Eve Online is CCP Games’ massively multiplayer online role-playing game. The long-running MMO will receive its nineteenth expansion, Odyssey, on June 4, the developer announced today at PAX East. The update will include a revamped scanning mechanic, user interface tweaks and hidden locations among the game’s 7,929 solar systems.
Jon Lander, executive producer of Eve Online, said Odyssey is a continuance of the game’s evolution. He went on further to say “Really, 2012 was about getting the foundations in place for a second decade, and Odyssey will be the the first step in that. It’s taking us back to our roots, taking us back to when people first came into the game in 2003 and there’s this huge expanse of the unknown.” He also added, “People never really knew what was out there. Were things dangerous? Were they scary? What would they get? What would they lose? Is there going to be some pirate around the corner who’s going to get me?”
Jon Lander also said, “Over the years, it’s either become harder to get into it, or people have discovered it all and it’s no longer exciting —there’s no longer a sense of the unknown.” CCP worked hard on the new user interface, and this began about 18 months ago, when CCP rewrote a new back-end engine for the UI.
Jon Lander said, “One of the unique and interesting challenges of having a 10-year-old game is, we’ve seen in the past when we just removed something that a lot of our players are very used to and replace it with something else, that’s a very dangerous way to go. You’ve got to be very, very sure of yourself. We had a good examples last year where we got that balance wrong.” He also said, “So, listening to the feedback from our players — listening to what they’re telling us — we’ve started reintroducing these concepts now, and introducing these new graphical elements using this new rendering path in addition to what we already have.”
Odyssey will redistribute and rebalance the MMO, as well as add new ships for players to use. Jon Lander finally added “When you think about all of the great science fiction … it’s all about ‘What is it?’ What’s going on? I don’t know what’s going on, and I love that feeling of discovery. Odyssey is really about enabling our players to do that.”
Let us know what you think about Eve Online’s latest expansion below.
