Over the last 22 years, Eve Online has evolved from a straightforward space MMO into a veritable second universe, parallel to our own. It has its own economy and corporations; its galaxy is divided between player-made administrations, factions, and pseudo societies. All told, if you want to break into Eve Online today, in 2025, you’ve got a lot to learn – there’s a barrier to entry. Though it’s set in the distant, distant, distant future, when even the advanced civilizations that colonized the furthest reaches of the universe have collapsed, Eve Frontier represents a fresh start for CCP’s flagship. While it’s already accessible through the incipient Founder program, Eve Frontier is about to break cover and go fully public.
While some MMO elements remain (persistent universe, thousands of players, open-ended exploration), CCP says Eve Frontier is closer in many ways to a survival game. Resources are scant. Death is swift. Like DayZ or Escape From Tarkov, you’re picking over the corpse of a fragmented world, fighting against both AI enemies and fellow players for whatever sustenance remains. However, like in Eve Online itself, you also have the ability to build, establish a faction, and even to create complex in-game systems.
CCP is building an expansive, open-ended creation platform that it calls Smart Assemblies. In some cases, Smart Assemblies will allow you to forge in-game infrastructure that can be used by other players, for example a portal that provides a shortcut from one section of the galaxy to another. But Smart Assemblies can also be applied more conceptually. In one video outlining Eve Frontier, CCP explains how a group of players built their own custom king-of-the-hill competitive multiplayer mode.
The developer’s goal is to provide an extensive and robust toolkit that allows players to build whatever they like within Eve Frontier’s universe. CCP also wants Eve Frontier to be very, very big. 20,000 star systems will exist in the game at launch, growing to more than 100,000 over time.
Since it’s still in the pre-launch stage, currently, if you want to play Eve Frontier, you have two options. First, you can purchase access via the Founder program. There are three different tiers, priced $99.99, $69.99, or $39.99 respectively, and each offering different bonuses including exclusive ship skins and subscription time for after Frontier is released. The second option is to wait for the next round of trial access; CCP periodically admits a select number of applicants to Eve Frontier’s latest test build, although they do not receive the same bonuses as Founders.
But now, the Founder program is about to change. CCP has just announced Founder Access: New Era, the next phase in the pre-release initiative, which brings Eve Frontier a step closer to its full public launch. As part of New Era, players are now free to share gameplay footage, personal impressions, and all information regarding their in-game experiences without any restrictions, providing Eve Online fans and would-be Frontier players greater insight into how the game looks and how it will work.
New Era also introduces a seasonal progression system called Cycles. Each Cycle introduces new missions and challenges; for each one of these that you complete, you gain ‘Grace’ and climb higher on that respective Cycle’s leaderboard. The first Cycle, Promised Land, begins on Wednesday June 11. More Cycles will be released throughout Eve Frontier’s New Era period. If you want to join the Founder program or put your name down for trial access, just head here.
Otherwise, you might want to try some of the other best space games, or maybe the best multiplayer games on PC right now.
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