News Drops Before The EVE Vegas 2019 Keynote

CCP managed to drop some news before the beginning of the convention today. The biggest news, of course, is the announcement that EVE: Echoes will enter beta in December.

GUANGZHOU, China and REYKJAVÍK, Iceland – Oct. 24, 2019 – NetEase Games and CCP Games today announced that the open beta for EVE Echoes, the authentic EVE Online experience for mobile devices, will go live this December. Developed by NetEase Games in conjunction with CCP Games, EVE Echoes was unveiled last year and will be available to demo for the first time at EVE Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada, this weekend.

In celebration of the open beta announcement, new assets, an official website, and social media channels are now live for EVE Echoes.

Venture into the depths of space with official gameplay footage here: https://youtu.be/7Cai8fwFa0I

“We’re very excited for the first public outing of EVE Echoes, the next revolutionary step in mobile MMO gaming,” said Hilmar V. Petursson, CEO of CCP Games. “I can’t wait to see the reaction from our core PC players, who will no doubt recognize the unparalleled scale and sophisticated gameplay of EVE Online’s virtual world running through the veins of EVE Echoes.”

“CCP Games is a pioneer in space MMOs, and will make its mark on the industry even further by expanding the EVE experience to mobile with EVE Echoes,” said Ethan Wang, Vice President of NetEase, Inc. “Combining CCP’s leadership in game design with our NeoX game engine and leadership in game publishing will no doubt create a spacefaring sandbox MMO for mobile devices unlike anything seen before.”

EVE Echoes brings the vast, interstellar EVE universe from PC to the palm of your hand. Built using NetEase Games’ proprietary NeoX graphics engine, EVE Echoes stays true to CCP’s hallmark EVE Online design principles and immerses pilots in beautiful starry skies and across boundless star fields. Pilots must collect resources, manufacture items, and explore thousands of uncharted planets to write their own history in pursuit of galactic glory. A realistic social system enables players to join and lead corporations, form coalitions, capture rival territories, engage in intergalactic combat, and much more across thousands of planetary systems.

I know, copy/pasting press releases is a bad practice. Pearl Abyss purchased CCP Games for the EVE Online IP and EVE: Echoes is the first chance for the investment to pay off for the South Korean game company. I passed up a chance to sign up for a hands-on demonstration yesterday, mainly because I didn't know my schedule for Saturday. Although I don't play mobile games, I should attend one of the 30-minute demonstrations so I can report first-hand on how the game feels.

The next biggest news is CCP will release the Korean-language client for EVE Online on 14 November, the first day of the giant G-STAR 2019 conference. Making a Korean-language client once CCP Games was purchased by Peal Abyss seemed a foregone conclusion. Announcing the launch of the client at G-STAR indicates some sort of marketing push will occur in association with the announcement.

One thing I can confidently say is that those who choose to just look at the daily peak concurrent user (PCU) count will probably not notice a difference. The effect of any Korean player influx will occur during the slow, Australian time zone. An influx of 20,000 new Korean accounts could result in a rise of up to 3,000 accounts in the daily average concurrent user (ACU) number. That many new players could also result in time-zone tanking becoming a much less viable strategy.

The next set of noteworthy news is the announcement of the replacement for the Crimson Harvest this year. Gone is the tale of Bloody Omar and The Blood Raiders. Last year's event began on 23 October and ran for two weeks. This year, CCP chose to go with a much less lore-friendly title, EVE's Halloweeen Horrors. The event introduces as yet undisclosed changes to combat interceptors.

Beware of roaming wolf packs at Halloween! An upgrade to Combat Interceptors in EVE Online means more damage, more fittings and more reason to jump into these ships for some Trick or Treat action!

In a first I can recall, the holiday event will have a dedicated PvP component.

This Halloween it will definitely pay to undock and go on a spine-chilling rampage as there will be a shocking PVP event from 11:00 UTC on 29 October to 11:00 UTC on 5 November. Tune in to the EVE Vegas live stream on Twitch for more details!

Or course, the event has a daily log-in component as well.

From 11:00 UTC on 28 October to 11:00 UTC on 3 November, every pilot that logs into the game will receive rewards that range from free Skill Points to limited SKINs. We promise that there is nothing to be afraid of.

No word if the current daily skill points for NPC kills event will continue to run.

In a few hours EVE Vegas officially begins. I'll try to write up as much news as I can. I do have the disadvantage of being on-site, so I may wind up watching the VOD from CCP's Twitch channel to see what I missed.