EVE Online Announces No More Expansions, Moving to More Frequent Updates

Slycne

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Feb 19, 2006
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EVE Online Announces No More Expansions, Moving to More Frequent Updates

Instead of two yearly expansion, EVE Online will transition to smaller more frequent updates.

Andie Nordgren, Senior Producer for EVE Online, detailed during the EVE keynote at Fanfest about changes to how EVE Online would be updated in the future. Previously EVE put out two large free expansions each year that were a bundle of new features, updates, balance changes and new ships. While this has worked well enough for the last 11 years, starting now EVE Online will transition to roughly 10 updates a year. The expected cadence of changes should fall about every six weeks.

As she explained, the reason for this is that it offered a number of flexible advantages to the old system. First, new stuff simply gets to the players faster. A finished update doesn't need to wait for a twice a year cycle, it can instead be pinned to a much sooner date. Secondly, the goal was to create a method that allowed for more ambition. Previously due to the six month cycle, features tended to be more realistically grounded since missing a deadline would push them back so far and it was hard to break it up into smaller pieces if it was going to take years of expansions to come to completion.

[gallery=2436]

The keynote went on to detail the first update under this new method Kronos, the updates are named after titans now, though Kronos still retained much of the look and feel of a typical expansions since it was originally planned as one. Kronos's major focus is on industry, refining and improving the way EVE players build and manage their goods. A slew of changes are in the works to let the most industrial-minded players really work at maximizing their returns.

There are however plenty of updates supporting the destruction of said property though. Pirate faction ships have been rebalanced, with a particular emphasis on each faction have it's one cool and broken special bonus. They even introduced a brand new missile focused fleet of pirate ships, Mordu's Legion. You can see the three new Mordu's Legion ships in the gallery.

Only one keynote remains, but CCP usually likes to keep something up their sleeves for last.

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synobal

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Jun 8, 2011
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This could be a great thing, the big expansions had a tendency to uh break stuff on a grand scale when they were first released. Not always but there has been a few large fiascos with expansion roll out, Boot.ini anyone fiasco for example.


That said it could be bad if they don't follow through. Still nice to see they are adding Mordu's legion factional ships.
 

Scars Unseen

^ ^ v v < > < > B A
May 7, 2009
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I tried to enjoy Eve(was actually a subscribing player for about 5 years), but the gameplay just isn't my style. Looking forward to Valkyrie though.
 

wswordsmen

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Mar 27, 2009
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Someone screwed up the math somewhere a year has 52 weeks at 10 updates per year that is 5.2 updates. At 6 weeks per update that would be 8.5 updates.
 

direkiller

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Dec 4, 2008
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They have been moving to this anyway, most of the big changes over the past few years have been on the in between patches.
 

Eiv

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Oct 17, 2008
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Scars Unseen said:
I tried to enjoy Eve(was actually a subscribing player for about 5 years), but the gameplay just isn't my style. Looking forward to Valkyrie though.
Thats a crazy amount of time to 'try' something. Didn't you think something was wrong after a few weeks?
 

Scars Unseen

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May 7, 2009
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Leviano said:
Scars Unseen said:
I tried to enjoy Eve(was actually a subscribing player for about 5 years), but the gameplay just isn't my style. Looking forward to Valkyrie though.
Thats a crazy amount of time to 'try' something. Didn't you think something was wrong after a few weeks?
That was back when I had a lot more patience for MMOs. Besides, I wasn't always playing. Sometimes I just kept my subscription open to level up my skills(which happens in real time whether you're logged in or not). And it's not like I never had any fun at all. It just wasn't what I was looking for in a space game.
 

Strazdas

Robots will replace your job
May 28, 2011
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i like big updates more, because i like consistency even for tha half a year. but they have been doing small updates for a while and they were telling us this is coming for over 2 years now. glad to see it finally officially confirmed.
 

Spartan448

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Apr 2, 2011
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Oh my gosh, those Mordu's Legion ships look AMAZING. Trying to get them might just be enough to get me back into EVE.
 

Arctodus_Simus

When I say "oo", you say "long"
Aug 23, 2010
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I am very much liking the new Moa - the old one was sort of horrific :p

That said, ol' horrifying did have a certain charm I guess?
 

renegade7

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Feb 9, 2011
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Yea, they've been building up to this for a couple of years now. The last two and a half years of patches have been 6 week long series of rolling updates, it makes sense that they'd now be planning to spread it further, especially given how much EVE's universe (Both with Valkyrie and the "We're sorry we fucked up" changes coming to Dust 514) is going to take off. I might get back in this Summer.