Free for everyone
Today during their 2018 Fanfest keynote, CCP Games announced the new Into the Abyss expansion for EVE Online. It’ll take them into the Abyssal Deadspace, a special new Deadspace location beyond the normal pockets. It’s a unique hostile environment with new NPCs and rare loot.
Because of the way EVE is structured, it’ll be free for all players, not just subscribers. As a reminder EVE went free-to-play in late 2016, and just last year CCP removed some of the training wheels for free accounts, allowing them to advance their characters more freely.
Into the Abyss will also feature Faction Citadels, player-created landmarks, a new race of NPCs with ships and modules (Triglavians) and a (non-retroactive) character progression activity tracker — with multiple progression paths and milestones. The Triglavians “appear to be human” in their origin according to the lore, but are a bit off due to their isolation from other civilizations. You’ll access the new Abyssal Deadspace through new items called “filaments,” which are basically dungeon keys/Diablo III rifts that can be activated by cruisers with varying rarity.
Into the Abyss is the 38th named expansion for EVE and it’ll launch on May 29. Their first was the Castor update in December of 2003, seven months after the original launch.
