EVE's biggest-ever expansion detailed

By Oli Welsh Published 8 November, 2008

March 2009, Tech 3, modular ships, more.

On the last day of the EVE Online Fanfest, developer CCP has unveiled the biggest-ever expansion for the space MMO, which will be released on March 10 next year (not in the summer, as was originally stated).

The unnamed expansion will introduce "Tech 3" modular ship designs, branching epic mission arcs, further improvements to the new player experience, and exploration of uncharted space through unstable wormholes.

In a drive to find new players, the expansion will also ship in a boxed copy of EVE, with all previous expansion content. The box will be published by Atari, whose chief David Gardner appeared in a video message hailing the deal.

Senior producer Torfi Frans Olafsson said the update would be "the biggest expansion in EVE as of today", with a larger team working on it than the game has seen in its lifespan.

The focus of the expansion will be "true exploration", with players using new skills and modules to travel through wormholes into all-new, unconnected space. There they will find unique stellar phenomena and the resources and artefacts that will lead to the third level of technology in the game universe, Tech 3 - the first such update since Tech 2 was introduced back in 2004.

The star feature of Tech 3 will be modular, customisable ships. Instead of providing each faction with one or two new ships each, CCP will provide each with a template that comes in five sections, with five options in each. That's a total of 25 possible basic ships for each faction, with many more thousands of smaller modifications possible (7776 permutations possible, to be exact). This announcement was received rapturously by the Fanfest audience.

Epic, branching mission arcs will provide hierarchies of missions, organised in trees, that will provide a varying experience depending on success or failure. These missions will cover the storyline introducing the wormholes to the universe.

Additionally, the new player experience will be made more accessible. It will take less time to get a new character flying in space, with more of the character creation process spread over the first few days in the game (although Olafsson also promised that creating alts would still be as streamlined as experienced players expect).

Earlier in the week, it was also hinted that a major graphics upgrade would be coming in this timeframe.

The March expansion will be the next update after Quantum Rise, which launches this coming Tuesday. All EVE expansions are free of charge to subscribers.

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.

You may also like...

Comments (10) Latest comment 3 years ago

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

  • Pirotic #1 3 years ago

    I've always admired EVE, they seem to have carved out a very stable little niche for themselves but still always strive to be something bigger and better.

    Might even pick up a new boxed edition just to see how it's changed since I last played it (which must be.. 4/5 years ago?).

  • DFawkes #2 3 years ago

    I've always fancied Eve, but never actually bothered trying it because of its hardcore reputation. But I've finally decided to give it a go on Steam. If it's hard/rubbish, 3 weeks is more than enough.

  • shamblemonkee #3 3 years ago

    get yourself in one of the starter player corps like eve uni.

  • HardToast #4 3 years ago

    Can you control the ships using wasd instead of point/clicking where you want to go in the exp?

  • Apostle #5 3 years ago

    This sounds truly awesome. I've always though I should be playing EVE, as a sci-fi fan, but the trial just turned me off. They need to find a more exciting way to introduce new players to the game, without swamping them with controls first.

  • CaptCastle #6 3 years ago

    "five sections, with five options in each. That's a total of 25 possible basic ships"

    It's very late and I'm tired, but shouldn't that be 3125 possible ships?

  • Nill #7 3 years ago

    Yeah, I've always thought that I should be playing EVE as well. Although the stories we hear from it are outstanding, whenever I've picked up the trial I've just never found it engaging enough.

    I'm sure that with the road-plan they have for it, I'll be picking it up sooner or later. Maybe with the walking on space-stations expansion, which btw, is taking an awful long time!

  • Sk1Zy #8 3 years ago

    @ Nill
    Well, i was at the presentation and the stuff they are doing with Walking in Stations is pretty amazing, loaded with really cool features and the graphics are breathtaking. The lighting system they are using is groundbreaking, first game to use this technology and it looks amazing. Also they said on the conference that their focus has shifted a bit away from EVE during this rapid growth of the last year and they've just recently assigned a lot more developers to EVE to push these things forward.

  • Chimpy #9 3 years ago

    Played Eve for 1.5 years when it first came out. Really liked it but it's very unforgiving. Also if you're not into PvP the end game isn't much fun.

    It has a great player based economy and guild/alliance management.

  • Velios #10 3 years ago

    M.Corp is recruiting, and we like Eurogamers! Take a look at theM.Corp Website!