EVE is a community-driven massively multiplayer online (MMO) game, set in a world of galactic proportions. This online universe is governed by a hyper-capitalistic economy where space flight is the path to all commerce, communication, and conflict. Your mission is to establish yourself as a major competitor, trusted by your friends, feared by your enemies. To accomplish this, your principle tools -- apart from an impressive array of sophisticated equipment, customizable space ships and in-game corporations -- will be your natural business acumen, social skills, Machiavellian thinking and cunning combat strategies.

Set tens of thousands of years in the future, EVE Online is a breathtaking journey to the stars, to an immersive experience filled with adventure, riches, danger and glory. With nearly a quarter of a million subscribers worldwide inhabiting the same virtual universe, EVE features a vast player-run economy where your greatest asset is the starship, designed to accommodate your specific needs, skills and ambitions. EVE offers professions ranging from commodities trader to mercenary, industrial entrepreneur to pirate, mining engineer to battle fleet commander or any combination of these and much more. From brokering business deals to waging war, you will have access to a diverse array of sophisticated tools and interfaces to forge your own destiny in EVE.

CCP Games launched a major update to EVE Online: Legion, the latest expansion for its iconic spaceship MMO, EVE Online.

This update introduces significant changes to deepen fleet warfare, expands freelance jobs, and more, all shaped directly by feedback from Capsuleers. It embodies EVE’s hallmark of emergent gameplay, giving players fresh ways to express creativity, adapt strategies, and ensure New Eden remains a vibrant, ever-evolving sandbox.

CCP Games also set the stage for Operation Nemesis. In this first-ever EVE Universe world event, EVE Vanguard Warclones can have a lasting impact on EVE Online’s player-driven economy, strengthening the connection of ground-to-space play between the two games. Operation Nemesis kicks off at 11:00 UTC on September 16 and lasts through 11:00 UTC on October 2, 2025. Players who want to participate in Operation Nemesis can access the event through the EVE launcher, downloaded from the EVE Online website , Steam, Epic Games Store, or the EVE Vanguard website. More information about Operation Nemesis and EVE Vanguard can be found in the recent Director’s Letter for the event.

“The updates to EVE Online: Legion are a direct reflection of the incredible feedback and ideas we received from players and the Council of Stellar Management following the expansion’s release in May,” said Greg Hennessey, Game Design Director for EVE Online at CCP Games. “EVE has always been about building a universe together, and with this major update to the Legion expansion, we’re delivering enhancements that players have been asking for while also laying the foundation for our long-term vision of ‘EVE Forever.’ These refinements are designed to reward the passion, investment, and creativity of our community, ensuring that New Eden continues to thrive for years to come.”

“With the Legion major update and Operation Nemesis, we’re bringing space and ground closer together than ever before,” said Bergur Finnbogason, Creative Director at CCP Games. “Together, the Legion major update and Operation Nemesis mark the next leap in our vision for a fully interconnected EVE Universe. Capsuleers and Warclones alike will shape New Eden’s future, as these updates deliver a new era of consequence across both EVE Online and EVE Vanguard.”

EVE Online: Legion updates include:

• Sweeping ship balance changes and improvements to broad areas of the game. Underutilized ships have been revitalized, armor-focused vessels have been strengthened, and the overall combat landscape has been rebalanced to expand player choice and shake up long-standing strategies.
• Deeper exploration with the arrival of new and more frequent wormhole connections, alongside several quality-of-life upgrades for those who thrive on venturing into the unknown. The ESS (Encounter Surveillance System) also undergoes a significant overhaul, breathing new life into small-scale gameplay and offering fresh opportunities for mastery.
• The Freelance system expands with the daring new “Destroy Capsuleer” project type. Combined with ESI support, this opens the door to player-made bounty boards and mercenary-style contracts.
• Major quality of life improvements, including a free time-limited character resculpt token for better player expression, and changing the minimum requirements to join the Angel Cartel and Guristas pirate factions.

Operation Nemesis is a joint PvE operation tasked to EVE Vanguard’s Warclones and EVE Online’s Capsuleers to uncover valuable secrets hidden across New Eden. Connecting two games and realizing a sci-fi combined arms fantasy is only possible in the EVE Universe. It’s also the first time a direct economic connection has been established between EVE Online and EVE Vanguard, which can have lasting impacts across New Eden’s player-run corporations.

Operation Nemesis Key Features:

• In EVE Vanguard, Warclones set out complete assignments and faction expeditions while planetside. Completing assignments as a Vanguard Warclone reveals high-value convoys in highsec, lowsec, and nullsec space in EVE Online.
• As convoys are revealed, EVE Online Capsuleers can move to intercept them and earn valuable resources to gain the upper hand against rival factions in New Eden.
• Completing faction expeditions and tracking convoys is no easy task; players must disable Upwell defenses and push back Mordu’s Legion to complete their missions.
• EVE Online Capsuleers within five jumps from a convoy’s spawn are alerted to its location, creating a high-stakes race on who can intercept and loot its contents first.

In Operation Nemesis, EVE Online players can earn SKINs, Trade Tokens, implants, and even the possibility of PLEX (EVE Online’s premium currency) as rewards for raiding convoys.

What is Operation Nemesis?

Operation Nemesis is the next battle for you, the Vanguard, with boots on the ground and a gun in your hand in this forever war throughout New Eden. It’s a free, limited-time event, running from 12:00 UTC, 16 September - 12:00 UTC, 2 October, for anyone to play through the EVE Launcher.

But this one - unlike our Groundbreak and Solstice events in 2024 - is a little different. This isn’t just a test, a bunch of ‘stuff’ we’ve added that we want you to hammer, break, and give feedback on (though we still want that, a lot). This is the start of us building towards the real Vanguard experience we want for our early access launch in 2026 - fleshing out the ways you grow in power, how you operate within this universe, the arsenal you get to use, and, most importantly, grounding this experience much more within New Eden.

In Operation Nemesis, the narrative of the Vanguard is truly starting - from your first steps as a Warclone in our freshly added New Player Experience, to interacting with characters through expanded voice lines, and unraveling the narratives of different factions and corporations as they vie for your help in acquiring information, resources, and power through the Expeditions system.

The Deathless are building something that could shake up the entire universe of New Eden - you can help them in their secret endeavors, work with other organizations to intercept this knowledge, stall this work, or even implant agents within the Deathless Circle itself. Rewards are always up for grabs, and who you work with - or how you work with them - is entirely up to you.

Why now? What’s in it for you?

Early Access is still some time away, in summer 2026, when the game will be live 24/7. We didn’t want to wait that long before we started getting parts of that experience out to you. We want your feedback: the parts you like, the things you don’t, what you want to see more of, and what you want less of. Your input will help shape Early Access into the best possible experience.

Our long-term approach has always been about making this game openly with you and our community. We’re still in pre-alpha, and even though we’ve had our heads down since last winter, we want to get you on board en masse and ask you how we’re doing.

What can you expect to get out of Operation Nemesis?

As you might know, games like EVE Vanguard live or die on keeping people playing - keeping players interested enough that they log back in another day, and another, and another. The focus for what we worked on first, for the stuff that went into Operation Nemesis, was around purely that - keeping players interested enough to keep playing in the early parts of their experience:

• Creating a New Player Experience to onboard players into the narrative, different features, and the playgrounds of EVE Vanguard.

• Developing the Expeditions system that adds structure to ‘what do I do’, engaging with the many different factions, alliances, and corporations that make up the EVE Online pantheon, taking on assignments, unravelling narratives, making choices about how you want to play, and earning some cool stuff along the way.

• Adding new weapons and chipsets to allow you to experiment with how you want to play, how you want to blow up enemies.

• Adding more enemies for you to shoot at and be shot by - no longer just placeholder blue, green, or yellow enemies - Mordu’s Legion are now in town, and they are packing a far more varied set of weapons and challenges.

• Taking all of your new shiny weapons and chipsets you’ve worked hard for and fighting other Vanguard head-on in 9v9 Insurgencies - now with a new greybox-like map we’ve built up that we think is a MUCH better combat space than before.

We need feedback on all of those things, as well as data. Where do people drop off, lose interest, get stuck, or not understand things? What parts of the game or routes that players take make for a better experience?

All of this info is INSTRUMENTAL in making improvements to the game before Early Access next year.

So, is this like a finished game?

No.

We’re still in pre-alpha. We still have the development approach on getting features, maps, weapons, enemies in early - get you playing them - and then making the improvements.

So you’re going to see some maps with placeholder geometry, audio, and VFX. You’re going to see some enemies with some slightly rudimentary behaviors, animations, and suits. You’re going to encounter some bugs, sorry.

We want your opinion and feedback on how they feel, not so much how everything might look and how polished it is at this stage. That’s not saying there aren’t some BEAUTIFUL things in the game we’ve worked hard on making pretty for you - but were the enemies fun to fight? Did they provide enough challenge for you? Did you understand how to use the Fabricator to manufacture more weapons? Were the rewards juicy enough for you to want to chase them? Did that new shotgun feel great to fire? Was it satisfying enough to get a headshot with our new long-range rifle?

We care a bit more as to how things FEEL - which means we will need your help to look past some of the placeholder things in the game, and tell us whether you were having fun, whether you wanted to stick around… and look if you don’t want to tell us, your data will tell us a decent story too!

In closing…

The creative vision and foundation for Vanguard are that you, as a player, are an elite, ruthless warclone engaging in the deadly rhythm of premeditated and brutal combat within beautifully scarred environments on the knife-edge of all-out war. All while shaping the planetary borders, forging alliances, and feeding into a larger living universe.

Are we fully there yet? No, but we’re building towards that, and we hope Operation Nemesis can show you how close we’re getting to some of these anchors of what we want EVE Vanguard to feel like, what we want to do by building the large, persistent, sandbox shooter of our dreams existing within one of the coolest universes in sci-fi.

So what do I want from you?

Set the date, download the game (you can do this 24 hours in advance!), buddy up with some friends (especially those that haven’t played either Vanguard or even EVE before), and help us between 16 September and 2 October to get this right and make this f*cking awesome!

Cheers,

CCP Collins