EVE Online‘s latest expansion was announced today at EVE Fanfest 2025, and this one seems to have a bit of something for everyone. The Legion expansion will drop on May 27th and is all about empowering leaders and organisers with new tools and options, from additional tactical options for territorial warfare to ways to incentivise public fleets and recruit new players.
The headline feature of Legion is a new Freelance Jobs system that lets corporations create their own work orders, jobs, or missions to give out to public players, opening some new opportunities for emergent gameplay. Also on the way are two powerful new ships, map improvements, exploration updates, big improvements to ESI, and improvements to nullsec territorial warfare.
Freelance jobs could help fix new player recruitment
We’ve known for years that the number one factor that can help new players stick with EVE long term is getting them to join a corporation or public fleet. EVE is a terminally social game, and yet most new players come to it after hearing stories about scams and being warned not to trust anyone. The Freelance Jobs system may help solve this by letting players play alongside a corp without committing to join. It helps new players smoothly transition from working for NPCs and tutorial missions to interacting with real player corps.
If used properly, this tool could also help fix the number one issue with recruitment of new players: the suspicion that they may be an alt or a spy. Seeing a player complete jobs over time gives a level of confidence that it’s a real player engaging in the kinds of gameplay the corp likes. It also gives a new way for people running public fleets to incentivise participation and find new members. If you’re running a mining fleet, you could list jobs to mine in the system and then strike up a conversation with anyone who accepts one of them and invite them to your fleet.
New ships and exploration updates
In addition to the usual balance tweaks and bug fixes, Legion will deliver two completely new ships that offer powerful new tactical options. The Babaroga (on the left in the image above) is a tanky triglavian Maurader based on the Leshak, with a bonus to microjumpdrives and ability to fit the bastion module. Also revealed was a new Angel Dreadnought called the Sarathiel (on the right in the image above), which has the incredibly powerful special ability to use a microjumpdrive while in siege mode.
Nullsec players will be pleased to know that new mechanics are coming to allow capturing of Orbital Skyhook structures so they don’t necessarily need to be destroyed and replaced. There will also be new system-wide effects to add to your sovereign space such as shield and armour bonuses, and upgrades to colony resource conversion. We’re also getting much needed improvements to exploration upgrades for sovereign territory and better exploration site distribution.
ESI and supporting developers
It may seem odd to be talking about a software API update as a major feature in an MMO expansion, but if you’ve played EVE for any length of time you’ve probably benefitted from it. EVE Online’s ESI API is used by over 2350 third party applications, and over 42% of active players have logged into an ESI-authenticated app at one point. It’s used by kill boards keeping track of your victories and defeats, market analysis tools, skill planners, ship fitting tools, and intel-sharing tools for corps and alliances.
The ESI API has been plagued with problems over the past few years, from outages and performance issues to serving outdated cached data or missing new info after major game updates. At Fanfest today, CCP announced that big improvements are coming to ESI in Legion and that a dedicated team has been put together to work on it again. That’s good news for the app developers of EVE and for those of us who use those apps.
Map improvements and graphics upgrades
The Legion expansion marks the beginning of a major overhaul to the EVE map, starting with small improvements but eventually rolling out into a full overhaul that will include more data visualisation and a dotlan style 2d tactical map. Currently, players have to use external tools to help navigate space or manage assets strewn throughout the galaxy, so the more of that we can do in engine, the better.
Slick new models are being released for several popular cruisers, along with new damage visuals causing fire and smoke to pour out of ships with damaged hulls. We’re also getting a new corp colour palette system that will give every corp a choice of core colours that will be used everywhere from corp logos and freelance jobs boards to corp ship skins, establishing a better brand identity. The corp logo designer itself is even finally getting full RGB colour options rather than the 16 we had before.
The overall impression I got from today’s expansion announcement is that EVE is entering an era of iteration with a renewed focus on giving the players tools to build their own content. It’s a sensible approach that takes me all the way back to my first ever Fanfest in 2011, when I spoke to dozens of players about what they do in EVE and learned that the true driving force behind the game is the corp leaders and the organisers — the power players of EVE who create places for other players in the world.
Whether you’re someone who likes to lead and organise other people or you’re just a new player who never quite clicked with a corporation but thinks this might finally be the way in, this expansion could be your time to shine. For everyone else, there are shiny new ships and graphics and some improvements to territorial warfare, plus a new Thorax model so slick it made the Fanfest crowd audibly gasp.
Expansion trailer:
