With EVE FanFest 2026 just a couple of weeks behind us, EVE Online players are eagerly awaiting the newest expansion, Cradle of War. The expansion promises new Military Campaigns meant to give capsuleers a new purpose in New Eden, eight new ships split between factions, and the addition of titles and achievements—every gamer wants achievements!
What EVE Online: Cradle of War is also bringing to the table this June is a brand new starter system, Exordium. This expansion’s focus, and the rest of the Theatres of War Saga, is on the new-player experience. To find out more about Exordium, Military Campaigns and more, CGM was able to sit down with EVE Online Game Design Director, Greg Hennessey and Senior Game Designer, Josh Bayer, during EVE FanFest—and fun fact, they are both Canadian, too!
Obviously, we’re here for EVE Online. Could you tell us who you are, and a little bit about what you do with EVE?
Greg Hennessey: Sure, I’m Greg Hennessy, the game design director for EVE Online. What do I do with EVE? I help think about this sort of big picture, like, do expansion planning, forward thinking. I work with lovely folks like Josh and kind of help build up our design discipline and the way we work.
Josh Bayer: I’m Josh Bayer. I’m the senior game designer working on EVE Online. Over the years, I’ve been working on EVE since 2012. For 13 years now. I’ve worked on all kinds of different aspects of the game, and most recently on improving some of the user experience, UI, and the new player experience. So, some of the changes we’re making to help new players get into the game from the very beginning.
And how did two Canadians get in with EVE Online? I have questions!
Greg Hennessey: You were in first, so…
Josh Bayer: So yeah, I came in through a bit of an unusual path in that I was an EVE player before I started working here. This was actually the first job in the games industry that I had—that I have. And I got to know CCP a little bit because I was involved with the Alliance Tournament as a player first, and then as one of the player volunteer commentators for the Alliance Tournament, and got to know CCP a little bit.
They got to know me and just generally my temperament, work ethic, then applied for what was a design internship position back in 2012, and the rest is history. I’ve been here ever since.
From Canada to Iceland?
Josh Bayer: Yeah, I moved up here for the job for what was officially a six-month contract, but with an understanding that if I did well, there was a long-term position available, and it ended up being available.
Serious faith in the formerly CCP, now Fenris Creations and EVE Online. And how’d you get here, Greg?
Greg Hennessey: That’s a great question. So, I’ve been here for two and a half years. I was previously working in Vancouver, and the industry, as it is, I was looking for a job, and it had been about six months. And then I had a friend in the Canadian club who was working at CCP.
She’s no longer with us. She’s back in Canada. But she was like, “Greg, I think you would be great for this job,” and connected me. And I am an adventurous person. I’ve lived in some other interesting places as well. And I was like, “Why not? Let’s go. Let’s try Iceland out.”
That was completely off topic, but it is very interesting to me. I keep coming back to Iceland, but I don’t know that I could just hop on board like that! Anyway, back to EVE Online. Let’s start with Cradle of War. What does it mean for EVE Online?
Greg Hennessey: I think there is an interesting focus on newer players. We have this concept that I’m going to be talking about more later [in the keynote], which is “progressive complexity.” So, EVE is a very complex and challenging game. We know that we have those sorts of memes with the onboarding of EVE and all of that. But we really want this game to thrive and stay alive for as long as possible.
We know that means having more new players stay around, and the context of gaming in the context of what people expect in today’s world is different than ten years ago or 20 years ago. And so, what we’re trying to do is to build kind of a series of staged sandboxes that open up over time and allow people to gradually explore and feel, even psychologically safe, to learn, to learn EVE, and hopefully stay around.
So that’s sort of the broad wrapper of what Cradle of War is.
Exordium. That’s what we’re talking about. That’s something that I’m focusing on a bit at EVE FanFest this year. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m not an EVE Online player.
Josh Bayer: Don’t worry. We forgive you.
It’s terrifying. I made a character last week, and I don’t know what’s happening. And then I found out that Exordium was coming to EVE Online.
Josh Bayer: That was a common experience.
EVE Online is intimidating. How is Exordium going to change that for people like me?
Josh Bayer: Exordium is the first time we’ve had an area of the game that is dedicated, built from the ground up, for new players. At the moment in EVE, new players, when they start the game, are spread throughout high security space. So, they’re in a bunch of different locations depending on which empire they’ve chosen to start with.
They’re surrounded by a mix of veterans and new players, and they are in an area of space that is relatively safe, quite safe, but not perfectly safe. So, there’s always a little bit of stress that comes along with that of having to worry about being attacked by other players. And so, what we’ve done with Exordium is we’ve created one place where all the new players will start together.
It’s a place where you can more easily get in touch with other new players and meet people that are at the same stage of the journey that you are, and ask questions that, you know, won’t seem stupid because there’s other people around who are going to be asking the same questions.
It’s also a place where PvP is disabled within that specific area so that you can learn the game and understand the systems before moving on to the rest of the sandbox. And it’s a place where all of the content, all of the NPCs you can fight, all of the sites to discover and hack are all designed for new players at their level of experience, so you won’t end up stumbling into something that’s too difficult for you.
EVE Online has been around for over 20 years now. Why did it take that long to get a starting zone? Why is now a good time?
Josh Bayer: This is an idea that’s been bouncing around for many years. And with a game like EVE, a gigantic sandbox, there’s always a huge list of things that we can work on. It really is just a case of: we found the time to get to it now.
This was a place where we knew we wanted to focus on a number of aspects of helping new players thrive in EVE with this expansion. So, we’re releasing this new starter zone, but we’re also releasing a feature called Military Campaigns, which is going to be useful for both veterans but also for new players to help find purpose.
So if somebody isn’t sure what they want to do, to do something interesting and have a big impact on the world, some players will hop into corporations in Null-Sec or wormhole space and feel that right away, but for other folks, they’ll be able to hop into Military Campaigns and choose to support the NPC empires if they want to.
Is there any benefit to Exordium for veteran players of EVE Online? Will veteran players want to go back and play this, not just because it’s new and fun? Will they get anything out of that if they make a new alt?
Josh Bayer: They can if they’d like to explore it. We’re actually opening up the space early, before we start sending new players to the space, starting actually next week [week of May 20th]. We’re opening up the gates to the area so that veteran players can check it out, can explore.
They’re getting a VIP tour!
Josh Bayer: Yeah, you can see it early and do things like start selling things on the market, so it’s ready to go for when new players do start getting sent there with the expansion. But the big benefit to veteran players is more new players, and this is something that our players have known for many years: that EVE is a game that is always better the more people are in it. It is an experience that’s meant to be shared, and there’s something really special about playing with a new player.
When you’ve been playing EVE a long time, you get to know all of the systems, but it’s easy to kind of forget about the wonder of seeing it through fresh eyes. And so, there’s something that’s really energizing about playing alongside new players, having new players in your corporation and getting more new players a stable place to start is going to then benefit everyone.
Greg Hennessey: The benefits are really social in nature for the veteran players; they’re the way they can recruit and build communities and things like that. I think this will offer a new sort of foundation that they didn’t have before. Even with having players spread out, now they can come to a concentrated location and find new players that they can try to recruit into their corps and things like that.
Josh Bayer: We’ve talked to many players who make it a big part of their gameplay to support new players, to people that will do things like show up in the starter systems, answer questions and give out free ships.
Also, representatives of corporations, they want to get more members in; they will recruit new players, and they’re really excited about the idea that all of the new players will now be in one local area, so that you don’t need to travel around as much to find them. And so, it’s going to be a really great place for mentors to be able to support the new folks as well.
What you are saying is interesting to me, because I’ve come from other MMOs; I used to play World of Warcraft. If you jump onto a PvP server, there are starting zones, and usually, you’re pretty safe. But then there are those players that will just hang out right where you spawn and just murder and murder and murder. But you’re talking about EVE Online players, excited for these new players and wanting to play along with them. Why is it different? Why aren’t people just waiting to kill us as we join the game?
Josh Bayer: I think part of it is that EVE is a game that gives you the freedom, and so you’re not breaking the rules when you attack another player in highsec, which means that some people will do it. There’s situations, especially if it’s a player that has something really valuable they’re carrying, where that’s a normal part of gameplay.
But because it’s not something that is frowned upon by the game, it doesn’t get the same taboo rush that you get in a game like World of Warcraft. You, instead, when given full freedom, humans tend to be kind to each other on average, and EVE is a game that kind of opens that up and lets humans be humans.
Greg Hennessey: I think to layer on that, too, World of Warcraft is, as we call it, more of a theme park, right? So, what’s interesting to somebody playing World of Warcraft is like, “I want to get over there and experience this piece of content,” or something, where EVE is a sandbox, and so there isn’t really a ride for you to go on. It’s hard to figure out sometimes even what your goals are.
But what is interesting to the players of EVE is basically what other players do, right? So, if somebody shows up and wants to fight, or somebody wants to show up and be your friend or do something, that’s where the interesting things happen. The more people there are, the more new players that come and stay, and the more interesting things can happen as a result of that. And so, players do want to cultivate that sort of a sense of “Stay here.”
On to EVE Online: Cradle of War as a whole. It’s the beginning of the Theatre of War, a three-part arc. Is there anything that we’re allowed to know about the next parts, or how Cradle of War will feed into them?
Josh Bayer: I don’t think there’s a huge amount of detail, partly because a lot of that is still being worked on. We can say that we’re continuing to iterate on a lot of what we’re releasing in Cradle of War. The team that I work on, a lot of our focus is going to be continuing on the new player experience, which includes adding more content to Exordium.
Exordium is going to launch with a certain set of content, and we’ll be building on that and adding more and more in the next two expansions. But then also includes things like improvements to our user interface, to the way you interact with modules and your ship stats, like hit points, to make things clearer for both veteran players and for new players.
So essentially, we’re building on the foundation that we are setting up with this first expansion.
Greg Hennessey: To add just a little bit more to that as well. We’ve been doing sort of six-month expansion releases, I think, since Uprising. Is that the first one?
Josh Bayer: And then, even before that, but with a pause. It’s been an on-and-off thing.
Greg Hennessey: Okay. For us, it kind of started as both a little bit of a development strategy, since six months is a relatively short cycle in terms of game development, in terms of being able to set ourselves up to think ahead just enough so that we can maintain momentum. So, I think that our expansions will hit with a little bit higher quality and a little bit more focus.
So, really, what this is doing in this first sort of trilogy is setting teams up, like Josh’s team working on Exordium, so maybe not everything that we dreamed of, how big it could be or how cool it could be, makes it into this first one. Then that allows us to set ourselves up for the second one and to land some of that stuff. But like Josh said, we are focusing on that progressive complexity, opening up the sandbox over time.
There is a new HUD that we’re going to be talking about. There is stuff like a mentorship program that we’re talking about as well, where connecting veterans and newer players. We’re really theming it around that, but also trying to bring in a narrative element, which is this war between the empires. And how do we connect the players to that war and get them participating in things like factional warfare, and feeling like they can really participate and contribute early?
You mentioned a mentorship program. Is that something that’s coming now or later in the Saga?
Greg Hennessey: That’ll be later in the saga.
Snorri said that EVE Online: Cradle of War is going to make “large-scale combat more accessible.” Can either of you explain what that means? Was he just referring to Exordium, or is that for veteran players?
Greg Hennessey: How can I describe that? That’s a great question. The goal again, of this progressive complexity, ultimately in this trilogy, is to lead players from being a new player into our more structured gameplay, which is factional warfare. And then, beyond that, even larger-scale combat.
In this first one, we are introducing Military Campaigns, which is another really big feature, and in that, it’s where we’re starting to lay the foundation of how we want to lead players into factional warfare. So, I can get a bit more into Military Campaigns?
That’s where I was going next, so that works!
Greg Hennessey: A lot of this kind comes from the notion of—I have danced with EVE for many years in and out. And one of the things that I find really challenging sometimes, especially when you return in an expansion, is like, “Okay, what do I do? What is there for me to do in this expansion? How can I be a part of something?”
The campaigns are a framework where, right now, each of our empires will have a campaign that runs from the start of the expansion. And what it does is offer a series of objectives you can participate in. So, you can say, “I’m going to go do some mining. And if I mine in these regions, I get paid by the Empire. So, they’ll give me some ISK.”
So, you’ll see quests or something like that more traditionally. “I can do work, and I can help an empire that I want to help.” But the cool part about this is we’re kind of measuring the collective progress of everybody who’s participating in that. And over the course of the expansion, we have a collective progress bar that goes up for each of these campaigns.
If players complete all of the objectives together and they work together to do them, then at the end, we have interesting stakes or repercussions depending on whether the campaign succeeds or fails. We might do things like place new structures in the universe, or change taxes and regions, or build a super-highway bridge between different regions that didn’t exist before or change some element of the game.
What we’re doing is laying this narrative framework for each empire to say, “These are our motivations and our needs during this expansion.” And you can come in, and you can help. It’ll be very easy for a new player to just say, “I have all these things I can do that will just make me some ISK, and I feel like I can contribute to something bigger.” Or if you’re an existing player, you may actually have strong motivations to want something to happen or not happen and organize people to participate.
You’re giving them the opportunity to choose their own adventure in EVE Online, but collectively.
Greg Hennessey: That’s right.
I know you can’t tell me what’s coming or what’s not coming to EVE Online, but is there anything that you, as a team, think will happen or really want to happen, or are worried they won’t do? Do you think about it like that?
Greg Hennessey: I think I’m going to just say this as EVE designer: you stop thinking about that a little bit.
Josh Bayer: You learn that you need to have all the situations covered. Like, we can’t give an option to our players that we’re not happy with it occurring because they’ll find a way. Even in some games, you might provide a challenge and probably say, “This is too difficult. They’ll never do it.” In EVE, they’ll always find a way.
So yeah, all of the objectives, both the success and failure conditions, they’re all things that we’re happy to see happen one way or another. I think, probably my guess is that probably all four empires will succeed, but that’s up to the players, and we’ll see.
Greg Hennessey: But we know how our players work.
Interesting. Last year, we had two new ships announced. This year, there are eight coming to EVE Online.
Greg Hennessey: Yeah. That’s right.
Why the choice to go with eight this time around, and how much of a difference is that in development compared to just the two?
Josh Bayer: A big difference is last year’s ships were for factions. There’s one unique ship for these that are factions, where it’s one distinct faction separate from all the rest. The new ships that are being added for this expansion are two sets of ships, and for each set, there’s one for each of the four empires. In a lot of ways, it’s a new class, and then you get to choose which empire’s flavour you want to fly with.
And that’s a way we’ve done it often in the past. If you look at things like the standard cruisers in the game, you’ll see a version of an attack cruiser, like the fast attack ship, for all four empires. And the same thing is happening here, where there are the new Tech II Carriers and the new faction destroyers. And for each of those two classes, there’s one for each of the four main empires.
Do you have favourites?
Josh Bayer: I think I’m most excited personally to fly the Navy destroyers. I enjoy both small and big ships. But I think my real heart is with small ships. And so, they’re a nice, fast, nimble ship. They can zip around the battlefield.
Greg Hennessey: Do you have a favourite faction ship that you’re going to fly?
Josh Bayer: Oh, that’s a good question. I think probably the Minmatar one is going to be the one I’m most excited to get to fly.
Greg Hennessey: Yeah, I’m excited to fly the carriers, mostly because I’m still working up to be able to fly carriers. So, it’s like a nice stretch goal for me to kind of get there. I’m a Minmatar guy also. Sorry.
The other thing that I wanted to talk about was the Epic Arc missions in EVE Online: Cradle of War. Again, I apologize for relating this back to World of Warcraft, but they brought back WoW Classic. So, you can go back and do all the original content the hardcore way. How does that work in EVE Online? What are players going to be able to do, and how do they get there?
Greg Hennessey: Epic Arc is just a series of missions, and it does have a narrative strung along with it. We introduced a new one in the last expansion, and the first, grounding philosophy behind that is, again, I really want to have things when you land in the expansion that you’re like, “Welcome to the expansion. It’s been a while. Well, here’s something that might be interesting for you to come check out and kind of remember some of the mechanics and do something interesting and give you a little bit of a story.”
It’s definitely way harder in EVE to do a story like World of Warcraft in a lot of ways for many reasons. But this one in particular is going to be a four-mission arc that takes you through the histories of each of the empires. And there’s a couple of cool things about it, which is that we’re actually pulling from events of the past and some of which are in the player’s memories as well.
The way we’re dressing that up and things is maybe will afford us the ability to do more interesting content like this in the future as well, where you’re kind of in these holographic sort of recreations of the past. So that’ll be there for everybody.
Josh Bayer: And this new epic arc takes place in Exordium, the new player area, and it is designed so it’s something that an existing player can come and check out and enjoy, but also something that is especially designed for new players who want to learn more about the major factions of the game.
To learn more about the story, you can essentially be presented with each of the empires trying to get you to support them in their military campaigns. The empires are kind of fighting over the player’s loyalty, trying to get the new players to come in and work with them. So they’re going to show you an example of a big battle from their history that puts them in a positive light and really gives you the hard sell.
It’s a great opportunity to see what all the empires are all about, what makes them tick and how they imagine themselves.
How do you choose which battles with 20 years of EVE Online history?
Greg Hennessey: That’s a good question.
Josh Bayer: There were a bunch of options. I think there were easily another dozen that we could have chosen. But in some of these cases, there are examples where battles that happened during EVE’s history, in some cases, they’re battles that were just in the lore text when EVE launched. So something that was on the website, in a lore blurb in 2003, we’re now, for the first time, getting the ability to let players actually kind of see a recreation of.
So, for folks who have been following along with the lore for a long time, they’ll find these really interesting.
And again, I’m going to ask, do you have a favourite Epic Arc mission in EVE Online: Cradle of War?
Greg Hennessey: I kind of like the Amarr one because there’s a very specific flavour to the Amarr Empire. And they’re very clearly and obviously propagandizing you. But it’s kind of fun in that way.
Josh Bayer: I haven’t actually played them since they got into their like semi-polished state. I’ll need to pass on that question because the last time I played them was in a very, very rough block-out stage. I need to actually give them a try. I’ll definitely try them out on one of my player characters when they actually launch to the full game with the expansion.
EVE Online: Cradle of War comes to New Eden on June 9, 2026, on Steam and the EVE Launcher.
