June 10th marks the dawn of EVE's Empyrean Age

CCP announced today that EVE Online's Empyrean Age expansion will go live on the 10th of June. The expansion will be free for all EVE players. Features added include factional warfare with a ranking system, new agents, a new region of space, details on hidden deadspace complexes, and new system occupancy rules.

EVE's in-game news sources have been filled with reports of one violent diplomatic disaster after another, setting the stage for the all out war to come. In addition to those reports, CCP commissioned writer Tony Gonzales to write a novel (also titled Empyrean Age) that reveals in detail the back-story of the conflict.

Empyrean Age is already live on EVE's test server, Singularity. User reactions have been positive so far, and we suspect this update will offer plenty of satisfactory content to tide users over until the Ambulation update downloads later this year.