EVE social network site detailed

By Oli Welsh Published 2 October, 2009

Renamed New Eden, out early 2010.

CCP has revealed ambitious plans for its EVE Online web portal and social network, which will open in the first quarter of 2010, at the EVE Fanfest.

Previously codenamed Cosmos, the portal will now be known as New Eden - the same name as EVE's universe, because "we don't want to differentiate between the web app and the EVE universe", according to CCP's social producer.

Inspired by social networking sites such as Facebook as LinkedIn, New Eden is similar to the MyLOTRO site launched by Lord of the Rings Online developer Turbine in the US, or a more evolved version of the World of Warcraft Armory. In the future, it will integrate with console spin-off Dust 514 as well as EVE.

At launch next year, New Eden will feaure character profiles (biography, employment history, location, wealth), your character's skills and training queue, Facebook-style status updates, and news feeds for your friends, Corporation and Alliance.

There will be a new mail system, much-improved over the current EVE mail, with labels, spam prevention and Corp and Alliance mailing lists. This will be made available in the EVE game client ahead of the launch of New Eden, with the Dominion expansion later this year.

Perhaps the most impressive feature is a contacts system that merges friends lists and EVE's "standings" with the six-degrees-of-separation-style system of sites like LinkedIn. This list is populated automatically from all your interactions - whether combat, commerce or communication - and will provide information on how you're linked to or have interacted with any other player, either in-game or on New Eden.

After launch, New Eden will expand to include new forums, including secure CCP-hosted forums for every Corp and Alliance. There will be out-of-game text and voice chat support, which should even be able to link into mobile devices. There will be file hosting for images at least, and enhanced kill boards for combat records.

In-game information tracking of your market orders, contracts, wallet, science and industry, ship fittings and combat log will be supplied. Initially this will be read-only, but CCP will eventually make it possible to interact with the game database directly through New Eden - how much, it has yet to decide, and will do so in consultation with players, since the effects on the game's market in particular could be huge if access is extended beyond the game client.

We'll have more on EVE and Dust 514 from Fanfest in the next few days.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (11) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • MeBrains #1 2 years ago

    good on ya knob! your point being?!

    respect to CCP ever since they started Eve - the way they are proceeding with it - both dust and this - makes it very intriguing.

  • telboy007 #2 2 years ago

    Started playing eve again after 2 years out and having more fun with it this time, the expansions since I played last have helped flesh things out quite a lot. Eve commander is handy for keeping tabs on stuff and no doubt this will expand on that. All good, can't wait. :)

  • bunglebonce #3 2 years ago

    Any Eve players who don't frequent the forums here, join the eurogamer.net channel in-game.

    As for social networking, well it might help bring similar minded players together, but with the amount of alt characters around, I don't see it working as well as it might.
    Edited by 1 at 02/10/09 @ 14:47

  • SL33PY #4 2 years ago

    I love the way that CCP keeps on expanding functionally, graphically and content wise! Good job!

    Now I only need to find the courage to log in to EVE... I'm afraid I'll spend too much of my free time in game...

    I wish I was still in college, good times it were :(

  • telboy007 #5 2 years ago

    Cheers bunglebonce, will do :)

  • Kelduum #6 2 years ago

    There will be a new mail system, much-improved over the current EVE mail...

    And well needed it is.

    As a director for a large corp with 40+ members applying every day, the amount of messages we get which we simply don't need is simply astounding. Logging in after a few days away is painful, and finding actual messages in-amongst the junk is almost impossible.

  • Macross #7 2 years ago

    Im currently on a "break" which just means i cancelled my alts sub and keep skilling my main whilst not really playing much (you can never leave eve once it has you theres no escape!).

    But all this stuff looks ace, theres buckets of people I used to fly with and weve gone seperate ways that id love to touch base with again but cant cos they are hard to track down in the game and the mail system sucks ass right now. itd be nice to have em all on eve's fauxbook.

  • DodgyPast #8 2 years ago

    Splitting mail into from contacts, from NPC personalities and unknowns would be handy.

    I have my flashy off for mail off to prevent lag in the case of ship loss and actually being able to interact with it on a 2nd monitor from a web browser would be nice. I am wondering whether this will lead to access to change your skill queue from outside the game and also whether it will be empowering alliance leaders who need to be able to handle their paperwork when they should be doing their real jobs ;)

  • Whitewalker #9 2 years ago

    Eve's updates seem to be getting better and better..nice!

  • Nephirion #10 2 years ago

    Did CCP pay for the amount of news articles on the site today?

  • DodgyPast #11 2 years ago

    Nope, they had their fanfest over the weekend with lots of new information releasd first to the fans and then to the gaming sites.