For Project Nova, the shooter set in EVE Online, the alpha was actually supposed to start now. However, that is not the case. Developer CCP recently announced a temporary halt for the shooter: it simply could not convince. It’s back to the drawing board.
What is going on with Nova? Project Nova was supposed to be a shooter in the world of EVE Online and was to start the alpha as early as November 2018.
But now developer CCP has pulled the emergency brake and announced: That’s it, there will be no alpha and the game is put on ice for now!
The game does not convince
Why was Nova put on ice? According to CCP, Nova would not meet the expectations that had been set after the previous feedback. Indeed, early players complain that it is merely a generic shooter like Call of Duty, just with EVE themes and the appropriate skins.
There have been no real unique features in Project Nova.
What did players wish for? Many players expected more overlap with the space MMORPG EVE Online from an EVE shooter. This would have been the case in the now-discontinued PS3-exclusive shooter Dust 514 from 2016.
There, it was possible for EVE players to request orbital strikes in-game. Many fans were hoping for a reboot of this game, also for PC.
Developers want to take their time, are in no rush
What will happen to Nova now? CCP states in a newsletter that they are not giving up on the game yet and continue to work on it to make it what they and the fans hope for.
They want to calmly explore the possibilities of linking EVE and Nova. Fortunately, they are in no rush to complete the game. It seems that we will not hear anything about Nova for a while, and CCP is sending it back to the drawing board for an extended period.
Is Nova facing the same fate as Project Legion? The fact that CCP wants to take their time to make Nova a unique game sounds commendable at first. However, one should remember that there was already an attempt to develop a new EVE shooter after Dust 514.
This was presented at the EVE Fanfest in 2014 and was called Project Legion. However, the project was quietly canceled and disappeared into obscurity. Let’s hope that Nova does not meet a similar fate.
Prefer Mobile over Shooter?
What’s behind this: Recently, there have been some developments at CCP that suggest the company is heading in a direction that may not necessarily fit a shooter for PC:
- In September 2018, the studio CCP was acquired by “Pearl Abyss,” the studio behind Black Desert, a Korean company. Pearl Abyss has made a fortune with a mobile MMORPG in Asia.
- Since then, CCP has also been keeping a closer eye on the mobile market and wants to convince with Project Echoes, a mobile version of EVE Online.
It is quite possible that Project Nova has lost its significance internally within CCP in this new direction.
