EVE Fanfest 2023: EVE Online’s Havoc expansion will finally let you side with the pirates

Details of EVE Online‘s latest expansion have been revealed at EVE Fanfest 2023, and the word of the weekend is “chaos.” The aptly named Havoc expansion will be allowing players to officially ally themselves with EVE’s pirate factions for the first time and cause chaos on the front lines of faction warfare. The expansion builds on the past year of improvements to faction warfare that have reinvigorated the conflict between the warring empire factions, allowing pirate-aligned players to screw with both sides.

Havoc also improves the corporation projects system that helps corporations work together toward common goals and brings new pirate destroyers and battlecruisers in addition to the long-awaited Angel Cartel titan. The expansion will go live on November 14th, but events are already moving in-game with the opening of four newly discovered Jove stargates leading to a mysterious new star system. As part of the expansion, players will also get access to a new first person shooter named Vanguard this December.

In the lead-up to EVE Fanfest 2023, CCP Games teased players with a galaxy-wide puzzle that they expected would take several weeks to solve. EVE players being EVE players, they solved it in four days flat. The clues led players to the locations of four massive ancient Jove stargates that had been hidden throughout New Eden and all seemed to be pointing to the same location. This weekend at EVE Fanfest 2023, CCP opened the stargates live, and players flooded into the mysterious new star system Zarzakh.

A pirate faction calling itself The Deathless has taken over the star system and installed itself into what’s left of an ancient Jove space station, and they’ve put out an invitation to the pirates of New Eden to join them. The Guristas Pirates and Angel Cartel have answered the call and joined the group, and when the Havoc expansion goes live on November 14th, we’ll be able to declare our allegiance and join the crusade too.

The Deathless are building massive structures that they can use to send fleets from Zarzakh directly onto the front lines of faction warfare, creating dangerous insurgency zones that will grow more intense if they aren’t dealt with. Players who sign their allegiance to the Guristas Pirates or Angel Cartel will be able to use these Deathless ship-casters to jump directly to insurgency zones and kill other players to spread the pirate corruption further.

The faction militias will have to actively fight back against NPC and player pirates and ultimately destroy the pirate Forward Operating Base to end the insurgency. You can think of it like a player-driven version of the Sansha incursions where players can actively fight for the pirate faction’s side or even just take advantage of it to get some nice kills. For helping spread the insurgency, pirates will also be rewarded with a new type of loyalty points, which can be redeemed for blueprints for exclusive new pirate faction destroyers and battlecruisers or even the Angel Cartel Titan.

The expansion also brings some highly requested features, including new types of corporate projects to help people organise their corp activities. The projects system was introduced in a recent expansion and allows corps to create collective goals such as gathering certain amounts of minerals or building ships. Players looking for a bit of direction in their gameplay can now just look at their corp’s current goals to see how they can contribute and get rewarded for their contributions.

New project types include new PvP goals and healing friendly ships in a fleet fight, and payments can be made automatically so corps can finally run automated ship replacement programmes for their members. If you’re in a large PvP corp, that’s a huge deal as it dramatically cuts down the amount of busywork a corp leader has to do. This gives even small corps the tools they need to work together toward common goals and reward their members for participation.

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