The latest addition to EVE Online, EVE Online: Retribution, is available for free and launched today. EVE Online is reaching its tenth year of continuous growth, which is pretty impressive for a game. I was more impressed by the fact that EVE Online is now a part of the Museum of Modern Art, which now has a permanent display of video games.
It is about time that people realize that gaming is both a form of art and entertainment, like pretty much everything else. This is the 18th expansion to the series, and is one of the largest updates to the series to date. “The EVE Universe has always been alive, filled with the choices of the hundreds of thousands of pilots who’ve lived in it,” said Jon Lander, Executive Producer of EVE Online. “With Retribution we’ve made many far reaching changes and I believe that EVE will feel revitalized as we head into our second decade.”
The additions to EVE Online: Retribution include NPC changes, improvements to corporation recruitment, as well as a new bounty hunting system. According to the studio behind EVE Online, “A unique bounty hunting system allows players to exert pressure on adversaries at the Alliance, Corporation and individual levels and a new ability to openly sell kill rights means a lot more eye-for-an-eye justice will be had.
A reworked “Crimewatch” system makes clear the outcomes of acts both legal and illegal while still leaving limitless choice up to the player who decides to commit them. In a massive rebalancing effort, every frigate, destroyer and cruiser in EVE will be re-engineered to provide more gameplay options for new players and veterans alike, revitalizing some of the less frequently used hulls. Each of EVE’s main factions will add a deadly new destroyer to the market with this latest expansion, alongside other new additions: a mining frigate, salvage drones and a micro-jump drive.”
