free to download and play.

I gotta admit, I really dig this one.

//www.pathofexile.com

It's Diablo 2-2.  If you liked Diablo 2, you'll love Path of Exile.

Very interesting. Diablo III was underwhelming, to say the least.

Thanks for the link. I'll get around to trying this.

The passive skill tree is my favorite part.

It really has to be seen to be believed.  It's like they took all the skill trees and meshed it into a giant web.  Very neat, and allows for tons of different builds.

I didn't like it. I was in the beta, and I played casually for a couple of weeks.

Well, that's not quite true. The skill gems idea is neat (And it makes partial respecs really simple), but it feels a bit hobbled by the way equipment and gem slots work; I appreciate coloured slots is intended to add an extra layer of choice to gear selection, but in practice, it's just another way of making gear useless for you.

Gameplay-wise, yeah, it's very much D2, again, and it's okay, but... it's far too focused on a hyper-hardcore audience and mindset, it's deliberately player-hostile. The passive skill tree is probably the biggest offender; yeah, it's neat, but it requires absolute planning out of spending every point (Although the game will, grudgingly, issue you a few single-point respec tokens along the way), and the developers have said they think it's okay for characters to simply reach walls they can't progress past due to poor skill choices. Now, that's fine for something like a roguelike, where your character is somewhat expendable anyway, but once you've got, say, ten hours in a character; that's a lot of time to just write off, and have to go through again just to get where you were beforehand.

Personally, it's time I would rather spend on a different game.

It's also just as online as Diablo 3 was. If that upset people last year then, well, it should still be upsetting them now.

In short, it's a hyper-hardcore action RPG. Only for those with plenty of free time.