Back at EVE Vegas 2019, CCP’s Bergur Finnbogason announced to EVE Echoes ISK fans the introduction of Quadrant updates. These quarterly-ish updates would be complete with their own theme and bring dedicated improvements and updates to the sci-fi MMO regularly. In addition to these themed quadrant updates, a new development team at CCP Games had been put together, Team Talos, with the intent to create faster updates that could be deployed quickly to fans to iterate or react to something in EVE Online as feedback dictated.

Since then, through the last few years these updates have, more or less, hit the mark. From the first Quadrant since EVE Vegas, Fight or Flight to the most recent Gateway update, the cadence has allowed players – and the developers alike – to set into a rhythm. However, it’s been a bit since the last release, which came in September 2021 and players have been keen to know what’s next.

CCP Games is always looking to iterate, even when it comes to its release cadence. And with Fanfest returning – four years since it was last held in Reykjavik – it stands to reason the team behind EVE Online might be holding some of what’s to come for the event.

Quadrants have worked, by and large, and the community has understood how the structure has worked the last few years. Team Talos’ ability to be agile in how it deploys updates and iterations as well has been pivotal to adjusting and iterating in EVE since 2019. One constant in my calls with CCP over the last few years has been the ability for the dev team to iterate on a Monday and, if need be, adjust by Thursday. The speed at which ideas and updates can flow is, as brand manager S?mundur Hermannsson put it in an interview last week, “unprecedented.”

“Just the reception from the community understanding it, and us being able to deliver things, updates at that unprecedented scale that EVE Online has not seen before,” Hermannsson said about the reception to Quadrants. “I’ll just allow myself to say those are the events and balance changes, iterations and updates – everything. It’s been a lot of fun for us internally to have this holistic theme and feed into it.”

Each Quadrant had a theme that defined the release, from 2021’s Foundation which sought to reintroduce the in-game NPC empires that form the foundation for New Eden’s story, or 2020’s Phoenix which saw players rebuild New Eden after it was changed forever thanks to the outcome of the multi-year Triglavian arc. These themes, these event and more helped solidify and give context to the updates that CCP was pushing out, with smaller, iterative updates inbetween. However, this came at the expense of the massive expansions EVE did for years, and it also didn’t allow for the type of narrative growth that Cheap EVE Mobile ISK has been leaning into with its recent additions.

“Now, after two years of having done it,” Saemi continued, “we have been going on a journey internally to see how we want to progress going forward.”

According to Hermannsson, this signals an evolution from Quadrants. And while the brand manager is quiet in terms of hard details of exactly what players can expect, he does tease that there is a focus on narrative and expanding the narrative that is the backbone of EVE Online’s universe.

“We want to put more emphasis on continuing to evolve the New Eden world, the lore behind it, and what is going on, having a narrative tie the whole thing together. And not just do balance changes and visual updates and event. Having [something] very concrete, something to put a bow on it and tie it all together.”