The festivities for the twenty-first anniversary of the space MMORPG EVE Online began today, with various challenges and rewards scheduled for a month. It is also an opportunity to take stock of the situation.
The XXI Capsule Day celebration is officially underway, leaving 30 days to complete the challenges and reap this year's rewards. Combat, exploration and production on the menu, allowing you to accumulate enough points to obtain boosters, filaments and SKINS. The chasms are at the heart of this year's offering, in addition to sites scattered across New Eden. Alongside this, a daily login rewards track will earn up to 650,000 CP for subscribers, among other bonuses. This celebration marks Eve Online in its third decade of operation.
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And unlike most others MMORPG, EVE Online continues to display the number of players connected to its single server. This barometer — available online — allows us to partly grasp the health of the game, with a confirmed recovery since 2022. The extension Uprising had then succeeded in revitalizing the mechanics of faction warfare and the low security systems where it takes place. The same maneuver is particularly expected this year for another sector of the New Eden universe, with Equinox, a sign of a certain ambition for the game even today, even if the studio continues to explore other avenues.
An ambition for EVE, but scattered
For a long time, CCP Games tried to diversify, with the desire to reproduce the success of EVE Online. A series of failures later, the studio persists with Project Awakeninga revisited version of EVE revolving around blockchain technology and EVE Vanguard to link a shooter to EVE Online.
If the first project is a good way to separate its community, the second can become an asset for EVE by bringing it a new gameplay and above all by allowing you to set foot in this universe after several aborted attempts. Game sessions suggest potential in both cases, but also developments far from being able to come to fruition in the near future.
Constant evolution
In the meantime, EVE Online continues to evolve at the rate of two expansions per year. It involves both overhauling outdated parts while adding new features. This balance, sought by any studio wishing to make its game persist over the years, is relatively well adjusted for the moment, without reaching consensus depending on in which corner of the universe the player is located.
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The next expansion will look at the part of the space where security is zero, such as play interest. Indeed, two coalitions — each counting several tens of thousands of pilots — now share the universe, having become too powerful to confront each other directly. This real cold war struggles to warm the hearts of players playing in 0.0 and above all brings up the devastating desire to look elsewhere. Scheduled for next June, the Equinox extension therefore has the main challenge of revitalizing the zero security space, with already some ideas to confront.
At the same time, EVE Online continues to display graphics that are as current as ever. Again this year, several additions including the management of shadows and lights on the hull of the ships flatter the retina. CCP Games also continues to strengthen the identity of player organizations, between the addition of corporation projects and the possibility of creating appearances of structures or soon ships to share. Supporting new players remains one of the studio's priorities, allowing EVE Online to begin today in the best possible conditions since its launch in 2003…