The following is my initial review, written years ago:

"This game has such awesome potential but some of the technical issues drive me nuts. Lag can make the game practically unbearable. I still love this game but my feelings are tempered by the severity of some of the issues. Random disconnects, disconnects upon loading zones, the game freezing occasionally... i've been a supporter of this game since beta. If I didn't have good friends playing with me I think I would have left the game by now."

Review update, Nov 15, 2017:

Well, here we are, and it's 2017 and almost 2018 and I'm still playing PoE, and so are some of my friends. I have put in alot of hours into this game, and it feels great to be able to say some really positive and grateful things about PoE.

The game has been overhauled, in many areas, and improvements came quickly. Lag for me is a thing of the past. Well, almost. I'm in California, USA and some of my friends are in places like Germany or Spain or Chile. If I want to play with my German friend, we have to pick a server that works well for both of us. There are servers placed in strategic locations throughout the world, but it seems that there are certain servers that are just simply very busy, in Western Europe for example. If my Portuguese friend and my Brazilian friend want to come with me and play as a group, we have a few servers to choose from. Still, sometimes it's bad.... lagged to unplayable levels.... but, then again, sometimes it works just fine. When logging into the nearest PoE server, in California, my connection is buttery smooth.

The graphics are majorly improved. Some of the old cosmetic microtransactions suffered from the same problem as a lot of gear in the game, and that is the problem that some of the old stuff is just ugly. The pace of graphical updates has increased over the years, and some of the cosmetic upgrades for sale are really top-notch. In the past, there were bugs related to some of the cosmetic transactions that should have been quickly patched but were not. My feeling was that the developers were not to blame, and that it was a case of too much popularity too fast, and that things would be smoothed over as the developers added capacity. These days, GGG, the indie developer / production company behind PoE, responds quickly and efficiently, inspiring trust of GGG, that they've got both hands firmly on the wheel and know what they're doing. They are getting it done. Actually, they're kind of crushing it.

The engine has been overhauled. PoE has become a rather visually striking, if not beautiful in a macabre sort of way, game. I mean, it was always macabre, but there's alot more to see in the game now. Kudos to their art department for getting it done while bringing more talent onto the team. The particle effects and various shiny and sparkly graphical elements are done quite well. They've implemented DirectX 11 while retaining Dx9 as an option. Frame rates are higher and more stable and more smoother than ever before. I used to get occasional jerkiness and slight hiccuping, but that has gone away. My framerates are super high, even with all the eye candy enabled, and I'm on a RX 480 video card. The engine also has gone through a process to take advantage of multithreaded processors. My Ryzen 1700X is probably overkill as far as multithreading goes, but multithreaded game engines are the future, and for GGG, the future is now, so, more kudos there. The game doesn't seem especially taxing on the CPU or GPU, so that's great for people who play on laptops or lower tier desktop PCs.

Lots of new spells and attacks, new loot and scenery, new bosses and monsters, more maps and better maps, more skill tree options, more gear, longer storyline... more more more

The cornerstone of Path of Exile is it's vibrant and dedicated player community. I find PoE players to be pretty cool in general, which might be because those who lack patience and/or skill wash out and leave the game infuriated, while other players play efficiently and make steady progress and end up having a really great time, trying out different builds, char classes, etc. There is a ton of variation in PoE character builds and classes. New mechanics have been introduced while older mechanics have been nerfed or removed, sometimes killing off imbalanced builds that become popular partly because they're practically game exploits, in how effective they are vs other builds.

Path of Exile started off as a labor of love, by several fans of Diablo 2 who turned out to be some pretty ace developers from various professional backgrounds. It's clear that GGG is still well loved by it's creators, as shown by the rapid and steady pace of development over the years.

And besides all that, the player community is genuinely a fun loving group with minimum tolerance for toxic players, and also a generous patience with new players.