From: http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=733

Introducing Tyrannis
reported by CCP t0rfifrans | 2010.02.19 17:45:58

Hi there.

It‘s that time of year again. CCP‘s developers have finished planning and preparing and have started work on the next expansion for EVE Online. The exact release date will be announced later, but let‘s say that it will happen before the summer solstice.

What‘s in the package?

For a long time we have had people asking us for more options to build up their own infrastructure. It‘s something that comes up frequently at Fanfest, in past CSMs and during casual conversations with players. There seems to be some deep Freudian desire to erect something monumental. To make stuff. To create something new. At last Fanfest we announced our plans to allow you, the pod-pilots of New Eden, to shift your foci away from the heavens for a moment, onto the planets. In Dominion, we gave the planets a facelift, updating the graphics with beautiful landscapes, awe inspiring deserts, peaceful Ewok-friendly green worlds and violent burning lava fields. But that was just eye candy, right? Well, not quite. In our upcoming expansion, Tyrranis, ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS.

OMG did you say all of the planets!?

That‘s right, you will finally be able to survey for juicy deposits of minerals and other goodies, build infrastructure to harvest them, store them, process them and launch them into space. Build complex networks of facilities and fine tune them for optimal production. All in a very massive single shard sandboxy way as only EVE can provide. And it‘s not just the terran planets. It‘s ALL OF THEM. The gas giants, the lava planets, the ice worlds, the water worlds and even the elusive plasma planets. Each type with their unique properties. Maintaining facilities on gruesomely hostile planets will be tougher and more demanding, but the rewards may be so much more “onturning.”

More will be revealed in upcoming blogs and on our test server, Singularity. Make note however that Singularity is a test server, primarily intended for testing of code in development and nothing is final until it hits Tranquility. All graphics, UI, balancing and mechanics are subject to change, iteration and polish...

Is there combat on planets?

No, not in this expansion. This expansion is about exploration and industry. When something goes bad or breaks it is because of the owner‘s mismanagement, and when things are awesome and perfect, it is because of skill and hard labor on part of the player that runs the facilities.

In future expansions you will be able to project military force for attack and defense of planetary installations. That will be where DUST 514 will connect with EVE. But DUST 514 will not be coming out at the same time as Tyrannis, so that is at a later date.

EVE Gate

In September last year, in a devblog by CCP Caedmon introduced our new Web Frontend into EVE Communication codenamed COSMOS. It was later branded "New Eden". In the agile spirit of CCP, we have since renamed it and decided on the final name which is EVE Gate, which makes sense because it is your gate into EVE. Clever, eh?

EVE Mail, Calendar and Contacts

EVE Gate will allow you to interact with EVE through a regular web browser. At first, we are giving you communication and collaboration tools. You will be able to access your EVE Mail through a browser, we are adding a calendar both in-game and out of game and are upgrading and streamlining our contacts and standings system. There is also a system for posting updates for players, corporations and alliances. More details on those changes will follow in blogs to be released in the coming weeks. EVE Gate is a foundation which we are architecting in a way that allows us to build deeper interaction with the game itself in future iterations.

Overall improvements

We are working on other optimizations and improvements throughout the game, as usual with our expansions. A task force is working on reducing fleet fight lag, often working deep into the night chasing action around on TQ, while another team is developing an advanced simulation environment for load testing on our local servers.

There is a sense of excitement in the air here at CCP. Today our development teams finished the first of their three week sprints, ending in a demo where we saw parts of the both the planetary feature and EVE Gate already running, with mocked up UI and graphics. Our engineers, artists and designers are deeply committed to continue to deliver a compelling EVE experience to all of our players, deepening the game with exciting new functionality while iterating, polishing and improving existing systems and code. We truly look forward to delivering Tyrannis to you. Soon.
 

 Yeah baby, a carebear approach to start with but we are getting PLANET EXPLORATION finally.

I'm so curious how will this planet exploration develop... Gona take some free trial to check it out for sure :)

I wouldn't call it exploration, I would call it "harvesting".

Time to play Eve.

Well, this should be interesting.  More harvesting..

something for everyone... even the console players will eventually have something to fight over.... and corporations/alliances something to pay the dust 514 players to defend/capture/destroy..... this is just the beginning of CCP's world domination of the MMO genre! ... or something like that...

Thinking about it more, this should change the population of systems if it turns out to be profitable...

And this kind of harvesting only requires infrastructure not mining lasers so while you sleep, money will be made.

Originally posted by Eveeldour

Well, this should be interesting.  More mining..

Fixed that for ya'. :P

Planet interaction as such is my least concern, what are actualy planetary resources supposed to be used for is where it gets actualy interesting.

so does this mean that you can actully get out of your ship and explore the planetss by foot?

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Originally posted by Muffpojken
so does this mean that you can actully get out of your ship and explore the planetss by foot?
 

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No.

Originally posted by Muffpojken

so does this mean that you can actully get out of your ship and explore the planetss by foot?

 

No, but ST:O is out now, so if you really want a spaceship game where you can get out, thats your first choice.

Im looking forward to this expansion, looks like it might be epicly fun for the civ players amoung us.

Sounds interesting but the main feature in the post can be summed up in just one sentence:

"We're going to tie in planets into the economy somehow."

I'm looking forward to when they can start delving into specifics.

I for one cannot wait. The thing is, if I said it wouldn't affect me directly I would be lying. Even the expansions that seem to serve no purpose to a particular playstyle can have a massive effect and change the game drastically. As with IRL, changing the dynamics of supply, demand and the aquisition of resources can mean the small difference in the price of a T1 ship to a pvp'er or members of a fleet, but on a large scale, can run into billions of isk.

what i see whit this is the first step to add  a CIV approach for eve planets i have enjoyed CIV games and pharaoh

This is pretty much a placeholder for Dust-514, but there's nothing wrong with that IMO. Making sure that there are a lot of assets in place to fight over and a lot of (by then) festering grudges to spark fights over them when Dust launches is just sensible. As far as current gameplay goes, this is basically adding a SimCity style minigame to EVE, plus adding a little more variety to the trading game. Again, nothing wrong with that - EVE needs more things to do.

Hopefully they have also devoted a huge effort in to bug-fixing as well. They lost a hell of a lot of ground in that area with Dominion.

The real deal for 2010 (and beyond) is Incarna. If CCP get that right, then they'll boost EVE in to the big league of MMOs. No more "niche" status. I wouldn't be surprised to see them hit 1M subs by the end of 2011 - IF they get it right.

I can't say I got all warm and fuzzy as I read that : (  I hope their working on the old as they bring in the new. Another free  expansion is great but the real successes of the last one seemed mostly cosmetic, not that they weren't need and important, but I would  hate to see that happen again.

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Originally posted by qazyman
I can't say I got all warm and fuzzy as I read that : ( 

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Me neither. There's just so much unfinished business from the last two expansions

Originally posted by batolemaeus

 

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Originally posted by qazyman
I can't say I got all warm and fuzzy as I read that : ( 

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Me neither. There's just so much unfinished business from the last two expansions

Yeah, well... :CCP:

Originally posted by batolemaeus

 

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Originally posted by qazyman
I can't say I got all warm and fuzzy as I read that : ( 

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Me neither. There's just so much unfinished business from the last two expansions

yet you see nothing EvE is going for "mainstream" (i mean for ppl that dont like ships and f1-f8 pew pew) this players will care less about the sov and pewpew problems so when a big problem will hit the gameplay more players will ignore it