After about a year in semi-closed testing, Elite: Dangerous finally opened its doors to the public this morning. The release of the PC-only space combat and trading simulation comes two years after the game’s successful Kickstarter campaign, and it marks designer David Braben’s return after 19 years to the game universe he co-created with Ian Bell in 1984 with the original Elite.

A lot has changed with Elite: Dangerous since we first plunked down our $150 to join the game’s "premium beta" phase back in June. Six months ago, the game allowed you to shoot players and shuttle cargo around in five star systems and gave you five possible ships of varying size and cost in which to do it. Now, there are fifteen ships and billions of systems (although, to be fair, the overwhelming majority of those systems are procedurally generated and unexplored).

For the past month, Braben and his team at Frontier Development have been running the game in a pre-release "gamma" stage, activating more and more of the game’s big features and using the ever-growing pool of paying beta testers to stress-test them for stability. At launch, the game features a live, evolving economy of constantly shifting supply and demand, with both players and NPCs moving goods between the web of space stations in the inhabited portions of the galaxy. There’s also an overarching story taking place, with the galaxy’s three main political factions clashing in a struggle for power that players can participate in or ignore as they like.

Progression in the game is marked by a set of rankings assigned to each player. As players trade, fight, and explore, their rankings increase, and if the player puts in enough time, they’re ultimately granted the ranking of "Elite." This concept of advancing rankings has been a staple of the series since the original game back in 1984, which required the player to blow up thousands of enemies to earn that rank (the exact number varied by platform). This time around, Frontier Developments is offering a $1,000 cash prize for the first players to reach an "Elite" ranking in each of the three disciplines and another $10,000 for the first player to reach an "Elite" ranking in all three.

The development of the game hasn’t been without its bumps. Although Frontier has been very good about communicating milestones to beta players and then hitting them, the game has launched with a number of promised features missing. Most notably, the ability to play the game fully offline was removed relatively late in development—playing the game as shipped requires a persistent Internet connection (though players can opt for a "solo" mode where they encounter only NPCs). Also not making the cut for the final game is the promised ability for players to link their faster-than-light drives together and jump in and between systems in formation, which hinders cooperative play and makes it more difficult for players who want to play together to actually stick together.

We’re working on our impressions of the release right now, and we expect to have a final release review ready at some point in the next couple of weeks, once we’ve had some time to immerse ourselves in the game. Elite: Dangerous can be purchased for $59.99 (or £39.99, or €49.99, depending on where in the world you are) directly from Frontier Developments, and is currently available only on Windows PCs. A Mac version will be released within a few months, and a Linux version is possible but not currently in work. No console versions are currently planned.