According to CCP, Incarna will be the "beginning of EVE Online's transition from 'the space game' to 'the ultimate sci-fi world.' "

In a reveal according to Eurogamer.net, EVE Online's Incarna expansion finally has a release date set. Sort of. Apparently Creative Director Torfi Frans Olafsson has confirmed that CCP is aiming to release EVE's highly anticipated expansion in the summer of 2011, and he further re-confirms that the expansion is, in fact, in development. Apparently the team is currently focusing more on creating the back-end technology to make Incarna a possibility.

Of course, EVE Online fans won't have to wait until summer of next year to get some new EVE content, as CCP plans to "progressively" rolling out portions of Incarna, like their "Incursion" expansion, coming this winter. Olafsson points to their new planet graphics that were released prior to launching planetary interaction as an example of their staggered development and release project. Incursion's character assets and character creator will be a solid stepping stone towards Incarna's promised "walking around on the planets" feature.

So EVE captains and pilots, I suppose you can plan to actually "see" each other in the summer of 2011!