Path of Exile 2 server issues are causing players to pick up random party members

The somewhat rocky launch of Path of Exile 2's Early Access has been causing many unexpected anomalies. While some have been frustrating for day-one players so far, a new "technical issue" is causing player parties to sometimes reshuffle when teleporting or transitioning to different maps.

While it's something of a hindrance for those trying to pair up with their buddies, the absurdity of this glitch borders on being goofy. The developers see the humor in it too, as they have acknowledged the bug in an ongoing X/Twitter thread about the Path of Exile 2 server status at launch:

"We're aware of an issue with players in parties sometimes being placed into parties with other random players. Until we fix this, consider it a feature to enhance your social experience!"

---

Reshuffling parties are the lighter end of server bugs at Path of Exile 2's Early Access release

Path of Exile 2 has a new co-op feature (Image via GGG)

The exact technical reason for the party-randomizing bug (or temporary social feature for the glass-half-full people out there) has not been officially pointed out. It's likely connected to the series of ongoing technical problems after Path of Exile 2's Early Access launch.

The million-plus key sales for the Early Access is a landslide success for GGG, but it also brings a number of technical hardships for server engineers and technical staff. Namely, the developers did not expect the player numbers to be as high as it is. To prepare for the surging intake of players, the developers prepared by ordering more server space and setting up new database shards.

As it turns out, the database shards have been part and parcel of some technical issues that can potentially cause multiple players to get the same character ID:

"The problem we ran into was due to adding more database shards in the last minute to try to support the massive player numbers. Unfortunately there was an issue which caused multiple characters to have the same character id. Thankfully the problem has now been found and is being fixed at this very moment. Your ongoing patience and support is hugely appreciated and we will continue to provide updates as we learn more."

The developers have had to wipe the realm and restart it more than once to tackle this issue, but the servers seem to have stabilized at the time of writing. There are, of course, other problem areas that need more immediate redressal, such as players being unable to redeem their keys on Steam.

As the developers work on finding a fix to the database shard problem, more anomalies are to be expected in the somewhat predictably rocky launch of an otherwise great ARPG.