Logo by Qohen Leth
What is a Distant Worlds event?
For those who came to Elite in the years that followed DW2 (2019), or who never experienced either DW1 or DW2 during the time they were running, the general theme is to create an expeditionary event - a journey through the deepest parts of the galaxy lasting approximately 3 months - have it built around an interesting core idea or goal that offers practicable gameplay, and flesh out the journey with player-run events, such as geology projects, mining goals, mapping surveys, and a science project, as well as the traditional waypoint meetups that would include SRV races, planetary circumnavigations, and localized exploration ventures.
- DW1 launched in January 2016 and had over 1,300 players take part. It was one of the first large-scale community created events in Elite Dangerous, laying down a blueprint for many other expeditionary events that followed.
- DW2 launched in January 2019 and this time almost 14,000 players signed up and took part. Among many other achievements, DW2 built the Explorer's Anchorage outpost in the galactic core, the event was extensively covered in the gaming media at the time, as well as featuring in the New Scientist Magazine and on mainstream radio, and was voted #2 in the Gameranx Game Events That Achieved The Impossible (receiving over 6 million views).
You can read more in-depth info about what DW1 & DW2 entailed here - link.
A Decade of Exploration and a New Journey?
Next January marks the 10th anniversary of the first Distant Worlds Expedition (DW1). A few months ago, organizers from both DW1 and DW2 began discussing ways to commemorate this milestone. During these conversations, the feasibility of rekindling our ideas for a Distant Worlds 3 (DW3) resurfaced. If this was to go ahead, the event would likely begin in mid-January 2026, aligning with DW1's anniversary.
Reflecting on Past Challenges
Initial plans for DW3 were halted about four years ago due to major challenges. Odyssey's release faced stability issues that took nearly a year to resolve. Later, the announcement that Odyssey wouldn't be on consoles excluded many key team members from participating, especially those who had helped organize DW2. Unwilling to continue without them, we decided to indefinitely retire future Distant Worlds events.
Now, four years later, much has changed. Many former console team members have transitioned to PC, Odyssey has reached a much more stable state, Elite itself is undergoing something of a renaissance, and with DW1's 10th anniversary on the horizon, we feel there's a renewed opportunity to take another look and explore the idea of a DW3.
But first, there are some key questions that need to be answered to help us decide if this kind of event still holds an interest amongst explorers, as well as what kind of an event a DW3 would be if we decide to move forward with it. i.e. should it be as ambitious as DW2, or something more akin to the spiritual successor of DW1, which was a much more lower-key and casual journey?
Is there still an interest in large-scale, player-created events in Elite Dangerous?
Events like Distant Worlds, the Gnosis Incident, Dangerous Games, the Birth of Colonia, the early Apollo Expeditions, and Premonition are among the most memorable of the Horizons era. Driven by passionate communities, these events involved thousands of players and required immense planning and collaboration. That chapter in Elite’s history was defined by creativity and a constant flow of high-profile community-driven events.
Since DW2 six years ago, it’s worth noting—and perhaps surprising—that aside from the excellent anti-xeno initiatives and the numerous smaller-scale expeditions that followed Horizons, no player-run events of a similar scale or impact, nor the variety of those seen during the Horizons era, have emerged. Or, if they have, they’ve not garnered comparable attention. This raises important questions as we consider the future: “Do today’s Elite Dangerous players (particularly explorers who a DW3 would be aimed toward) still have an appetite for this type of engagement?”, or has this near absence of large-scale community created activity (compared to Horizons) been more down to a technical barrier in some way?
How would a DW-type event work in today's game?
For those who took part on DW1 (2016) or DW2 (2019), you'll remember part of its appeal was the journey itself - it being a kind of right of passage, sometimes challenging, and sometimes requiring teamwork to help ships of lesser range to make headway through some hard to cross regions.
The game has changed a lot since DW2. The abundance of personal Fleet Carriers along with ships with triple the range we had back in the day, and other factors have changed the face of deep space journeys forever, some in a positive way, but also in a way that now makes obsolete some of the key factors that made both DW1 & DW2 attractive to so many - those being the challenge of the journey itself, the endurance needed, and in DW1's case the navigational nous required to traverse places like the outer-arm Abyss. For good or bad these are no longer factors we can work with.
Instead we now need to find new central 'hooks' to make this interesting and offer some semblance of challenge or an achievement beyond the journey itself, as without those, it's not worth pursuing.
So our goal as organizers would be to come up with ways in which we can either try and recapture what made aspects of those journeys special using existing mechanics and game assets, or possibly design a route that offers something different; where we go, what kind of challenging waypoints could we include along the way (bearing in mind 500 LY-ranged Carriers make this a difficult one to overcome). Either way, this time the journey would focus on exploring somewhere different other than the traditional cross-galaxy trek from the bubble to Beagle Point.
As a very brief synopsis, and if we're following the DW2 mould, Distant Worlds 3 would build upon what proved popular during its predecessor (the various projects and events that thousands of players enjoyed and took part in). We’re also exploring the possibility of including industry and logistics based gameplay in some capacity, possibly linked to the DSSA. In addition this time around we would have the whole event play out against a narrative that Drew Wagar (Elite: Reclamation & Elite: Premonition author), has kindly volunteered to write. There are many more ‘projects’ in the pipeline too, and more in depth details on these will follow in due course.
Fleet Carriers - how will they affect a Distant Worlds event?
While Fleet Carriers are undeniably useful, their presence en-mass in visited systems is often viewed as disruptive. Imagine the waypoint systems overwhelmed by Carriers clustered around every celestial body or every POI we visit. Even beyond the aesthetic disruption to a deep-space expedition—intended to be a journey far removed from human infrastructure—the sheer volume of Carriers could introduce performance and server load issues, along with lag degrading the experience for everyone involved.
We do have ideas that may help mitigate against excessive Carrier use on DW3 and we'll share details once finalized. But this has been a challenge since their introduction, and one we wrestled with 4 years ago. As organizers, we can only respectfully ask players not to bring their own personal Carriers, but many will anyway no matter what is asked of them. Ultimately, only Frontier can resolve this and we'll take on board any advice they offer to prevent server disruptions during meetups and launch events.
In any case, if DW3 proceeds, there would be no practical reason for people to bring their own personal carrier along as we’d utilize two or three official carriers tied to events, the narrative, and projects, allowing participants to use them as their home away from home to store ships, equipment, and to hitch a ride on as and when needed.
Gauging Interest before Moving Forward
But before any of that, and by gauging player interest, we need to assess whether DW3 is even viable. Organizing this event would require months of preparation and oversight, similar to DW2, which took a team of 40 people six months to plan and three months to manage.
This is not a sign-up thread but a call for feedback to assess community enthusiasm. Are you likely to take part in this expedition? Your input will help shape DW3—whether as an ambitious, event-packed successor to DW2 or a more casual experience like DW1.
Console & legacy-client players, please also share your support and platform. If interest is high, we may run a Horizons-based DW3 alongside the Odyssey event.
In essence then, it’s been six years since the last Distant Worlds event, and we need to understand if a large-scale, community-driven expedition far from bubble-centric content aligns with the game's current state, both technically and socially, and whether or not enough players are willing to invest weeks of their gametime into taking part.
Thank You.
- Posted on behalf of The Distant Worlds Organization Team
A reminder of some of the sights we saw on DW2…
Source: https://youtu.be/awdsTmCQrOA?si=53K9QntrBYvmjY91
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