Independent MMO developer CCP has confirmed that the tenth free expansion for its globally popular MMO EVE Online will arrive on March 10th – the same day that Atari brings the first boxed iteration of the game to retail.

EVE Online: Apocrypha sees a network of unstable wormholes open across the game’s universe, allowing players access to previously unexplored regions of the New Eden universe. CCP promises that “advanced new technologies” await those willing to explore the new cosmos.

The firm has also taken steps to ease passage for those trying EVE for the first time, with both a reworked New Player Experience and EVElopedia.

“Just this past week we broke our concurrent user record with 45,186 people flying unbound in the same game world at the same time – a huge percentage of our quarter of a million current subscribers and a true testament to EVE in our sixth year of operation,” EVE Online’s senior producer Torfi Frans Olafsson stated.

“Today is an unprecedented time to start playing, as you can get ahead of the curve before Apocrypha releases in stores and our hard work hits the server cluster. It'll be easier than ever to get 'lost in the wormhole' that is EVE with what we have planned for the future of our expanding universe.”