Pain knows no bounds when it comes to the fortunes and desires of Capsuleers across New Eden. Following disruption by a mysterious and highly contagious pathogen spreading throughout New Eden, a low-level leak from the inner circle of the Amarr holy government outlines the halting of Stargate Construction projects, including a highly anticipated Low-security gate to Stain. The memo notes the closure of numerous Amarr mega-infrastucture development corporations—primarily responsible for the highly complex process of constructing Stargates—during the current pandemic being the culprit.

A spokesperson from the Amarr Interstellar Infrastructure Development responding to the ensuing outrage by seven Capsuleers on social media, reported that all plans for future Stargate expansion and deployment projects have been placed on indefinite hold until the pandemic can be brought under control.

The fabled “Silk Road to Stain” has been on the radar of many highly connected Capsuleers—who have been stretching their influence in the Amarr Government for some time—as a means of bypassing the currently over policed chokepoints into the region.

Humanitarian organizations noted that the billions of lives currently lost to the pandemic seem to barely slow down the cut-throat and blood thirsty Capsuleer campaigns for whatever sand castles need to be knocked down at the moment. In a strange turn of events, CODE was praised for their valiant policing of high trafficked routes between major commerce points. The beleaguered faction police forces have struggled to actively police and scan all ships passing through these systems and CODE had to step in for the benefit of mankind. 

Copenhagen, Denmark. 

Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus during the now daily press briefing on COVID-19 virus status made a surprising change in international policy and guidelines in the combat against the world-affecting COVID-19 virus. 

After much study and observation of the MMORPG EVE Online player base—where players from all around the globe engage in everything from piracy to mining basic elements for starship construction—concluded player engagement and the resulting social effects were the ideal hope for humanity during this time of crisis.

“Let it be known that we have never before seen such an engaged and determined player base who distance themselves to such extreme degrees from their fellows!” The Director-General proclaimed after pulling up a spreadsheet on player participation and activity profiles from within the game. Of particular note was how the game retained players even when faced with the most mundane and boring of gameplay elements such as clicking a button once every minute to cycle a mining laser. A reporter was escorted by armed guards out during the Q&A when the Director General was asked about a column showing numbers of Cholera victims in Ethiopia on one of the spreadsheets, the director stared vacantly towards the assembled press for many seconds before moving the discussion on saying it had just been talked about and brought the discussion back to Eve Online.

Speaking later that day via video conference with CCP Games head, Hilmar Pétursson, Director-General Tedros was reported to be in awe of live ingame demonstrations of a player mining with seventeen characters at once, a large asteroid without apparent knowledge of its complete lack of measurable entertainment value. Hilmar commented that if the individual were to work for a single hour in a Somali coal mine it would produce a greater ingame currency value as a result. Later in the interview, further demonstrations of the extreme self-isolation the player base subjects itself to without apparent knowledge of the societal collapse occurring in the real world (IRL) was shown to the awe-struck members of the press. Many mildly disgusted but hopeful that this was the solution to maintaining absolute social distancing was the consensus afterwards. A war-correspondent was later found dead by apparent suicide that evening with a note sadly proclaiming the end of humanity.

To demonstrate the lengths players would go to avoid engaging with the outside world, Hilmar ejected 150 random logged in players and enacted a 15 minute long tedious and mind-numbing captcha system which all players immediately completed within the next 18 minutes and continued to play. CCP has since made all player credentials available to international organisations for the benefit of humanity.

Over the following days a joint CIA-MI6 task force made contact with several players who showed unusually high hours of activity per day; one such individual know ingame as “TheLastSparton” exclaimed complete ignorance at the unfolding Corona virus impact to wider society as he had not left his residence for the past 49 days due to ongoing inter-faction disputes occurring ingame which required his complete attention. Interview minutes released highlighted a particular quote: “Corona does not matter in the grand scheme of things as my killboard has to be as green as possible, it’s all that I can leave in this world when I get podded IRL”. Many other contacted players dismissed all questions saying they don’t drink Corona Beer and refused all contact requests.

The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) has since started distributing vouchers to free ingame time and currency to residents in the wider Baltimore Area to better understand how normal citizens would be affected by the now labelled “Spod-Brain Distancing Effect” Eve Online has on its player base. Day on day crime and outside interpersonal activity has since plummeted in the area as well as new Corona cases. A later demonstration on how younger players could be enticed to player Eve longer was a deposit of “NEET Bucks” into their parent’s bank accounts which could be slowly released into their “Good Boy Accounts” as the player continued to play. This currency is now accepted in exchange for various fast food items in all retailers.

Unfortunately, Eve Online play does have some undesirable side effects; which are manageable according to experts. Many players develop an allergic reaction to fruits and vegetables as a result of their prolonged lack of sunlight exposure coupled with a long-term diet of Mountain Dew and Cheetos. Lesser negative effects include random emotional tantrums when engaged in social-platform player voice-conferencing during and out of gameplay, a severe lack of basic personal hygiene measures, sexual aversion to other people which is slowly replaced by the development of sexual attraction to tabulated data usually in the form of Excel or Google Cloud spreadsheets, masochistic tendencies such as “camping” (sitting invisible) in ingame solar systems for hours at a time even when no other player is present, and a few other minor psychiatric conditions.

As WHO continues to roll out universal access to Eve Online as the main policy in social-distancing efforts, many other organisations across the globe have already passed legislation and mandatory quotas for ingame participation by their citizens.

The policy effects of Eve Online access have not been without repercussions; advocacy groups across the globe have formed and similarly demand the immediate closure of Eve Online citing the personal killing effects of Eve Online on their loved ones who never leave their computers save to eat, sleep, or use hygiene facilities. A recent bombing of a WHO outpost in Norway was credited to the Mothers Without Eve Online who have advocated for increasingly violent actions against CCP Games. Kidnappings and torturing of game time card distributors has lead to many officials providing armed escorts; CCP games has had to maintain game time card access as it was discovered free access would result in a small minority of players creating endless numbers of additional characters which CCP servers would be unable to accommodate at a time of increasing new players from around the world. Many would agree that drastic measures must be taken to save society from COVID-19, but many are now asking if Eve Online and the cost to humanity it incurs is worse than the virus itself.

New Eden—some wormhole or another

Today, several large Wormhole corporations announced the creation of a splinter organization: The Frighole Coalition.

This is the greatest thing ever! They literally can’t stop us!”, said FelixJarl of Ember Sands, a key alliance in the new coalition. Mr. Felix was, of course, referring to the possibilities opened up by the newly infinite nature of wormhole connections between wormhole space and nullsec.

The war room was upbeat. Almost as upbeat as the tempo of the drums. “Casus belli,” he repeated slowly. “Make sure you get that down.”

Admittedly, I didn’t quite have his full attention. He was busy refitting Entosis Link modules onto the Talwars that were available in the corporate hangars. I knew that I was watching Eve history in the making. A new kind of force, one that would use the full potential of the frighole to move massive fleets of Jackdaws and Kikimoras anywhere. Across known-space and wormhole-space, alike.

“Now, to be fair, we’d prefer to go after SYNDE, next, as they were a key player in the eviction of Solaris. But we have to go where Bob wills us—where the frigholes lead.”

I asked if he really thought that it would make much of a difference. “We’ve got half of wormhole space on our side, but we also have the full backing of the Imperium. We’re all really just primarily interested in making sure that people know that there is always a bigger fish. You can’t pull stunts like those people did, and expect to get away with it. The Mittani has spoken extensively of his desire to see wormhole space remain a place for small and medium sized corporations.”

The Mittani was away on business in Wisconsin, and could not be reached for comment. The office of The Mittani declined to comment, as well.

Pressing further, I asked if Felix thought that Fraternity. intended this to signal the beginning of an alliance with the infamous WHCFC. He reminded me that, “The WHCFC has always been aligned with PandaFam, going all the way back to 2013. Gobbins even personally apologized for the confusion created when the Horde fleet started shooting at the Inner Hell fleet.” This long standing working relationship among these unlikely allies has been corroborated by others, namely Andres M Afanador, a master strategist, with ties to both Inner Hell and Northern Coalition. (Mister Afanador is most famous for recently making the final payment on a $75,000 bounty for the successful eviction of Hard Knocks Inc.)

Cyentw of Exit-Strategy suggested that, “Whatever comes of this foray into Fraternity. space, there will be more repercussions to follow. We would very much like to see the liberation of C6 space, which has been dominated by the WHCFC, for far too long.”

Following the success of several reward campaigns like the Skilling Spree, CCP Games has announced a new tiered Omega Account system for premium users. To qualify, users must pay for regular Omega Account time, but also complete a series of weekly tasks in—and sometimes out—of game.

In an orange sorbet stained press release prepared by CCP Spider, it was revealed that CCP Games plans to add tasks of greater challenge and complexity to unlock premium content. “This will be totally awesome!” said CCP Spider regarding the changes. “We’ve really looked at the numbers with this one. There’s a core group of players that really get into the nuances of the game. They like to do a bit of everything, and this will help them take that energy to the next level.”

These new tasks will not be available to everyone though. Some Omega accounts will not even be able to access the content, not at first anyway. “To qualify a player will need an account to have maintained at least six consecutive months of active Omega status first,” clarified Spider. At the start of month seven, if the account is still Omega (and will continue to be omega for at least another 28 days) the player will see a new tab in The Agency window suddenly become available. “We really struggled on where to introduce the premium content, but then I remembered,” Spider said, pausing to lick the sorbet from the papers in his hand before continuing, “The Agency! It’s been such a huge hit since we launched it, and this would keep from cluttering up the in-space UI.”

When it comes to the specific tasks, the initial list is quite extensive. Players would be given one task to complete each time they login, chosen randomly from the list below. Spider was quick to point out that this was just a rough draft for testing, and there was potential for many more tasks to be added before launch:

• Kill a Titan
• (Invent\research\complete) 100 blueprints
• Harvest 10,000,000m3 of (randomly chosen) ore
• Jump through a wormhole
• Visit Jita, Do Dixie, Rend, Amarr, Hek, in a single session
• Be killed by a Titan
• Die in Tama x times (sequential task, starting at 1 and increasing n+1 each completion)
• Kill an ally
• Be killed by an ally
• Transfer 100 billion isk from your corporate wallet to your personal wallet
• Receive 10 billion isk from mission, bounty, or CONCORD payouts
• Jump 150 gates
• Use 100 Abyssal Filaments
• Win an Abyssal PVP tournament in a Cerberus
• Pilot a Super-Carrier class ship for at least 11 consecutive hours
• Spend a total of 400 minutes with a Covert Ops cloak turned on
• Watch 100 gate jumps while cloaked
• Report 25 unique player names for botting
• Link a Reddit post about yourself in local x times (chosen randomly)
• Anchor a citadel
• Kill a freighter with a catalyst
• Lose a catalyst to CONCORD

“We really wanted to narrow this down and target a specific audience” said Spider. “You’ve got all these little micro-identities in Eve Online that tend to shoehorn people into one play style or another, but this update is for people that like to do it all. The renaissance pilot, so to speak.” He explained that the intent is to promote those who like to involve themselves in all aspects of Eve Online, including incentives for some “offline” activities that serve the community.

The new system will deliver special rewards for task completion, based upon a tiered involvement scheme. Gold Level Omega accounts for instance would receive 10 free plex, a rare tech 2 ship skin, 25,000 free skill points, and 50 free HyperCores at the end of each week. Silver Level Omega accounts would receive seven free plex, a ship random ship skin for a tech 1 battlecruiser or battleship, 17,500 free skill points, and 30 free HyperCores. Bronze Level Omega accounts would receive one free plex, one ship skin for either their capsule, corvette, or tech 1 frigate, 5,000 free skill points and 10 free HyperCores. All rewards would be paid out at downtime each Monday, for tasks completed the previous Monday. To calculate which tier a pilot qualifies for, CCP Spider provided the below helpful reference guide:

Bronze Level
Average three login/s per day for the previous seven days

Complete at least 12 tasks in the previous seven days

Have a non-neutral security status

Silver Level
Average of four logins per day for the previous seven days

Complete at least 18 tasks for the previous seven days

Have a security status greater than 1 or less than -1

Of course, these tiers are dependent upon a pilots previous six months of active Omega status and a commitment to remain in Omega status for at least 28 days from the date of payout. If a pilot completes the tasks, login events, and has the proper sec status for a reward tier, but their account is scheduled to go Alpha in less than 28 days, then that pilot would be given notice of their rewards being placed on hold and 24 hours to update their Omega status. If they are unable bring their account within compliance before the 24 hour timer expires, then the premium rewards counter ticks back to the beginning and they have to wait six months. “It’s harsh, but we think it will be effective in growing our long-term player base.” Spider said.

When other members of CCP Games were questioned about the press release they appeared shocked that CCP Spider would have spearheaded such an obviously innovative system to support the burgeoning population of Eve Online players. “He just walked in one day and was like ‘I have this plan!’ and was so excited,” said CCP Karkur. “I felt so bad for him at first because, well, this is obviously way outside his area of responsibility.”

CCP Dopamine added “Yeah, we were all sure he was going to get fired. But then it leaked to the CSM and they unanimously backed him up and Hilmar just let Spider go for it.”

“I think this is really bringing Spider out of his exoskeleton.” finished Karkur. Dopamine nodded in agreement.

The new system is scheduled to hit the test server in April for roughly three months of player testing before rolling out to the Tranquility server in August for the 3rd Quadrant of 2020.

Late today, Icelandic Transport Authority denied entry to all Eve Online nerds for the year of 2020, claiming that an outbreak of the beer contagion known as “Corona Virus” has destroyed the country’s supply. The ban is causing sweeping cancelations of planned events, and has forced many bars and hotels to reduce staffing needs for the season. In a public address, a sobered CCP Hilmar said the following:

“Our preparations in the Reykjavik, Iceland area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have cancelled Fanfest. My decision to host at this time and place was based on the best information available. You nerds, traveling by land and sea, did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”

When questioned about the decision, high ranking officials within the Icelandic government were concise in justifying the travel ban, stating plainly that the country “did not have enough beer this year”. It was suggested that those who wish to travel to Iceland in the future pre-purchase their meal and drink so that local establishments could ensure a proper supply prior to their arrival. “We cannot allow Eve Fanfest to occur. It would get very bloody” said Iceland’s Minister of Tourism, Þórdís Kolbrún Reykfjörð Gylfadóttir, “The Corona Virus has afflicted our stock of libations heavily. We have run out of beer a lot in the last few years and it always comes down to rival Eve Online alliances attempting to out drink each other.” She continued, “This year would be so much worse! If we let hundreds of Eve Nerds into the country for the weekend, we wouldn’t have enough beer to drink for the dozens of other tourists visiting at the same time! There would be PvP in the streets.”

Local politician and beloved mayor of Reykjavik, Dagur Bergþóruson Eggertsson, viewed this as a very positive step for the country. “We are moving in the right direction” he said, when hearing the news. “Our city is more walkable, quieter, and all around enjoyable now. How could we let a bunch of online nerds come here and wander our fine city in a drunken sleepless haze looking for more beer that doesn’t exist? Real tourists adjust to jet lag! These punks just don’t sleep for four days and puke everywhere. It’s disgusting.”

Local establishments that are commonly visited by Eve Nerds are feeling the pinch in budget that this will cause, and plan to protest next Saturday. The list of establishments so far includes Valdis Ice Cream, The Russian Orthodox Church, Flatey Pizza, that little red Fish And Chips trolley, and the Phallological Museum. These locations have reported between 42% and 69% of their annual earnings during Fanfest, and strongly encourage the Transport Authority to rethink their ban. “We can just serve them vodka, when we run out of beer” said the owner of Flatey’s. “Well I mean…not us but like, other places, you know?”

In CCP’s continuing effort to throw away resources, the latest investor relations call with Pearl Abyss revealed Project Nova is officially shelved. Along with that announcement is the promise of a new and improved, more immersive Project Dust 514 Project Nova FPS of some sort. In the call, CCP said “Project Nova’s gameplay experience as presented at EVE Vegas ’18 would not have achieved our ambitious goals for this concept.” PC Gamer was a bit more blunt, calling it “boring and unambitious” long before CCP realized this feature. It was ambitiously confirmed that the new game may or may not interact with EVE Online. Even though CCP continues to ambitiously ignore the many, much better titles out there, and has gotten it wrong twice, they countered with no less ambition: “We’re continuing to develop our sci-fi multiplayer shooter game concept, actively evolving it beyond the original scope for what was formerly codenamed Project Nova. Development efforts on this concept are now the full focus of CCP’s London studio.”

In case those on the call didn’t hear the nails being firmly seated into the coffin, we were told “Project Nova team members based in Iceland have been moved onto other projects at our Reykjavík studio.” What wasn’t clear was whether any of the “other projects” were EVE Online. We asked for clarification after the phone call and, although the details are not clear, the direction was crystal. Please note that we were given a CSM-like NDA, which means we can ignore it. CCP Smokescreen then filled us in, “We are always accused of not caring about EVE Online; however, this is not the case. Let me explain:

“Consider the titles we have released or almost released to date such as DUST, Valkyrie, Nova, EVE Echoes, as well as all the ones unrelated to EVE. These all represent a two-pronged Low Bar Strategy approach to managing expectations with EVE Online.

First, by announcing resources are being diverted from EVE Online, we can keep the bar low on expectations for the only thing we have actually released: EVE Online itself. We want to appear very busy without actually doing anything material. Quite frankly, we’ve run out of ideas with what to do with EVE and I think it shows. So we need to keep expectations really low.

Secondly, we are distracting you by hyping up other efforts and hoping you’ll project that enthusiasm to EVE until it suffers its own heat death. We’ll even throw out some demos, screenshots, videos, and so on to make it seem real. You’ll be all wired up, but you can’t actually play it so you’ll go fire up EVE now that you’ve been reminded of it!

When we first introduced this strategy we weren’t sure how it would work out, but I think you’ll agree it has been extremely successful. It was what closed the deal with Pearl Abyss. The media claims this is yet another failure, but here at CCP we consider this another resounding success!”

Unfortunately, it looks like CCP is going to be closed-lipped about future “successes”. EVE Onion wondered if CCP seems to have realized just how embarrassing this is since they announced during the call, “We are moving away from publicly announcing our internal project codenames and will wait until we’re ready for a full reveal. We want to show you rather than tell you how we have evolved this concept and we’re looking forward to doing so when the time comes to present this concept as a fully-fledged game.” 

CCP Smokescreen confirmed during our covert call that this is actually simply the next phase of the Low Bar Strategy. “Now that you are all conditioned to expect very little, there is no need to waste resources on campaigns to hype up the next thing that won’t be released. We will be going full Blackout and let the Chaos reign for a while.”

CCP’s most recent update to Eve Online has confused and surprised the population of New Eden. “Wormhole’s still exist? I guess I didn’t know” one Capsuleer told reporters after being informed of the update patch notes and articles published last week by CCP Dopamine. 

“Yeah, I used to run around in wormholes.” A pilot in Deklein said, “Or was that Jove space? Which one used the Sister’s probey things again?” 

The majority of those interviewed either didn’t know that wormhole space was still a playable area of the game or didn’t care. A pod of porpoise pilots in a Highsec ore belt said:

“WHBTW is soooo last decade.” 

“It’s a mehm!” 

“You mean meh-meh…” 

“SERIOUSLY people? It’s pronounced meem”

“Of course it is, dear, it’s just not a thing we do anymore. There wasn’t anything good about it, so everyone left.”

Many citizens of New Eden echoed these comments, with some of the more popular responses being, “I didn’t know people still did that” and “why would CCP waste time developing for an area of the game that’s super niche and caters to only .01% of the population, when we have real game breaking issues to deal with, like hyperinflation from the overabundance of combat anomalies and the unlimited availability of mineable resources in nullsec?”

One unique perspective came from a pilot we found multi-boxing super-carrier class Nyx’s in Esoteria. “Man, I love J-Space!” he said as his heavy fighters bombed a wave of Sansha pirates at a rock haven. “It’s some of the best travel options around. There’s that nerdy pacifist group that keeps all the maps up to date and scans out the different connections for you, too! Plus, we’ve figured out that if your fleet is too big for the hole, you can time it so that everyone jumps on the same server tick. You get more ships through than you normally would, like a cheat or something! It’s a great way to travel around New Eden undetected, and surprise your enemies.”

This wormhole loving Nyx pilot was outnumbered though by his wormhole apathetic alliance friends who just shrugged their shoulders and walked away. 

The  update (released Tuesday) comes with an apparent treasure trove of goodies for the die-hard wormhole dwellers of New Eden, if any still exist: With infinite loot drops from drifters, null-sec pirate anomaly spawns across all wormhole classes, extensions to all structure timers caused by corporations that have violated wormhole bushido, a 3x increase in the spawn rates of connections out of wormhole space, and the long-awaited addition of asset safety. At last count there were still 12 active accounts on a discord channel dedicated to the praise of “bob”. Six of them claimed to be active wormhole pilots while the other six pilots just reacted with emotes to the others. 

At time of publication CCP Games has declined to comment, citing ethics and privacy policies restricting them from disclosing any information about exactly who they intended this update for.