Do players play POE after leagues end?

Dear all

As a new player, nothing concerns me more than joining a "not so populated" game. When I first started, I chose hardcore mode. Someone in chat then told me not to bother, and wait for leagues to start.

Now that the leagues start, I'm thinking of continuing my first hardcore character. Then I heard no one plays hardcore now that leagues started.

So I'm curious, after leagues end, do players still play the game? Or they just take a break and come back for new leagues?

To me, the game has split player base, with leagues and permanent modes. Not sure if that is a good thing, but hearing from a number of players saying they don't play without leagues is a little worrying. As it is, I don't know which mode to play T_T

Cheers!

I don't and normal HC is like a fucking ghost town filled with tumbleweed's rolling around.

afaik extremely few people play hardcore league as their main league.The way GGG designed the game is aimed at pushing people to try out new leagues whenever they come out so you can bet that majority of the player base will be in the temp leagues.However,standard has a pretty decent population as well so if you do not wish to play temporary leagues and want a non-dead league,standard is pretty much your only option left.Keep in mind that this is taking into account things like trading and public party mapping etc

The Hardcore league merges into hardcore, it's more or less a newer version of the hardcore league. Newer things are largely proffered, and thus people migrate to the temp leagues to try out the new mechanics. You get the masters favor you earn in the temp leagues merged with the perm hardcore league, you get the items, the characters and so on, so when the leagues are up there's really not much of a reason not to play in them. Most of the people I play with just continue their characters in hardcore after the temp league stops, but than it's hardcore so sooner or later the characters die and you roll a new one :3 . If you have a high level hardcore character you might just play that for a while I guess, but most people re-roll to try something new they thought of, or to optimize, or to play with their friends who ripped (;_;) and so on. What I'm getting at, is that you play temp when it's available and then continue in hardcore, I havn't seen anyone have a problem with it, but then all of the people I play with have stuck around so my xp is very biased. Hope you have fun all the same!

Standard and Hardcore are where all the toys go when temp leagues end. I dunno about HC; seems like there are always some folks about in town when my race characters end up there. Personally, I prefer Standard, and, depending on the temp leagues, I sometimes just play there, anyway (with all my cool toys).

If you play solo most of the time, no reason not to play HC, especially if you're in a guild. That way, guild chat keeps you from feeling isolated and lonely, and it's just possible some'a your guildies will join you in HC, which can help if you're really focused on party play.

Dun shun HC just because others do, if 90% of the time, you're alone, anyway. =^[.]^=

I kinda just play hearthstone/stare at the wall in between leagues.

I play standard or HC between leagues. Why not?

Standard has a large population even during leagues. Not everyone sees the allure of starting fresh.

Hardcore players are going to naturally be drawn to temp leagues due to the perishable nature of HC play, it's really no wonder the permanent HC league is dead.

Standard is usually pretty populated even during leagues though.

I play mostly league. During the league drought before act 4's release I played in standard.

It was that or do housework.