Eve and Dust servers will merge tomorrow

It's been a long time coming, but Icelandic developer CCP Games is ready to plug its free-to-play multiplayer shooter Dust 514 into its ten year old, behemoth MMORPG Eve Online. Dust was originally announced back in 2009, and acts as a strategic first-person shooter than both exists and connects with the Eve universe. It's been in closed beta since last year and kept separate from Eve, but CCP is finally ready to cross the streams. From tomorrow, January 10, Dust servers will be migrated into the Eve world, and Dust players will be able to get involved with Eve veterans, joining their corporations and sharing information. What makes the move all that more interesting is that it's cross-platform -- Dust is a PlayStation 3 title, while Eve Online is Windows PC and Mac. CCP engineer "Nullarbor" notes that joining up the worlds of a subscription-based game and a free-to-play title has never been tried before on such a grand scale, and as such certain elements will not be readily available from the get-go. For example, in a bid to keep the economic balance of each game stable, transfer of the universe's in-game currency between Eve and Dust isn't yet possible. "It is of course very important that we do not upset the serious business of internet spaceships," says Nullarbor. It's also notable that all character skills and corporations in the Dust universe will be reset as part of the migration, although CCP says that this will be the last reset to affect Dust players.