Yesterday Dust 514 was finally introduced into Eve Online's live server Tranquility. This marked a big step towards the full integration of Dust into New Eden. This has been years in the making, with CCP being very vague about when it was going to happen. Slowly but surely Dust mercs start to settle down the the big universe CCP has made and run for 10 years.

This also is a sign that the open beta is just around the corner, i dont know the date but im pretty sure its close.

Here is a copy of the dev blog put out before the merge happend.

Citizens of New Eden

My name is CCP Nullarbor from Team True Grit and I am here to introduce to you some new space friends: the mercenaries of DUST 514.

DUST 514 is the second major game in development in the EVE Universe, where the players are mercenaries fighting ground wars on the same planets that you have been flying past in EVE Online for almost 10 glorious years. You can read more about it at www.dust514.com.

On Thursday the 10th of January, following a slightly longer than usual scheduled downtime, we will be migrating over players currently participating in the DUST 514 closed beta from Singularity to Tranquility. This is a particularly special day here at CCP as this brings to life an ambitious and incredibly exciting vision of a single cross platform universe, the likes of which have never been undertaken before.

So as a capsuleer, what does this mean in practical terms?

Well, for starters, you will begin to see unfamiliar faces in local. They may look a little funny and talk about bizarre concepts such as tanks, grenades and “running around” but I promise they are as friendly as New Eden citizens can be and want to learn everything they can about this world you now both share.

DUST mercenaries can belong to existing EVE corporations if you’re willing to accept their applications. Similarly you will see corporations started by DUST mercenaries recruiting EVE pilots to join up with them. You can share corporation chat including voice chat and invite them into custom channels or private conversations.

Mail works in both directions and you can add each other into your contact lists so you don’t forget your new acquaintances.

You may remember CCP karkur talking last year about some changes to the UI in anticipation of this event. I will leave that link here incase you missed it:

Look Who's Talking

Click to enlarge

The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy

Besides just chatting about the weather or sharing battle stories, we are also introducing the first component of higher level gameplay as part of Faction Warfare. DUST mercenaries can accept contracts offered by the NPC Faction Warfare miltias and fight to attack or defend them in the form of corporation battles. These come with the risk of losing a collateral payment of ISK, but a victory will secure a district on one of the many temperate planets in Faction Warfare space. The more districts a militia has control over the fewer victory points will be required for EVE Faction Warfare pilots to take ownership of the system.

That is, provided you can convince the mercenaries to fight for your side.

CCP Fozzie has some more details about the specifics of this here:

FW: I-hub and system upgrades

The tools of war

We are also enabling the ultimate in cross game escapades, Orbital Bombardment, with the first flavor being the Tactical Strike. You may have also noticed some new ammo blueprints on the market (Tactical EMP S, Tactical Laser S, Tactical Hybrid S). Well, now you can load up these special long range, high precision munitions into suitable small turret weapons and rain fire from the skies. This will be available to Faction Warfare battles in low security space and we’ll leave it up to you to arrange the details of this with your new fleet-footed buddies. As one might assume, more guns are just better, so I recommend the destroyer hull as the best compromise between damage, mobility and cost for this particular task.

Click to enlarge

We are working on a FAQ to answer all your questions about orbital bombardment complete with pictures. We will post details of that later this week.

Worlds collide

This migration comes with a reset of character skills and corporations for the DUST players. If you are already in the beta, and especially if you are a CEO or Director of a DUST corporation, I strongly recommend you head over to the DUST forums to read this thread on some of the specifics of the migration:

Tranquility migration inbound

For now we are remaining in closed beta from the DUST side of things but short of anything catastrophic occurring as we head towards open beta (knock on wood) this will be the last reset for DUST characters. So enjoy those skill points mercenaries, you earned them.

Just the beginning

This is a massive technical and game design endeavour and so the overlap in gameplay is intentionally contained for now. It is of course very important that we do not upset the serious business of internet spaceships.

In particular the economic balance between a 10-year-old space simulation and a brand new free to play MMOFPS is an obvious concern. So, for this first release, any ISK transfer between EVE and DUST characters will be blocked. This will then be replaced by a taxable transfer mechanism with the intention of easing the currency control to 0% and removing it entirely once we are happy the economies have reached an equilibrium.

We are already hard at work on the next expansion where you will see things like player owned districts, tighter economic integration and more incentives for EVE characters and corporations to take part in the politics, logistics and outcomes of DUST 514 battles. The design teams will be working with the CSM this year to make sure these plans sit well with capsuleers and mercenaries alike.

We absolutely cannot wait to get this journey started with you and it all kicks off this Thursday.

For now fly safe and good hunting. o7

CCP Nullabor – original Dev post.

I hope this works because it sounds awesome.

a lot of eve players do also. Its been talked about for 4-5 years now and finally we are seeing it happen. Also CCP has put a lot of money into Dust which could have been put into Eve. So if it goes tits up it might hurt Eve badly.

The concept is really cool and ground breaking. Now we just have to wait and see if it works out in the real world

I think I'm most interested in the Office Space reference in the screen shot of the UI.

I can't play EVE, but the best stories come from it! Hope this all works well, it's a pretty awesome idea.

Looks like it is time to jump back in to some Dust.

I want to like this game but overall it feels a bit sluggish and convoluted. There are better games out right now that do the big battle thing better. Planetside 2, MAG, Battlefield 3 and Section 8 just to name a few. I'll keep playing though to see if it will hook me or not.

I hope it's more worthwhile than Planeside 2 which had problems giving me motivations to do anything (I haven't read anything about Dust, so I wouldn't know)

I will have to admit I liked eve for quite a while. Sadly i didn't find anyone at my level to play with so I ditched it :/ But I knows hows to plays em shooters.

I'm the only one of my EVE friends that has a PS3 so I'm really looking forward to the open beta so we can dick around in it.

I really hope this does well for them, its such a promising project.

I didn't enjoy Dust much when I played it but that was a long time ago, and before I knew there was mouse+keyboard support.

May give it another shot.

I have heard a lot of mixed reactions, but since its still in beta, closed beta even CCP still have time to make it a good game. I hope! Even tho Eve is growing every year it would be nice to see a influx of players larger than normal.

Also doing something as ground breaking as this there will always be problems. All tho the merger went as smooth as silk. No hitches that i have noticed

Unless there's some serious overhauling, this game simply won't be fun enough to play to justify choosing it over any other shooter. It just feels like a shooter that was made by people who make weird MMO4xspacesimstrategythingies. Ultimately, it doesn't matter that much how cool the Eve/Dust integration is.

Its not made by the people that make Eve, its a totally separate dev team, located in Shanghai. The Eve dev's doesn't do anything with it except the Eve-Dust link.

And as i said, its still in closed beta so lots is going to change between now and the official release, whenever that will be. Even after that Dust will get the same treatment as Eve has, meaning it will always be changing, new expansions, more integration into Eve, balance changes ect

The reason to choose Dust over other shooters is because the progression is totally different from other games, it takes time like in Eve. You cant go into Dust for a few weeks and expect to be wiping the floor with everyone. You benefit from experience from other FPS's but there is so much more that factor into how good you are in Dust.

Any idea if this will come to the PC?

There are some rumors that it will come to PC, but nothing official.

I really wanted to like Dust but I found the shooting to be poor and that the higher level guys had access to all the better gear. I just never stood a chance.

Tried the beta, and was not impressed. Frame rate is bad, graphics are bland and uninspired, and worst of all, the shooting doesn't feel good.

Fantastic idea, marred by mediocre gameplay.

Here's hoping they have another 10 years to perfect it.

@Legion_ said:

Tried the beta, and was not impressed. Frame rate is bad, graphics are bland and uninspired, and worst of all, the shooting doesn't feel good.

Yep. Dust (the beta) is one of the worst online shooters I have ever played. They should honestly think about cancelling this thing. It damages their reputation (and Sony´s for pushing this game so hard).

I know graphics aren´t everything, but the framerate matters in online shooters- and it´s just all over the place in Dust. The worst offender are the controls for your dude on the ground. It just feels BAD and I doubt it would feel a lot better with a higher framerate. It´s like the devs have never played a shooter before. I didn´t really like how MAG felt on PS3 and that game had some technical issues too, but it was a goddamn revelation compared to DUST. In short: Cancel this game, move to better hardware (the PC), or hire some people who actually know what makes a good shooter.

@Superfriend said:

@Legion_ said:

Tried the beta, and was not impressed. Frame rate is bad, graphics are bland and uninspired, and worst of all, the shooting doesn't feel good.

Yep. Dust (the beta) is one of the worst online shooters I have ever played. They should honestly think about cancelling this thing. It damages their reputation (and Sony´s for pushing this game so hard).

I know graphics aren´t everything, but the framerate matters in online shooters- and it´s just all over the place in Dust. The worst offender are the controls for your dude on the ground. It just feels BAD and I doubt it would feel a lot better with a higher framerate. It´s like the devs have never played a shooter before. I didn´t really like how MAG felt on PS3 and that game had some technical issues too, but it was a goddamn revelation compared to DUST. In short: Cancel this game, move to better hardware (the PC), or hire some people who actually know what makes a good shooter.

The way I see it, this game will be a launch title for the PS4. I think they'll just drop the PS3 version all together. It's been in development for so long, and it's obviously more ambitious than the PS3 allows it to be.