EVE Online Game Box Hits Stores in March With New Mac Client

CCP Games has announced plans to release the tenth expansion pack for EVE Online, its massively multiplayer online role playing game set in space. EVE Online: Apocrypha is planned for a March 2009 release, and it coincides with the forthcoming boxed version of EVE hitting store shelves.

EVE Online, which runs on Mac OS X, Linux and Windows, transports players to the other side of the universe to a region called New Eden, thousands of years in the future, where the human race has populated a remote region of space that has become isolated from Earth. Players align into four factions, each with technological, social and economic differences. EVE Online is very much a "sandbox" MMO -- you can do whatever you want, from being a fleet commander to a privateer, miner, captain of industry and much more. In addition to player-versus-player spaceship combat, the game features a very robust economic simulation that enables players to buy, sell and trade goods, services and materials.

The Apocrypha expansion pack will, as is customary for EVE Online, be released for free as a download for all existing players. The new release adds many new features to the game -- new wormholes that enable users to explore and acquire new technology, including advanced Tech 3 modular ships. Non-player characters (controlled by the computer) will also be authorized to assign "Epic Mission Arcs" to game players.

EVE Online has been sold primarily as a download, but CCP Games is returning to a boxed edition thanks to a partnership with Atari. As a result, the company has reworked the new player experience for EVE Online, to help new players get up to speed with the rich, complex story line and gameplay system.

What's more, CCP Games has announced that the boxed version of EVE will include the new Premium graphics client.