“Staying beautiful isn’t about chasing trends” Eve Online developer CCP explains why looking good is more than just skin deep for a ‘forever game’ in 2025

“Eve Online is a game about spaceships, and what would a new expansion be without… new spaceships?” asks CCP Snorri – also known as Snorri Árnason, game director for Eve Online – as he shows off a video of a ‘pretty, white beast’ of a new ship at Eve FanFest 2025. It’s like an advert for an expensive car; all sweeping shots, slow pans, light glinting off hard, metal edges. “It’s a best-in-class marauder, and people are going to freak out about it!”

He’s right. The sizzle reels of the ships that CCP Games shows during FanFest 2025 get the biggest reaction from the crowd that I see all day. And by some margin, too. People stand up from their chairs, whooping and hollering. I’m pretty certain I see one person cry. People that love Eve really love Eve. These ships will be landing in EVE Online: Legion, the next expansion for the legendary sci-fi MMO, which launches on May 27, 2025.

For those well-versed in Eve Online, the ships are a pretty big deal. First up, there’s the Babaroga, a cutting-edge Triglavian Tech II marauder, that channels devastating entropic disintegrators and activates a bastion module that delivers game-changing subcapital DPS – perfect for those who dominate through precision and power. Then there’s the Sarathiel, a fierce and agile Angel Cartel dreadnought, that rains down long-range capital-class destruction with massive bonuses to projectile damage and fall-off. CCP Games tells me that it’s the only dreadnought capable of using a Capital Micro Jump Drive in siege mode, making it “a true terror in fast-moving frontline warfare.”

“Every ship we create is a work of art,” says Georg Hilmarsson, art director for Eve Online. “We pour our heart and soul into every design. Modernising your ship fleet is always on our mind, and we’re bigger, more impactful packages than ever before as part of the Legion update.” Hilmarsson explains that all cruisers are getting a lighting and VFX upgrade, and all ships will get “dramatic” new damage visualisation effects that include smoke, fire, and particle effects to better show when your vessel is taking on damage. It sounds like a small thing, but this is catnip for Eve folks: it makes the ship-to-ship combat that forms the bread-and-butter of the whole experience more dynamic, realistic… it’s a better realisation of the spreadsheet that underpins all the action.

But it’s not just new ships that are keeping the game alive. Eve has been alive for over 20 years, now – first releasing way back in 2003. It’s safe to say the game, and the client you access it with, has changed a lot in that time. It’s important for a game that wants to attract new players (and keep older players on-board) to move with the times, but that’s not an easy thing to do whilst keeping your project online at, effectively, all times. Just ask Final Fantasy 14 (and its controversial grapes).

“Recently,” says Adrian Gurney, game engine producer and development manager at CCP, “we released a major update to our graphics engine, Trinity. This update unlocked more performance from your graphics card, delivering a smoother, more responsive experience in space, with higher frame rates and improved visual fidelity. This is just one step in the journey to ensuring the foundations of Eve are ready for the next decade of breathtaking visuals that our artists will bring to life”.

Gurney says that the CCP team has already started taking advantage of this upgrade to Trinity, and has started working on “a complete renovation of the game’s fog system” (which, being in space, is a much bigger part of the overall project than you’d expect. Gurney insists that these updates enhance the sense of depth and mystery in space.

CCP is also adding ray-traced shadows into the game, resulting in the “most realistic shadow rendering [the team] has ever seen.” This update, apparently, paves the way for even more ray-tracing features in the future. “Carbon continues to evolve, and alongside our talented artists, we remain committed to delivering even more stunning visuals for Eve Online.”

Relatedly, there’s a big new graphical update scheduled for later this year, too. The various nebulas you see around the universe have always been part of the visual identity of Eve, and this new update will introduce more realistic lighting, a wider dynamic range, richer colours, and finer details to all lighting conditions. This means, for the layman, that there will be a more dramatic and immersive feel to the various nebulae you navigate towards and around in Eve Online. Simply put; it looks more like space. And that’s what you want in a game like this.

One of the things Snorri said to press fairly early on at Eve FanFest 2025 has stuck with me. “There’s a lot of competition in games right now, and without getting new players or keeping people sticking around, we cannot be a forever game.” Eve has long been the sort of game that just is; its players love it, and it seems perennial in the minds of people that have been in the industry for a pretty long time. But it’s not a given that this will always be the case. By the developer’s own admission, Eve is different to most games. And CCP is keenly aware that it cannot simply rest on its laurels and expect things to stay the same. It needs to proactively, and intentionally, give reasons for players to join the fray, or keep coming back.

“Staying beautiful isn’t about chasing trends,” says Snorri. “It’s about keeping New Eden alive, keeping it current, and for us to be able to keep players telling the stories that they come up with.”