Effectively onboarding new, curious but uncommitted EVE Online players is a conundrum that developers Fenris Creations, formerly CCP Games, have been trying to solve for decades. Many are drawn to the MMORPG’s stories of espionage and military adventure, purely narrated by players, only to bounce back onto its dense shell of complex economic space calculations and its sandbox occupied by pirates and crooks who often go unpunished. Perhaps the game’s next big expansion, Cradle of War, will have better luck when it launches on June 9.
Revealed today at EVE FanFest (during which I sat among hundreds of superfans, quietly hiding my own failure to complete the tutorial), Cradle of War is as combat-heavy as it looks, promising unique, objective-based military campaigns for each of its four major empire factions. But it’s the peaceful network of beginner-friendly systems, named Exordium, that might be the expansion’s most impactful addition. As originally revealed in AprilExordium is a “truly safe space” for new accounts, where PvP is entirely disabled (unlike current startup systems, where it is simply heavily monitored) and where beginners can more gradually learn the basics of ship movement, trading, and PvE combat through a series of “staged sandboxes” before launching into New Eden proper.
As someone who finds EVE too impenetrable, I should welcome a change that specifically punches holes in it my size, although Exordium also seems to be in danger of becoming the least EVE-like place in the galaxy. In a game that’s all about risk and unpredictability, this feels like a corner of DayZ’s Chernarus where guns don’t exist and zombies aren’t allowed to bite you. That said, a more lenient break-in period would probably help keep players around, and simply living out your days in the Exordium nursery doesn’t seem particularly sustainable in the long term. It will apparently be garbage for mining and the trades will be heavily taxed, so there will be incentives to get a degree and look for a real job.
The mercenary sector, for example, will be booming in Cradle of War. The expansion’s narrative returns to its central empires, and willing players can sign up to fight their battles in distinct military campaigns built on EVE’s existing Freelance Jobs framework. In keeping with the game’s enthusiasm for betrayals, mercenaries can choose which faction missions to undertake, without necessarily having to stick to just one. However, not all empires can prevail, so expect corporations and alliances to clash in service of a favored faction. I hope you like news articles with “…destroyed ships worth $XXXXXX” in the title.
Speaking of ships, Cradle of War is full of them. There are eight new ships in total, split between a series of faction-based naval destroyers and some Tech 2 command carriers. I’m guessing the latter feature is in high demand, considering it received the most deafening cheers of the entire FanFest keynote. To be honest, they’re supposed to be the “ultimate support ships”, and I generally like the ultimate stuff too.
If you own a, uh, Tech 2 Command Carrier (Yeah) proves to be an insufficient source of prestige, Cradle of War will also introduce achievements (which are exactly what they sound like) and titles. The latter are earned through the former and will adorn your character as a symbol of your cheevo prowess.
All of this will arrive in June, and as with previous expansions, Fenris has already scheduled a major Cradle of War update that will arrive a few months – in September to be precise – after the main event. Details on this are altogether sparser, although the update will include a significant balance change aimed at reducing the ability of corps/alliances to “project” the power of large fleets “over long distances”. Ooooh. It seems that this would have radically changed most of the battles described in the Six-hour EVE Online documentary I looked before I flew here.
