It’s coming up on eleven years of EVE Online capsuleers exploring wormholes and blowing each other up in them. Introduced as a feature of the Apocrypha expansion in March 2009, this was a whole new world for the citizens of New Eden. Players immediately began to explore, colonise, and wage wars over space and mechanics that were unique at the time. Now, CCP is giving wormhole(r)s some love and attention as part of the major February 2020 update.
In the theme of this quarter’s ‘Fight or Flight’ focus, on February 11 wormholes will begin to feature higher chances of finding connections to other wormholes. While this will affect all wormhole connections, CCP hinted in their announcement devblog that connections to high-class wormholes will be particularly rampant, and it should be noted that high-class holes are often used by players in expensive ships and engaging in high-risk, high-reward PvE sites. Alongside this, adjustments are also being made to Drifter NPC AI, in an effort to address the longstanding issues with so-called “Astrahus ratting”.
In yet more celebration of all things wormholes, a SKIN sale will be running on a number of ships often used in wormhole space. This will include the Sisters of EVE bundle and more, with the sale starting at 11:00 UTC on the 11th of February and running for one week exactly.
The second part of this update is the return of the annual Guardian’s Gala in-game event. This is an annual gathering of New Eden’s drug empires, with the Angel Cartel and Serpentis corporations setting up parties across the cluster. In this event, you have to gatecrash their revels and kill the party, in return for some great loot and ISK bounties. This year, however, it receives a wormhole-related twist. In wormholes, the parties will be even fancier, with more difficult NPC AI and more unique rewards – the new “Savior” logistics implants. This year, CCP is really pushing the boat out in an attempt to entice players to leave the relative safety of K-Space.
It doesn’t stop there, too – wormholes are also recieving a buff to the PvP loot fairy. So far, we don’t know how much or little the loot fairy percentages will be increased by, but it will be specifically for PvP engagements. So, it looks like it might be time to sit up, find your nearest hole and dive through. Crash those parties, kill any other players around, scoop the loot, and moonwalk out. Or perhaps more likely, die trying.
In related news, the February 11 server downtime will be extended to a full 30 minutes in order to deploy this major update. CCP expect the server to be up and acessible at 1130 UTC. However, as any experienced player knows, it’s better to be safe than sorry, so you might want to double-check your skill queue, especially in light of the recent server issues.
