If you weren't one of the 3,000 viewers watching the CCP Presents Keynote today, you'll be excited to know that there was plenty of new information about DUST 514 and what's to come after EVE Online: Dominion. In addition the announcement that EVE Online now has over 302,657 subscribers, CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Petursson told the crowd that the company has a new goal of reaching 600,000 active users. Considering the EVE Online team is now 5x the size it was at launch, this is definitely a possible and something to believe in.

Make sure to check out our summarized after the jump and stay tuned for our DUST 514 gameplay impressions, and transcribed interviews covering DUST 514, EVE Online and the overarching economy.

Technology Upgrades

Server and Database Upgrades - Significant Upgrades.

Patch Deployment Upgrades - Patch day issues will now be a mostly painless process. Due to upgrades the EVE team can push an hotfix in an hour.

What's to Come After Dominion Announcements

Formations - "Looks Awesome" and provide squadrons with multiple bonuses. Adds organization.

Treaties - Alliances and Corps will be able to make binding contracts to corps or players. This will allow that gang of noobs to mine in your zerosec!

Planetary Ring Mining - This will make mining more engaging and interactive as you'll be able to scan down veins of rare ore and other new resources. We were told that players will rediscover that goldrush feeling.

Comet Mining - Imagine scanning down comets that contain organic compounds to harvest. That's the overall concept here.

Jovians - You may already know them, but not as well as you will in the near future. They are evil, they are uber, they are harbringers of doom. Oh ... and they have l33t ships.

Planetary Interactions - One of the features that I'm the most excited about as it's a new barrier of entry. It was explained a bit to sound like human gardening. Nurture good growth. Prune the dead branches. Kill the weeds. Check on it regularly.

DUST 514 News

No Classes - Instead of choosing a class in a traditional MMO, players will define their role by the gear they choose to carry.

How DUST and EVE are linked - Eve and Dust 514 will be link using phased implementation strategy at specific stages during the life-cycle of the two products.

No Subscription Fee - DUST 514 will operate on a micro-transaction model.

Andrew "Tamat" Beegle
Editor-in-Chief
ZAM.com