SAN FRANCISCO--EVE Online is one of many online games present at GDC 2009, and while the most significant updates this online space-exploration-plus-battles-plus-trading-plus-player-politics game will likely see in the near future are behind it with the recently release "Apocrypha" content expansion included in the new "Special Edition" boxed product, its developers remain focused on continuing to push forward with the game'sevolution through continued rebalancing and new content updates.

　　EVE Online continues to feature virtual corporations of ruthless players competing in cutthroat resource wars.

　　The Apocrypha expansion, which launched earlier in March, added new missions, new user interface elements, a new skill queuing system that lets players queue up skills for the next 24 hours, a new tutorial experience for beginners, and a graphical upgrade to an updated engine that now scales better to lower-end systems. These and other additions seem to have helped a great deal, since the game now has an all-time subscriber base high of 280,000 players.

　　Though EVE's development team refused to talk specifics on future updates, stating only that it plans to continue its efforts to appeal to hardcore fans while also adding features to draw in new users. The team otherwise seems extremely upbeat about the game's success, especiallyduring thesefinanciallyuncertain times.