Intro
During Fanfest 2025 in Reykjavík, I had the chance to sit down with Peter Farrell — better known to the community as CCP Swift — a key figure in EVE Online’s community team and one of the driving forces behind the Alliance Tournament.
We began our conversation with what everyone wanted to know: the future of Alliance Tournament XXI (AT XXI). But as the interview unfolded, we shifted gears into something equally important — the state of EVE Galaxy Conquest, a mobile title set in the EVE universe that’s still finding its footing.
Before the event, I’d gathered focused community feedback with the intent of acting as a kind of parliamentary voice — not just raising issues, but presenting them constructively. I’m deeply involved in the game myself (see my review of the game), and I saw this as a fantastic opportunity to make sure the EGC community’s voice could be heard. Knowing that CCP Swift was already aware of some of the ongoing discussions within the EGC Discord, it made sense to bring those concerns directly to him — not just as a developer, but as someone who genuinely bridges the gap between players and the team.
This conversation was just one highlight of Fanfest 2025 — explore the entire experience in my recap.
Table of Contents
Alliance Tournament XXI – What’s Next for Competitive EVE
Probably the most important question to you right from the start – is AT XXI confirmed?!
Alliance Tournament XXI is returning.
One of the big announcements that CCP Orca will be talking about in the EVE keynote is that they’re working on building out the tournament toolset. You have to limit fleet sizes, assign point values — it’s not how regular roams or fleet fights go. So having the right tools is critical.
My guess is it won’t be on TQ — so are you planning to give players direct access to the Thunderdome server? Or will everything still have to go through CCP?
Right now, only the community team — folks like CCP Zelus — can run those tools, and players can’t access them directly. The goal is to change that. The devs are working on giving players access to the Thunderdome tournament server, with tools that don’t require engineering support or manual work. Players will be able to pitch an idea, get trusted, and then run events on their own terms.
The idea is to have a more active tournament scene throughout the year, not just a single annual highlight. The Alliance Tournament will remain the peak event, but it won’t have to stand alone.
Do you have any dates for Alliance Tournament XXI? I assume sometime in fall 2025?
It’ll be in October again — hopefully that’s not a leak — but that’s the current target.
Feeder rounds will happen ahead of time, as usual. After the hype around Alliance Tournament 20, especially with those prize ships — the battleship-class Python — there’s a lot of excitement. People are already training, preparing to fly with their teams again.
There’s so much interest that they expect a solid turnout. So yea, the plan is to run feeder rounds earlier in the year, with the main tournament around October or November.
The EVE Alliance Tournament is my favorite sport. I watch it on a big screen with my son — snacks, drinks, yelling at the TV when teams do something silly. Do you ever think about that kind of experience when you’re creating the show?
Same here. It’s such a blast to watch, especially with the commentators and personalities who bring the matches to life.
It’s wild to think that when the Alliance Tournament started, YouTube didn’t even exist. They had to burn DVDs of the matches and physically mail them out to people. That was the only way to watch. Just raw footage, physical discs. Now we’ve got Twitch and YouTube — the livestream quality is amazing.
I was talking to CCP Zelus about the Alliance Tournament — just watching bars and squares isn’t that exciting on its own. But the commentary? That’s easily 80% of the whole experience.
Exactly. That tension — the sweating hands, the “what’s going to happen” feeling — that comes from the hosts. They elevate those moments when someone leaks deep into structure at the last second and barely survives. The excitement is all in how it’s framed.
Is it just me, or have the matches lately been incredible? The level of parity between alliances feels way higher than before — what’s your take on that?
Yeah, that’s one of the things I love about how the tournament has evolved, especially with the current rule sets. CCP Zelus has done a great job organizing things.
Back in the days of AT6 and AT7, there were three or four top-tier teams, and then a big drop-off. Now? You look at the top 10 or even top 20 teams, and it’s impossible to predict outcomes. Everyone’s skilled. Everyone’s smart. They’re putting in the hours and coming up with amazing strategies.
When I created a full report on the latest Alliance Tournament, I noticed how the meta evolved and shifted mid-competition. That’s some seriously impressive work from the teams. Do you think that kind of rapid adaptation is what defines a top-tier AT contender today?
Exactly — it’s so fun watching the meta shift week by week.
Even if you’ve been on a team before, things rarely go the way you expect. You see someone bring out a wild setup, and suddenly everything changes.
Like Mira Chieve from The Tuskers — their team won AT20 — he’s here at Fanfest this week. I’ve been meaning to ask him where he came up with that crazy tracking disruptor comp. Or that target painter Typhoon setup that just blasted everything at the start of the match.
Related: you can check out my full analytical breakdown of AT XX — with killmail data, ship comps, and trend visualizations — here.
The Alliance Tournament might be synthetic, but it still reveals real power. It’s like boxing — in the ring, you’ve got structure, rules, one-on-one. But out in the wild — like outside a pub — anything can happen. You might be the better fighter, but ten guys could still jump you. Same in EVE. On TQ, there are no fair fights. But even if it’s controlled, AT still surfaces comps and doctrines that absolutely apply to real-world PvP.
That analogy actually works really well. The tournament gives us a lab environment — but what players discover there often carries over to real EVE.
On the community team, we run a Friday stream where we just filament out and see what happens. We’ve borrowed a few Alliance Tournament fits, just to test them out in roaming. And yeah — they’re shockingly effective.
The Fleet Typhoon in particular — really, really good. And we didn’t even have a Hyena with a high-skill pilot. Just a Rapier running few target painters. But the core idea? Straight from the tournament. Distilled, adapted, and dropped into live play — and it holds up.
EVE in the Physical World – Trophies, Monuments, and Legacy
Alright, let’s bring it back to the physical plane for a moment. I noticed this year you’re creating a physical trophy with all the previous 20 winning teams’ names on it — but it stays here in Reykjavík, right?
Yes — the physical Alliance Tournament trophy stays in the CCP Games studio.
Winners still get the in-game Cup, but the real-world version remains on display in Reykjavík as a tribute to the effort and history behind each tournament. There’s still plenty of space left on the trophy too, and the hope is that it inspires players to earn their name on it in the future.
It kind of feels like the EVE Monument is the ultimate symbol of that, right? CCP and EVE have always offered something physical — something grounded — in a game that’s otherwise all digital.
We held a monument tour yesterday and weren’t sure how many people would come — maybe 20 or 30. In the end, over 80 showed up.
Everyone got to take photos, see their names on the EVE Monument, find old friends, maybe even remember people they’d lost. There’s something powerful about being able to say, “yeah, I did that,” and having it physically marked in the world.
That was one of my reasons for being here. My previous Fanfest saga had a whole section dedicated to the monument pilgrimage — it was a powerful, emotional moment.
It felt like twenty years of life and in-game memories collapsing into a single name etched into something real, somewhere far away.
Related: I wrote about this moment in more depth during my Saga 2023 — including the story of finding my names on the monument and watching other capsuleers do the same. Read it here.
I just came back from another emotional spot — the EVE History Wall. Not sure how many of the 70 veterans from the Siege of C-J6MT are still out there besides me, but seeing that moment etched into the timeline really brought back memories. Do you get a lot of reactions like that from players when they visit?
It’s such a fun thing to explore.
The wall is full of alliances, moments, and personal milestones. People just wander down it, looking for where they started. You’ll see small groups forming around certain areas — all reliving shared memories. It’s really something special.
Seeing people recognize these milestones and say, “yeah, I was part of that” — it really brings it all back.
EVE Galaxy Conquest – Feedback and Community Vision
I don’t have much more on the tournament, but we’ve got these evolving storylines in other CCP Games projects. Mind if we shift gears and talk about EVE Galaxy Conquest?
Sure. I can talk a bit about it. I’m not directly on the Galaxy Conquest team, but I do chat with players and relay feedback to the developers — especially the Shanghai team that’s working on it.
I know there’s a lot of feedback coming your way, but as someone deeply involved in the game — and in creating content around it — I wanted to take a moment to voice a few things the community especially wants to see highlighted, presented by me in a clear and constructive form.
That format is super helpful.
Sometimes a player just says, “this sucks,” and it’s hard to act on that — we don’t know what exactly went wrong, or if it’s a misunderstanding of game mechanics. But when we get structured feedback like you and Gumi have been sending, it’s way more valuable.
You’re saying, “here’s what we’re struggling with.” You don’t even have to offer a fix — just defining the problem clearly gives the design team something solid to work with. They might not use the exact solution proposed, but it still gives them a direction. They can come up with a different mechanic that solves the same pain point.
The first issue falls under your area — community development, specifically around trust and transparency. Everyone understands this is an early-stage game. Bugs and balance changes are expected. But the frustration sets in when things get patched silently, without any communication. Is that something you’re actively looking to improve?
Exactly. Galaxy Conquest is still finding its footing, but it’s very much set in the EVE universe, and we want that same sense of developer transparency and collaboration.
It’s going to be a bumpy road while we get there — but that’s absolutely the end goal. It should feel like any other EVE title, with patch notes, dev comments, and clarity around what’s being changed.
Trust is fragile right now. Players feel left in the dark, and that breeds frustration — accusations of pay-to-win, unfair changes, and growing negativity. Most of it could be avoided with clearer communication.
Absolutely. I get that. Just knowing what’s been changed — even if it’s a nerf to your favorite commander — is so much easier to accept than finding out after the fact. Being upfront goes a long way.
Patch notes really need more clarity. Vague terms like “slightly reduced” don’t help — this is a numbers game, and many of us come from EVE where we’re used to analyzing exact values. Do you see more transparent, stat-driven patch notes as part of the long-term direction?
That kind of feedback is incredibly useful — and the work you’re doing to dig into the game systems really shows how committed the community is. You’re right: players shouldn’t have to reverse engineer core mechanics just to understand if something changed. We definitely want to get to a place where patch notes are clearer, even if it’s just a simple stat change. That kind of transparency really helps.
And from a content creator’s side, clear patch notes are even more critical. When stats change quietly, it’s easy to end up sharing outdated or misleading info — and it takes a lot of effort to keep everything accurate across guides and builds.
Yeah, no — I totally understand that. It reminds me of the EVE University wiki. Even with a whole group of people, it’s nearly impossible to keep up. And when you’re not sure what’s changed, it’s maddening.
That’s really where we want to go — toward having a proper creator program for Galaxy Conquest, like we already have for EVE Online, EVE Vanguard, and EVE Frontier. Right now it’s definitely a weak spot, but community collaboration and transparency like you’re describing — that’s the goal.
Making It Work for Everyone – The Future of Galaxy Conquest
One of the biggest struggles for players right now is just playing with friends. You probably know where I’m heading?
Yeah, the way the servers and seasons are structured right now makes that really tricky.
Exactly. I understand why it was designed this way — to prevent people from steamrolling early servers — but it’s holding the playerbase back. There’s no real way for new friends or family to catch up and join you. Even taking a break means risking losing your corp if they merge into another season. I know this is outside your direct scope, but you definitely know who to pass that feedback to.
Totally. I’ve been on the receiving end of that too — getting steamrolled by someone with a full five-star hangar is no fun. We get why the system is there, but it’s not perfect. This kind of feedback is exactly what we’ll bring to the Shanghai team.
Like I mentioned earlier — it’s still a CCP game. We want to preserve our identity: community-first, fair systems, and flexibility for all kinds of players.
And that flexibility is what I love. There’s room for free-to-play players. I even wrote a review praising that. Just like in EVE — you don’t need to be rich, you need a role. A day-one Maulus pilot with a 1 million SP bonus can be a fully functional e-war frigate and completely change a fight.
Exactly. Whether you’re sieging, flipping tiles, or just supporting, there’s always a job to do. That’s the kind of structure we want to preserve in Galaxy Conquest too — one where every player has a purpose.
The community in Conquest has been genuinely great — people are working together, even across rival lines. In our corp, we’re actively holding back from steamrolling the server because we know if players quit, we’ll end up alone. Some groups are even creating their own content — keeping things engaging between seasons. That kind of self-driven effort feels worth supporting. Please, work with the community.
Absolutely — we will. It’s something we’re already focused on improving.
We know there’s a gap, but we’re learning. The goal is to bring the same kind of framework we’ve built around EVE — strong support systems, reliable feedback loops, and real collaboration — into Galaxy Conquest. That’s where we want to get it right.
Debrief
By the end of my conversation with Peter, I was reminded why the Alliance Tournament still holds such a central place in EVE’s identity. From evolving metas to community-driven showmanship, AT XXI is a statement of what players can build when the right tools (and ships) are in their hands.
That same energy carried into our conversation about EVE Galaxy Conquest.
I left with more confidence that EVE Galaxy Conquest is in the right hands — and that it has every chance to grow into another long-lasting CCP Games project. Bugs, UI quirks, missing pieces — those are just code problems, and code can be fixed. What matters most is the community, and it’s clear that CCP understands that deeply. That’s what gives me real hope that things are going to improve — and soon.
An unexpected surprise happened later that same day. A group of three CCP Games employees — not even part of the EGC development team — approached me. They had a deep understanding of the game, its potential, and the same clear view of the challenges it’s facing. We agreed to collaborate after Fanfest and find a way to help the Shanghai team prioritize what matters most.
But that’s a story for my full Saga.
For now — fly smart, stay loud, and o7
Leave a Reply