The joy of long-term D2 players, and the frustration of newcomers, is in the rigidity of the character's "build". If you want to try a different way to play a character, you need to start a new one and work up to the point where your new strategy becomes viable before you can try it. Most "builds" require some choices of equipment (sometimes very specific items, sometimes general guidelines) which you must acquire via finding or trading.
PoE addresses this to a carefully calculated balance point. No choices you make about your character are irrevocable, and the choice of what skills you are using is extremely fungible. The hard thing to change is the allocation of points (one per level) on the passive skill web. So if you want to change your Arc (a lighting spell)-using character to use Ball Lightning (also a lightning spell), you won't be hampered at all by your choice of passives. If you want to change to Static Strike (a lightning melee attack) or Lightning Arrow (a lightning bow attack) you might get reduced results depending on which passives you chose (Lightning damage would still apply, but spell damage wouldn't for example).
If you are planning to make this kind of transition (say, the skill you plan to focus on is not usable until level 31), the effects of passive choices are cumulative enough that you can usually plan a path that will help while you are still using "placeholder" attacks, and the game is pretty forgiving at the early levels when choices are most constrained.
Another part of this flexibility is in the character "classes". Your class determines your base stats (which will become mostly irrelevant as you use passive picks and equipment to raise them) and your starting point on the passive web (which is very important but by the time you have finished Normal difficulty and moved on to Cruel you could have grown into another character's starting area quite easily).
A final really important thing, in which PoE has gone the completely opposite direction from Diablo 3, is that there is no game gold. None. There are items which are referred to as "currencies" (by developers and players) but they are all things with meta-effects on other items (equipment, skill gems, passive tree). If, for example, your character needs a new rare bow suitable for their level, you could use an Orb of Alchemy to turn a white bow into a random rare (which might or might have useful affixes for your character) - OR you could ask other players in-game or on the forums what they'd trade for one that fits you better; often the extra effort of looking for a trade will get you a great item for the same Orb that you would have used to get a random one - because the other player can use that orb as currency that's more useful to him/her than the bow is, while the bow is more useful to you than a random rare would be.
As I mentioned in the parent article, PoE is completely free to play. You can download the client and start immediately. Real money will get you more (shared) stash space, let you start a guild with its own shared stash, or let you jazz up your character's appearance with special effects, non-combat pets, and so forth with no game effect. In a very real sense, PoE lives off of being so good that players will buy these cosmetic items in order to support the game - or you could say that those who support the game get cosmetic things to show their status.
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