CCP, the developer and publisher of the massively
multiplayer online game EVE Online, announced that its EVE Online: Exodus expansion will be
released worldwide on November the 17, 2004.
Available as a free downloadable
upgrade, the expansion will have a major impact on the EVE universe as a whole. It will
incorporate scores of new game play features, improvements to current functionality,
performance enhancements and user interface changes.
EVE Online is now one of the
fastest growing massively multiplayer online games. In the last 12 months subscriber numbers
have more than doubled to 54,000. This growth has made the EVE server cluster the largest
persistent world with more players on a single shard than any other MMO game in the U.S. and
Europe.
The EXODUS expansion finally gives our players the opportunity to truly begin
the territorial conquest they have been building up for said Reynir Harðarsson, CCP's Art
Director and founder of CCP. All players can now affect the political landscape of the EVE
world by conquering everything from solar systems to whole regions of space... This feature
originated from the player community, and demonstrates well that EVE is a living world that
evolves through player interaction.
EVE Online: Exodus is predicted to have a
revolutionary impact on the persistent world game genre. Exodus contains new tools that
allow powerful players to manage very large political structures like alliances, which can
contain thousands of players each. The sizes of player alliances in EVE are considerably
greater than in any other MMO game. By formalizing the gathering of player corporations into
player alliances, along with tools sets to allow these massive entities to control
territory, the current underlying power structures will be more visible to
players.
The EVE 3D graphics engine has been enhanced to offer outstanding
performance in demanding situations such as when hundreds of players engage in massive fleet
battles. New special effects, ships and NPCs, along with many interface changes further
enhance the player's immersion and experience of actual space flight. To demonstrate the
new expansion, CCP has released a new EVE Online: Exodus trailer available by following the
download tab above.
Exodus improves the starting experience for new players. For the
first time new players will get a detailed manual to guide them along their way. Casual
players will also enjoy the new Deadspace Complexes, which are massive game arenas, where
they can gather and join forces with other players to attempt to complete large scale
battles with NPC's.
