It's that time of year again. CCP's developers have finished planning and preparing and have started work on the next expansion for EVE Online. The exact release date will be announced later, but let's say that it will happen before the summer solstice.
What's in the package?
For a long time we have had people asking us for more options to build up their own infrastructure. It's something that comes up frequently at Fanfest, in past CSMs and during casual conversations with players. There seems to be some deep Freudian desire to erect something monumental. To make stuff. To create something new. At last Fanfest we announced our plans to allow you, the pod-pilots of New Eden, to shift your foci away from the heavens for a moment, onto the planets. In Dominion, we gave the planets a facelift, updating the graphics with beautiful landscapes, awe inspiring deserts, peaceful Ewok-friendly green worlds and violent burning lava fields. But that was just eye candy, right? Well, not quite. In our upcoming expansion, Tyrannis, ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS.
OMG did you say all of the planets!?
That's right, you will finally be able to survey for juicy deposits of minerals and other goodies, build infrastructure to harvest them, store them, process them and launch them into space. Build complex networks of facilities and fine tune them for optimal production. All in a very massive single shard sandboxy way as only EVE can provide. And it's not just the terran planets. It's ALL OF THEM. The gas giants, the lava planets, the ice worlds, the water worlds and even the elusive plasma planets. Each type with their unique properties. Maintaining facilities on gruesomely hostile planets will be tougher and more demanding, but the rewards may be so much more 'onturning.'
More will be revealed in upcoming blogs and on our test server, Singularity. Make note however that Singularity is a test server, primarily intended for testing of code in development and nothing is final until it hits Tranquility. All graphics, UI, balancing and mechanics are subject to change, iteration and polish... Read more about Eve Online Expansion : Tyrannis
President Jacus Roden formally assumed office earlier today at his inauguration before the Gallente Senate. Shortly beforehand, incumbent President Souro Foiritan made a brief, formal statement to the Senate. Executive power rested briefly with the Senate before Chief Justice Broyal Alserette of the Federation Supreme Court swore in Jacus Roden as the new President of the Federation.
To a standing ovation, President Roden then took the rostrum and stood quietly for a moment before motioning for silence and giving a speech in which he reaffirmed his election pledges. President Roden stated that it was the policy of his government to "restore Federation control over the space and planets of the Luminaire system and to all Federation systems and worlds occupied by Caldari State naval and militia forces," and noted that capsuleer forces of the Federal Defence Union had liberated several Gallente systems since the election. His wide-ranging speech took in aspects of policy such as corruption - another theme of Roden's campaign - industrial policy, and the importance of the capsuleer class to the economy and security of the Federation. President Roden is himself a capsuleer.
President Roden finished his speech with a pledge "to return the Gallente Federation to the greatness that has been its undoubted destiny from the moment our peoples united to realize the historic project of universal freedom." As he stepped back from the podium, the Senate once more erupted in a standing ovation, which the President acknowledged before leaving.
With Alliance Tournament VIII coming this June, EVE TV is looking for a panel of player experts to provide commentary on all the great PvP action. Applications are being accepted until February 28, 2010. For more information about this exciting opportunity, please read CCP Charlie's newest Dev Blog!
9UY4-H, Providence - "Deliverance Reclaimed" outpost in 9UY4-H system fell to Ushra'Khan [UNITY] on the 08.02.112, with system sovereignty falling into their hands the following day. Ushra'Khan have been fighting Amarr loyalists Curatores Veritatis Alliance [CVA] in Providence for half a decade; they originally held sovereignty in the system which was home to their first outpost, "Unity Station" until it was conquered by CVA.
Ushra'Khan allied with Against ALL Authorities, who currently reside in Catch adjacent to Providence, after the losing their space in Providence in the so-called "Unity War" of 109 and joined their AAA in their retributive invasion of Providence following incursions by Providence Holders into AAA space in Catch.
9UY4-H StationThe siege of 9UY4-H station lasted less than a week and on 08.02.112 the station fell to Ushra'Khan. UNITY are claimed by the Providence Holders as a major enemy of Amarr interests in New Eden. Sources among the Holder alliances of Providence claim 9UY4-H system is an important trade hub and of strategic value as a central location for most access routes to Empire space.
AAA was reported to have brought over400 pilots to the siege, fielding several super-capital vessels.
Karn Mithralia of Ushra'Khan said that his alliance has waited a long time for this opportunity.
Regarding the invasion of AAA's systems in Catch, Karn expressed surprise at the turn of events. "CVA is usually cautious and skilled in strategic decision making. The timing of the war in Querious was perhaps coincidental, but regardless, it was obvious AAA would not walk over this [move] so close to [their] home systems."
"We have worked for near three years building our strength, undermining the enemy, breaking their Holders and throwing as much energy as we could into our allies wars so they would have reason to do the same for us.
"Nothing inspires Ushra'Khan to fight like the opportunity to fight slavers and their Holders. We were already fighting [alongside AAA], fully committed, are used to working together, have good [communication systems] in place, fleet discipline and knowledge of what to expect from each other. Yet even then we didn't expect to stand so soon once again in Unity Station; we knew our allies ...
Read more about The Providence War: Part IV - The Return Of Unity
The Team here is proud to announce that the 8th Alliance Tournament is on its way and will be kicking off this June!
We'll be spicing up the rule set once again and bringing in some new faces and fresh ideas for EVE TV's coverage. There will be a full dev blog on the tournament itself in a few weeks which will cover the rules and sign up details.
For those who missed the last one - all the matches from Alliance Tournament VII are available on CCP's YouTube Channel.
EVE TV's Player Expert Team
We will once again be opening up the application process for players who would like to be PVP Experts. These elite players are handpicked by us to fly out to Iceland for the tournament finals and fill the roles of commenters for the qualifying weekends.
As an Expert you'll be on the set discussing the tournament, tactics, teams and talking with developers about EVE live on air. You'll also take shifts in the commentary booth providing live commentary on the matches themselves. You need to know your PvP and you need to know how to keep on talking!
You'll also be commenting on the two qualifying weekends from your own home. You'll be given special access to the tournament arena so you can give your view on the action which then will be relayed over EVE Voice and through partner radio stations!
But the final weekend is where the fun is. You'll be flown out to Reykjavik, Iceland to join the team here at CCP HQ to help us run the show during the live broadcast of the final weekend. Flights (from all icelandair destinations) and accommodation are supplied by us. All you need is a little spending money.
So you're interested? Next step is to check this short list and make sure you match what we're looking for!
Can you come out and play? Selected experts will need to hold a valid passport (we will require scans to confirm this at a later stage) and be available to fly to Iceland on the 16th and back on the 21st of June.
Available to commentate live from their home on the non video broadcast qualifiers on the 5th & 6th as well as the 12th & ...
Wow, this has turned into quite a long blog, but it's chock full of much info-goodness which hopefully addresses many of the questions and concerns people have had about public testing and how we approach large-scale performance and feature testing for EVE.
What's in our anti-lag arsenal?
As EVE grows, more features are added, more players are online at once, and the whole system becomes more complex we find that our ability to weed out sources of lag becomes increasingly difficult. Throughout EVE's development we've used various methods to identify and fix sources of lag; server performance monitoring, special task-forces to ?seek and destroy' lag, monitoring forums and petitions, public test servers, and intensive regression tests of all new code, for example. Though these are great tools, we don't feel that it's enough. Over the years, while creating all of our expansions and the new features and changes that come with them, it became apparent that we had a problem: We had no good way to simulate high-load situations such as fleet fights, factional warfare, Jita, etc. This is a particularly difficult situation for us. In any high-load situation there are always a very wide range of actions being performed simultaneously, with many different hardware configurations on the client machines, and many small factors quickly add up. But these factors are all relatively unpredictable and almost random in practice.
Consider Jita. Think of how many people are there; now think of all the different market transactions, combat, chatting, industry, and other activities that are going on simultaneously in that system - you can see that testing this scenario is not as simple as "load up 1000 clients and let them run." We needed a way to get as many different transactions and machine configurations as possible in order to confidently say that we've gotten a valid test for high-load performance.
Over a year ago, in order to address this issue, we began exploring several different options. We looked at everything, from specially built load-testing clients (bots), to hiring many more testers, to community-supported testing, to developing specialized test suites and scripts, and everything in between. After some prototyping, tests, and wracking our brains, we finally came up with a multi-prong approach that includes community-sup...
Read more about Keep Running Eve Smooth and Fun To Play- You Can Help
31-MLU, Syndicate - Near 06:00 this morning, over 100 corporations were expelled from the GoonSwarm [OHGOD] alliance. Issachiar, pilot of a Hel-class supercarrier for GoonFleet, was caught by the dissolution of his alliance while within the shields of a starbase belonging to Battlestars corporation. The Hel was expelled from the shields where waiting forces from Cry Havoc [C H] fell upon the vessel.
Fleets Engage in 31-MLUWhen corporations began dropping out of GoonSwarm, Cry Havoc began receiving automated surrender messages. Mduncan0341 of C H described how those messages became a supercapital kill for him and his wingmates.
"We were on a roam, when we noticed Goonswarm alliance disbanding - our mailboxes were being flooded with surrender notices, since we have an active wardec against them. We ran back to Orvolle to ship into [remote repair battleships] since we knew they had a supercap staging [tower] in 31-MLU and we knew caps would bounce as they [arrived]."
While GoonFleet members VCtab and Apples Appleby claimed the Hel's death was a desperate, deliberate and suicidal act from a pilot devasted by the loss of his alliance, eyewitnesses in Cry Havoc stated that the supercarrier was repelled by the Battlestars' tower's shield and recoiled a substantial distance, at least in terms of supercapital speeds - an accidental casualty of GoonSwarm's shattering.
While the Hel at first managed to evade the C H fleet as they jumpbridged in, the ship was uncloaked at a nearby moon by a scouting Dramiel. It was tackled and the Cry Havoc raiding fleet quickly called in their standby capitals, including a pair of titans and a supercarrier of their own.
The former GoonSwarm corporations sent multiple waves of ships in an attempt to break the Hel out from the interdiction the C H fleet had put upon it, using Interdictor warp disruption "bubbles" and the infinite strength warp scrambling of Heavy Interdictors. The now-combined fleet from Cry Havoc and allies Ev0ke, however, was able to destroy the Hel in approximately 6 minutes and turn their attention to evacuating their own supercapitals before a heavy fleet from GoonSwarm's so-called "CapSwarm" could respond. In the end, C H were able to depart the field with very light losses.
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