Over the weekend CCP Games held their semi-annual in-person gathering of capsuleers with over a thousand EVE Online players coming together in Reykjavik, Iceland to hear about the future of Eve Online.  Held over three days this year’s fan fest brought with it the announcement of the next three major content releases for EVE, the introduction of a new line of deployable structures and the tease of some mysterious content due out later this year.

The May Content Drop

Blood Raider Shipyards

Interactions with NPC pirate factions are about to escalate quite a bit with the addition of the Blood Raider Shipyards with in the May 9^th release. This hostile Amar offshoot will begin deployment of their own shipyards which are similar to the player owned Engineering Complexes in design. Only a limited number of these shipyards will be deployed across New Eden at a time and upon destruction, a special blueprint for one of the Blood Raider Capital ships will drop, This means that competition from other players will be fierce for this highly coveted loot.

Here is how CCP’s site about the May Release describes the Blood Raider Shipyards:

“Blood Raider shipyards provide a unique opportunity for capsuleers from across the cluster to assault Blood Raider manufacturing facilities and military staging points,salvaging blueprints that will allow the construction of formidable Blood Raider capital vessels.”

Three New Blood Raider Capital Ships

Those lucky enough to survive the Blood Raider Shipyards PVE events will be rewarded with one of three brand new Capital blueprints that they can either use to manufacture one of these three new ships or sell for large amounts of ISK on the marketplace.

Here are the three new Capital ships available in the upcoming release:

• The Dagon: A battlefield support ship that excels at armor repair.
• The Molok: A modified Avatar Titan that has the ability to drain capacitor from other ships on the battlefield.
• The Chemosh: Combining hard-hitting turrets with the Molok’s vampire technology the Chemosh adds some kick to any existing fleet.

Changes To PLEX & In-Game Premium Currencies

(Image via Crossing Zebras)

Pilots in New Eden have multiple ways that they can upgrade their account from the free-to-play Alpha tier to the subscription based Omega clone status. Some of these involve giving CCP real money (typically between $15  – $20CDN a month depending on the amount of game time subscribed), earning enough in-game ISK to purchase a Pilot’s License Extension (PLEX) for an additional 30 days of game time or earning PLEX through the refer-a-friend referral links.

Another entirely second premium currency currently in exists in EVE Online called Aurum which is used to purchase cosmetic items in the “New Eden Store”. Basically, CCP will be retiring Aurum entirely with the May release and making PLEX granular. Instead of purchasing a single PLEX item that can be redeemed for the in-game time, Pilots will be able to purchase PLEX in smaller chunks and spend it on a number of existing services including re-customizing their character, optional apparel, extending their subscription time or donating it to a friend. Don’t have enough ISK to buy the entire 30 days right away? Save up PLEX in smaller chunks until you have the 500 needed for 30 days by storing the new granular PLEX in your accounts PLEX Wallet.

This is how CCP explained the changes to PLEX, their official developer blog on this change has an entire breakdown of the coming changes and an FAQ for existing players:

“Currently, PLEX is rather large. By always existing as a one-month chunk of subscription time, PLEX can be cumbersome to buy and trade. We think it would be great if it could be broken into smaller units that fit your needs rather than always being bound to the size of 30 days. With that in mind, our first planned change is to convert every existing PLEX into 500 PLEX. After the change, anything you could get for 1 Plex from CCP will instead require 500 Plex. This new PLEX granularity will allow us to sell smaller PLEX packages, and allow you to trade whatever amounts you like with each other.”

New Introduction Movie:

The Winter Expansion: Unknown PVE Events In Empire Space

New Expansion:

(Image Via Eve Online Dev Blog)

CCP is hard at work preparing a brand new expansion that will see new dynamic Player Vs Environment content come to New Eden. Specific details about this expansion were kept vague during the Fan Fest keynote and really any talk about the expansion’s existed that happened to come up during any panels.

What little we do know can basically be summed up nicely in CCP’s own words:

“We are going all-in with the EVE Online winter expansion. Using all new capabilities (dynamic PvE etc.), we will create amazing new content in the universe. The heart of this expansion will be all about new content: New challenges, new rewards, new aspects of EVE to learn and explore in Empire space. Stay tuned for more info.”

So Much More

(Image via CCP Games)

There was so much more information shared during the Eve Fan Fast keynote address and the almost six hours of daily content streamed on CCP’s Twitch channel over the weekend on Saturday and Sunday. If you’re a veteran capsuleer or simply feel like the world of New Eden might be interesting after reading this nearly 1,000 word summary of the major announcements I highly recommend giving some of it a watch. Not only is CCP’s dedication to their now 13 year old MMO so apparent but the EVE Online community is some of the passionate players I’ve ever shared a server with.

It wasn’t all flashy trailers & keynote presentations either – everything from lectures from real scientists, to community driven concept art panels to insights into the largest player run economies in gaming were available through CCP’s Twitch stream. EVE Online is a vast sandbox and clearly CCP has a lot of changes planned over the next year that will continue to evolve the content and user experience of Eve Online.