"Empyrean Age marks a big turning point for EVE Online. The cluster of New Eden has seen a lot of great storytelling and roleplaying but until now, most of that activity has been created by the players and there has been very little interaction between player created content and the content created by CCP. Almost no changes have been made to EVE since its launch that reflect the developing story of EVE.

That is now about to change. Starting in the middle of May CCP began to create a direct link between the evolving story of EVE and the actual game environment. This has been done a few times before in very limited circumstances but the path we are on now is really unprecedented.

Tony Gonzales’ novel EVE: Empyrean Age is a prequel to the events of the next expansion. The 4 major Empires of EVE will shift from peace to war as a result of the events in that novel. We wanted to bring a sense of those changes to the players in a natural way that immersed people in the unfolding plot. The first and most visible highlight of that strategy was the news items, video teaser, and in-game changes related to the destruction of the Ishukone HQ by a Gallente suicide attack. Players could read about the peace conference at the station, then see a newsreel of the attack itself, and in game, they can travel to the site of the disaster and see the massive damage caused to the station, linking fiction, multimedia, and game assets together to create a total experience for the players.

Now that the expansion is released the players will see even bigger impacts of the story. Many of the events of the novel are reflected in changes to the game itself. During the downtime period while the game was upgraded with the Empyrean Age expansion the players were treated to an unfolding series of plot threads communicated in the form of news items. Once the servers came back on line people were able to fly to many of the sites of conflict described in these news releases and see the changes made to the environment as a result, including ship graveyards and an orbiting Titan supercapital. The biggest effect is the game system we call “Factional Warfare”. Factional Warfare allows players to directly take part in the action by having their characters join the 4 militia organizations of the Empires and fight on their behalf for control of contested space. The war that is begun in the novel will be fought in real time, by real players, in EVE Online, totally merging the story with the game."