EVE Online's next expansion, Viridian, hits in June, bringing more tools for player corporations as the next stage of warfare hits New Eden.
The upcoming expansion announcement comes on as CCP Games prepares to celebrate EVE Online's 20th anniversary, complete with fireworks in Jita 4-4, the unveiling of the Fabric of New Eden mosaic featuring over 80,000 EVE Online players.
Speaking with MMORPG.com last week ahead of this morning's announcement, EVE Online's community developer Peter "CCP Swift" Farrell tells us that while Uprising was more focused on getting players into the factional warfare fight, Viridian is more focused on the corporations being able to better service their corp members.
"Maybe Uprising was a little bit more individual focused, getting people into the war zone of factional warfare itself, Viridian is definitely about empowering corporations, giving them tools they never had access to before, helping them provide for their members."
One of the ways this works out, according to Swift, is by giving corporations tools to better contribute to a warzone without having to be on the frontlines. As a result of the tools being provided, corporations will be able to "organize much, much better." Swift says the team is focused in this expansion on giving corporations tools that the players have been asking for.
One improvement is the ability to tax Loyalty Points earned in-game right now, giving the corporation a better way to get the currency to then spend on the corporation itself - especially by selling the LP to make some ISK for the Corp coffers.
"So this is something that it's not like a sales tax or anything, the game doesn't treat this as a sink," CCP Swift tells me. "This is going to be a tool for corporations where they can set a tax on Loyalty Points so as members accrue them through different activities, be it missions or through Factional Warfare, corporations can get a cut."
Swift describes a scenario where corporations were getting LP by being forced to jump through loopholes, with members donating to corporations the LP itself. It was a clumsy convoluted system that, hopefully, the new tools offered by Viridian will streamline.
EVE Online's Viridian expansion also aims to expand on the overall toolsets provided to corporations, both big and small, to empower them all to make the most of every interaction in EVE between the corp and the member.
EVE Online's creative director Bergur Finnbogason tells me it's a way to allow corporations to "activate" their members.
"We want to go deep into the social construct of corporations," Bergur said in our interview. "We want to activate corporations to give [them] more ways to activate their members. And we want to give corporations ways to spend their hard-earned EverMarks."
CCP Games isn't just celebrating the announcement of one of the two expansions the team is releasing this year, but also the 20th anniversary this month. To that end, the team at CCP Games is celebrating with players this weekend on May 6th with a fireworks display at Jita 4-4, as well as developer interviews on Twitch and more.
The event will also see the unveiling of the EVE Online player mosaic, the Fabric of New Eden which features over 80,000 players in the piece of artwork. Additionally, EVE Online players who want to see their capsuleer names immortalized on the upcoming revamped Worlds Within A World monument will need to have an active Omega account on May 6th in order to qualify.
EVE Online's player base has been busy lately as well, as the MMO shows no signs of slowing down. Recently, massive battles were kicked off thanks to a renter's dispute in Nullsec, with the battles seeing some of the longest and most aggressive fighting since the end of the last major player war.
