EVE Vanguard Alpha Goes Live 24/7 Today Alongside EVE Online Fractured Skies

After years of playtests that came and went, the EVE Vanguard alpha is finally open around the clock. Fenris Creations flipped the switch at 11:00 UTC today, November 10, and the extraction shooter now runs 24/7 as a paid alpha through the EVE Launcher. It launches on the same day as EVE Online: Fractured Skies, the expansion that connects the ground war to the space war for the first time. Buy in now and your firefights on the surface feed a living campaign in New Eden.

What the EVE Vanguard alpha actually is

EVE Vanguard is an extraction-adventure FPS set in the EVE Online universe. You play a Warclone, an immortal soldier dropped onto contested planets to run contracts, grab loot, and extract before rival squads or the planet itself ends the run. The loop will feel familiar to anyone who has played Marathon or ARC Raiders, but the setting is pure EVE: four empires fighting over the same patch of dirt, with the outcome feeding back into the MMO.

The alpha is paid access, not a free weekend. Founder's Packs start at $15 for the Resonant Pack, with Contraband Packs at $30, the Fulcrum Pack at $100, and the Legacy Pack at $514. Every pack includes permanent access through full release, so this is a one-time buy rather than a subscription. The alpha is exclusive to the EVE Launcher for now. A Steam Early Access release is planned for Q3 2027.

Today's build adds three new maps spanning New Eden's security levels, the Gallente BR-60 Battle Rifle, and a Weapon Telemetry progression system that tracks how you actually use your guns. Fenris Creations spent the playtest phase tuning the difficulty after its own game director admitted the team had accidentally built one of the hardest extraction games around. The alpha is the payoff for that work: the game no longer disappears between test windows.

Fractured Skies: the expansion behind the launch

The shooter does not launch alone. EVE Online: Fractured Skies went live at the same hour, and it is the second expansion in the Theaters of War trilogy reworking lowsec Factional Warfare. Four new navy attack battlecruisers join the fight, led by the Naga Navy Issue, which finally gives the Naga the cruise missile and torpedo fit players have asked for for years. The Tornado Fleet Issue, Oracle Navy Issue, and Talos Navy Issue round out the set, and all four come exclusively from Factional Warfare loyalty point stores.

Fractured Skies also adds nine sets of Synchronizer rigs, a new rig type that grows stronger the more modules you fit from one faction, and a first-phase HUD rework available as an opt-in preview. New pilots get thirteen free pre-fitted AIR Academy ships to experiment with, and the AIR Career Program now lives inside the achievement system with close to 80 achievements to chase. Anyone returning for the expansion can claim seven days of Omega free in the New Eden Store until November 20.

How the ground war feeds the space war

The headline feature is the connection between the two games, and it is permanent from day one. Contracts and expeditions completed by Warclones in Vanguard increase the number of special campaign sites appearing in EVE Online's highsec and lowsec space. In plain terms, shooting things on the ground creates content for the pilots in space, and the loop runs in both directions.

That link deepens over the next year. In Q2 2027, Warclones will be able to enlist in Factional Warfare and aid their chosen empire's Conquest. The full expansion notes lay out the road ahead: each empire runs a two-month Military Campaign from today, with system-wide bonuses activating on January 5 for the factions whose players complete the most objectives. Then, in mid-January, an Emergent Artifact is expected to surface, and all four empires will clash over it in a four-way brawl in lowsec. The first Conquest follows in February, when the Conquest Engines the empires have been building finally deploy. Read the full expansion notes for the complete list of changes.

This is the idea CCP Games has chased since Dust 514, the PlayStation 3 shooter that linked ground combat to EVE Online a decade ago before the servers closed. Dust 514 proved the concept and died on a platform that could not sustain it. Vanguard is the second attempt, built as a PC-first extraction shooter with a live connection from the start.

What to watch next

The honest read is that today is the starting gun, not the finish line. A paid alpha at $15 is a low bar to clear, but extraction shooters live or die on their player counts, and Vanguard needs enough Warclones online at odd hours to make its maps feel dangerous. The three new maps and the weapon progression give early buyers something to chew on, and the link to EVE Online gives the game a reason to exist that no other extraction shooter can copy.

Watch the numbers over the next two weeks. If the alpha holds a steady population, the road to Steam Early Access in Q3 2027 looks straightforward. If the maps feel empty, Fenris Creations will need to move faster on the Factional Warfare enlistment planned for Q2 2027. Either way, New Eden's ground war is finally open for business, and for the first time in a decade, what happens on the surface matters to the pilots above.