According to a dev blog entry posted today by CCP Soundwave, the new player experience is going to receive some updates in the upcoming expansion. As Soundwave mentions, the tutorial didn't even exist when EVE Online first launched, and it's currently in place to teach new players EVE fundamentals. Of course, as new content is added, the tutorial should be updated as well.

The first change Soundwave mentions is that the tutorial will be informing players about the importance of corporations. Also, exploration will be added as a fourth career path for players who like to poke around complexes and wormholes. Lastly, a special mission line will be added for players who have done one or more career paths. "This mission line should ultimately point you towards faction warfare, rewarding the player with enough standing to join a militia upon completion," Soundwave said.

You can read the full blog entry below.

Here at the Tranquility Department of Public Safety, we strive to make sure our new pilots leave basic training with the best foundation for safe and responsible spaceflight. To reach this goal, we currently have a tutorial which teaches new players EVE's fundamentals, and career paths which gives players a taste of EVE's content. Ideally, a player that has gone through the tutorial and career paths, will end up with a good grasp of EVE's basics, allowing them to spend more time having fun, and less time being on fire shouting “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH”.

Continually adding more content to EVE also means making additions and adjustments to the new player experience. For the coming expansion, that is the responsibility of Team Fibonacci, widely considered the best development team and coincidentally the team I am on. Hopefully, when you are done reading this blog, you have a good grasp on the changes to come. Anyway, let us start at the beginning, with the tutorial.

The tutorial has come a long way, from not existing when the game launched (the new player experience consisted mostly of clicking away pop-up error messages), to the well structured and informative introduction we have today. Based on feedback from the playerbase, we are going to make tweaks and changes, to make it even more newbie friendly and interesting. One of the added goals for this expansion is to make sure that a player that completes the tutorial is aware that:

1. Corporations exist. 

2. They are awesome. 

3. Not joining one as soon as possible is silly.

The career paths should introduce the player to some of the different features EVE has to offer. Currently, you can get a small taste of industry, combat and trade through the three available options. As EVE expands content wise, so should the career paths to accommodate these changes. For some time now, we have been adding a lot of exploration enabled content like complexes, mini profession sites, wormholes and so on, which makes a fourth career path that focuses on exploration a natural extension. We are making a brand new career path mission line, so new players interested in this particular part of EVE can learn the fundamentals early on.

The last change we are looking to add is a special mission line for players who have done one or more career paths. This mission line should ultimately point you towards faction warfare, rewarding the player with enough standing to join a militia upon completion. Essentially, this line will feature everything from learning to warp scramble, to getting your newbie ship horribly blown up (ok so I lied, you will spend a little time on fire).

 Anyway, I you would like to have your opinion heard, feel free to give us some input and feedback in this thread: http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1106131