A feature that’s surfaced on the Eve Online test server suggests that the Odyssey expansion will bring with it an update to the PLEX system. The update would allow players to spend PLEX to activate and train their alt characters instead of just adding playtime to their main account.
During last week’s Fanfest CCP finally opened up to talk about the changes coming in this June’s Odyssey expansion. We’d already had some specifics, like the new private hangars in Player-owned Stations, but it was only during the event in Reykjavik that the developers were free to talk about all the granular adjustments.
One of the announcements, moving ice belts into anomalies, may sound small on the surface but will significantly reduce the amount of ice available in Eve, making the resource that’s essential for big ship warfare significantly more valuable.
We spoke to Eve’s lead game designer Kristoffer Touborg about the changes.
If you’ve got a lot of friends who don’t play EVE (say two million of them), and you fancy inviting them to join you for a galaxy road-trip tomorrow, please don't. CCP have said that the game couldn't cope with a sudden increase in players.
At 18:49 on April 14, the CEO of a small corp named Christ’s Little Angels blew up. At the hands of two of his own pilots, 234,999,443.49 ISK worth of ship was destroyed, and another 14,054,679.85 ISK of equipment and cargo dropped. But perhaps he should have seen it coming.
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The star of Eve Fanfest 2013 was EVR, a 6v6 space shooter that runs on virtual reality headsets like Oculus Rift. It’s the best fit for the technology I’ve seen so far and it was ridiculously good fun.
Here’s the problem: there are no plans to release the game. When we asked one of the artists working on the game, Andy Robinson, about its release, he explained that it may be that Fanfest “is very possible that this is the only time that you’ll get to play it."
So what if fans want it? What if they put together a petition for the game’s release?
Andy smiled.
“I’d love to see that."
So we’ve gone and made a petition.
Eve Fanfest 2013’s closing keynote gave a glimpse of what the future holds for Eve, Dust, and CCP. It’s a future of space elevators, boarding parties, and personal stargates. Of course, this was CCP looking years into their games’ futures but they also made some promises of what players will have in their hands by next year’s keynote.
As part of CCP’s continuing plan to take over the world, subsuming our globe into the enormity of New Eden, the developer announced during their Fanfest keynote that they’ve partnered with Dark Horse Comics and director Baltasar Kormákur to produce a run of comic books and a TV series based on the true stories emerging from EVE.
To celebrate 10 years of EVE, CCP are selling a collector’s edition of the game. You might wonder why you’d want such a thing - it’s a digital game, after all, with all the potential buyers likely already in possession of at least one account - but then you see what the box contains: another game.
Yes, CCP have finally issued a new run of their board game Hættuspil. The thing’s taken on a near-mythic quality among EVE players because it’s only available in Icelandic, in Iceland, and because the cover features Reykjavik’s mayor dressed in drag.
Eve Online is a majestic creation. Sometimes I just like to float around in space in a small frigate, gaze at distant nebula or visit pretty stars and planets. The sense of scale and awe its universe presents is sometimes overwhelming as you slowly drink in your beautiful surroundings.
The music of Eve Online is the icing on the proverbial cake for me - the game always chooses an appropriate track depending on what you’re doing. If you too love the music, then I’ve got a special treat for you: nearly an hour’s worth of orchestral renditions of the most famous Eve Online music. It’s beautiful.
Eve Online’s fanfest is ongoing right now, and the EVE keynote for the event has just finished. During the address, CCP revealed detailed the features of 4 June's Odyssey expansion, the core feature of the Winter 2013 expansion (thing space colonisation), and a little experiment called EVR.
Whipping my head round to trace the path of a rocket that was rapidly closing on my rear, looking for the moment to hit my afterburner and escape the payload before it connected with my fighter’s fuselage... that was the moment that EVR came together. EVR is special. EVR is new. EVR is a 6v6 space dogfighting game, built for the Oculus Rift and set in the Eve universe, taking place in the violent cold blacknews of New Eden.
But it leaves a question. What does this mean for Eve Online?
Early this morning, four Battlecruisers flying Goonswarm colours, flanked by their Clusterfuck Coalition comrades, closed in on a six billion ISK Golem and blew it to smithereens. It was only the most expensive explosion in a long series to rock high-sec space since Burn Jita 2 began on Saturday.
It’s been a big year for CCP, it’s the 10 year anniversary of EVE Online’s launch and also the year they launched their PS3 tie-in game, DUST 514, so the developer is putting on a pretty major show for this year’s Fanfest.
If you were able to get hold of a ticket before they all sold out then it looks like you’re in for a real treat, there’s panels aplenty, parties, PvP events, and even a wedding to go to.
EVE Online’s executive producer Jon Lander AKA CCP Unifex is stepping down from the role and transitioning to another position within the developer, where he will lead CCP’s mobile development.
CCP are looking outside the company to fill that role.
Whether a player of Eve or not those who know of the game largely learned of it through its stories. It may have been a friend telling them about a midnight raid in nulsec that saw them tricking an enemy corp into launching into an ambush, or reading an article about an alliance leader robbing his own friends of billions of ISK. Compelling stories bubble up from the mechanics of this emergent space MMO.
Recognising this, Eve’s developer CCP have created an interactive timeline that will be populated with the major stories of the game’s decade long history.
Today the CEO of Space Monkey’s Aliiance, a major alliance in EVE Online, robbed his own collective blind, making off with currency and assets totalling more than 440 billion ISK.
In an open letter, Space Monkey’s CEO EX Loft, AKA Alisonia, wrote “I was spending needless hours on something that was pointing SMA into the direction of NOWHERE [so...] Tonight I stole about 220B+ worth of assets, this on top of what I had already taken. The total comes to around 440B in assets.
EVE’s next expansion, Odyssey, will be bringing extensive changes to the games Player Owned Stations (POS). These stretch from little things like improving the UI to much-wanted features like private hanger bays for corporation members.
If you were wanting to head over to Reykjavik this April and attend EVE Fanfest to see all that CCP has planned for their space-based MMO and DUST 514 but were:
A) too slow in buying a ticket
B) Couldn’t afford travelling to a small island halfway between Europe and America
C) Scared of volcanoes
Then have we got news for you.
All of Fanfest’s talks will be streamed for free! Though, if you want you can also throw down some money for some extras.
Odyssey is the newly announced expansion pack to CCP’s space MMO, EVE Online. Not content with already having a vast universe for their players to battle over, Odyssey will take all that space already in the game and enrich it with secrets for capsuleers to search out with their new exploration systems.
That’s not the only change the expansion will bring to the table, mind.
One of the most fascinating facets of Eve Online, at least for outsiders, is its Council of Stellar Management (CSM) - the player board given a voice and an industry-unprecedented amount of impact in the game’s continuing development. Now CCP are working on something similar for Eve’s shootier sibling - a something they’re tentatively calling the Dust 514 War Council.
