Will the Jovian Directorate Become a Player Faction in Eve Online?

Despite the hints dropped on various Eve sites and the less than subtle suggestions posted on Eve Online message boards, the Jovian Empire is not yet a faction available to players in the game. This oversight might be corrected in a later expansion to the popular space faring MMO. Even if a player cannot join the Jovian Directorate as a player character, he will need to interact with this faction from time to time.

The Jovian Directorate maintained a high level of technology after the collapse of the New Eden Wormhole. The people may have forgotten how to use warp gate technology, but they retained a high level of knowledge of genetic engineering. This allowed them to make improvements on the standard human genotype. This went well for many generations until the Jovians started to tamper with basic human instincts.

The results of such tampering were catastrophic and left its mark on the people of the Jove Empire. Their lineage is human, although the bizarre appearances sometimes give people outside of the Empire cause to wonder. The genetic tampering had another side effect. Jovians will sometimes go into a deep depression where they lose the will to live and lose interest in most activities. The condition usually results in death, but it can take place over a process of months or years.

The Jovian Directorate has little effect on play in Eve Online, but it does affect the story line. The Jovian Empire delivered a crushing military defeat to the Amarr Empire. (A feat also accomplished by the Gallente Federation.) The Mimnatar followed up these two military defeats by rebellion against their masters.

There are a few story line missions that hint on the mystery behind the Jovian Directorate and attempts whose morality varies from high-handed to questionable to cure the genetic condition that often strikes the Jovian People.

This is a matter of speculation and the Eve Online game developers have remained silent on the issue. The story line elements that have been released suggest to the author that players will eventually be able to create a Jovian character, especially as a statistics for the number of systems they control in the Eve Online universe is available.

A patient player should enjoy playing one of the other factions they can represent for now, such as Caldari State, and try to find out what interesting lore they can uncover about the Jove Empire and the Jovian Directorate. So far, the new race has not been added, but player clamor might necessitate Jovian player characters at some point in the future.

Additional Sources:

The Evelopedia