Exodus Expansion Coming Nov 17

REYKJAVIK, ICELAND -- November 3rd, 2004 - CCP, the developer and publisher of the award winning massively multiplayer online game EVE Online, today announced that its highly anticipated EVE Online: EXODUS expansion will be released worldwide on November the 17th, 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, im provements 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 award winning 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 on www.eve-online.com.

"EXODUS is a great step on our journey towards a very big idea which is EVE," says Hilmar Veigar Petursson, CEO/CTO of CCP. "As presented at our Fan Fest last month, CCP has much in store for future expansions to the EVE universe which is now ready to grow to an unprecedented size."

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.

"We are very happy with the growth EVE has had during the last 12 months, and at the same time very grateful to our players for their active participation and interest in all aspects of the game." Says Magnus Bergsson CMO at CCP. "We are looking forward to see how the players will use the new tools in EXODUS and I am certain they will do something we never expected!"

Below is a short list of some of the more prominent new features in Exodus:

For a complete description please click here.