Who knows when Diablo III is coming out? At this point your guess is as good as ours, but there is hope in the short run. Enter Path of Exile , the upcoming free-to-play Diablo clone that offers just enough twists on Blizzard's formula to make it unique, while staying true to the same mouse-button-destroying gameplay that we all love.

You can also play Path of Exile with your friends. It's not an MMO, but it does allow players to meet in towns, party up and then go into dungeons together. All parties get their own dungeons, and all dungeons are randomly generated so you can do them over and over again with slight variation. It might bother some folks that you can't play it offline, but all characters and progress are stored on external servers, meaning you can log into your Path of Exile account anywhere and keep grinding away with your character.Combat is basically the same as in Diablo – which is to say incredibly addicting yet simple – but special abilities are handled in a completely different fashion. Whereas Diablo allowed you to give your class-specific special powers by putting points into a skill tree, Path of Exile allows all characters to have any special abilities. The only catch is that you have to find those abilities. Abilities aren't earned from a tree, but are instead given to the player through gems. By placing a colored gem into a correspondingly colored slot on a weapon or piece of equipment, the player gains the ability described on the gem. This ability then levels up with the player through killing monsters. So instead of the confinement of your typical class-specific powers, players are freed up to create their character truly as they see fit.Leveling up still has a purpose in Path of Exile. While it doesn't grant new abilities, it does give the player points to put in a massive, branching skill tree. The tree allows each person to specialize their character, giving them things like additional skill with a specific weapon, extra magic abilities, or even more health. Additionally, each skill you purchase on the tree also gives you passive stat upgrades to your strength, stamina, dexterity and intelligence. Every class uses the same skill tree, but gets a different allocation to their core stats in order to try and push the player in a specific direction. Yes, you can essentially craft any character into the combination of specialties and ability gems that you like (although some combinations will be better than others), but it also means that the choice of which class you pick at the beginning has less weight. It's still an Alpha build at this point, and it didn't bother me all that much, but I can see more traditional RPG players having a hard time with the lack of extreme class differentiation.While the skill tree and ability systems of Path of Exile are likely going to be divisive, the loot system is great. There is no gold or money in Path of Exile. There will still be merchants that you can purchase and sell items, but instead of gold they barter for items you actually use. For instance an axe might cost you a scroll that allows you to open a portal back to town. It makes purchases feel like they matter more, and gets rid of a monetary system that becomes arbitrary after players muster a hoard of otherwise worthless cash.While it's obvious that Path of Exile has drawn a lot of influence from developer Blizzard's great RPGs, one place the team needs to develop further is the narrative. At this point Path of Exile gives you very little direction. You create a character and then immediately drop into the world and start beating down hordes of creatures. It's fun, but outside of a few quests you get at the first town you find, you pretty much keep moving forward just to get loot. That's enough for a taste, but one of the reasons other similar RPGs are so successful is the rich lore and universe they develop.At this point I can't think of any reason for someone who's interested to not try Path of Exile. It goes into Beta in the next few months, is slated for release later this year and it's completely free. You'll be able to spend money on items to change your character's appearance, but no one will get a gameplay advantage by spending cash. If you're looking for your Diablo fix between now and when Blizzard finally graces us with their next game, Path of Exile is looking like a great option.