CCP Games has announced that a free, limited-time event for EVE Vanguard called Operation Nemesis has started, and will conclude on October 2nd, giving players the chance to play the free trial for a few weeks.
The Game Director posted a lengthy blog on the official site for EVE Vanguard, explaining: “In Operation Nemesis, the narrative of the Vanguard is truly starting – from your first steps as a Warclone in our freshly added New Player Experience, to interacting with characters through expanded voice lines, and unraveling the narratives of different factions and corporations as they vie for your help in acquiring information, resources, and power through the Expeditions system.
The Deathless are building something that could shake up the entire universe of New Eden – you can help them in their secret endeavors, work with other organizations to intercept this knowledge, stall this work, or even implant agents within the Deathless Circle itself. Rewards are always up for grabs, and who you work with – or how you work with them – is entirely up to you.”
Here’s some more info from the blog, with “CCP Collins” listing some of the ways the team wants to keep people engaged, noting that “games like EVE Vanguard live or die on keeping people playing”:
- Creating a New Player Experience to onboard players into the narrative, different features, and the playgrounds of EVE Vanguard.
- Developing the Expeditions system that adds structure to ‘what do I do’, engaging with the many different factions, alliances, and corporations that make up the EVE Online pantheon, taking on assignments, unravelling narratives, making choices about how you want to play, and earning some cool stuff along the way.
- Adding new weapons and chipsets to allow you to experiment with how you want to play, how you want to blow up enemies.
- Adding more enemies for you to shoot at and be shot by – no longer just placeholder blue, green, or yellow enemies – Mordu’s Legion are now in town, and they are packing a far more varied set of weapons and challenges.
- Taking all of your new shiny weapons and chipsets you’ve worked hard for and fighting other Vanguard head-on in 9v9 Insurgencies – now with a new greybox-like map we’ve built up that we think is a MUCH better combat space than before.
The creative vision and foundation for Vanguard are that you, as a player, are an elite, ruthless warclone engaging in the deadly rhythm of premeditated and brutal combat within beautifully scarred environments on the knife-edge of all-out war. All while shaping the planetary borders, forging alliances, and feeding into a larger living universe.
Are we fully there yet? No, but we’re building towards that, and we hope Operation Nemesis can show you how close we’re getting to some of these anchors of what we want EVE Vanguard to feel like, what we want to do by building the large, persistent, sandbox shooter of our dreams existing within one of the coolest universes in sci-fi.
EVE Vanguard is coming to PC in Q3 2026. Download the trial here.
