CCP have released the new full length video trailer for Eve Online: Apocrypha.

The long awaited next expansion for Eve Online is now just day’s away, and this gamer is looking forward to checking out all the new features and gameplay enhancements when it’s ready.

Set a long training skill!

EVE Online: Apocrypha, the tenth free expansion for EVE Online subscribers, which is due out on March 10th, coinciding with the availability of EVE in retail outlets across North America, Europe and Pan Asia. Pilots will be able to scan down and enter massive, chaotic wormholes that have opened into unexplored solar systems. There, untold opportunities await behind the powerful defensive curtain of an ancient, deadly race. When defeated and pillaged, their ships and fortifications become the basis of the next level of technology back on the “safer” side of the wormholes.

EVE’s Senior Producer Torfi Frans Olafsson on Apocrypha: ”Just like the human body is said to regenerate itself every seven years, EVE Online continues to grow and evolve in its sixth year of operation, with systems being added, refined, refactored and polished with every expansion we make. As the player base continually grows, we are able to increase the development team and bring in more engineers, designers and artists for each expansion. This allows us to deliver such a broad range of features catering to a variety of playstyles in a volume that we can be proud of.”

”It’s both comforting and disturbing to come home after work, log in to EVE late in the evening and find the same developers that spend their long day building EVE, playing it and enjoying it deep into the night. We are a company that truly sips its own champagne, likes it and strives to make it more tasty whenever we can.”

The improvements for Apocrypha include:

The full feature list is expanded upon further at www.eveonline.com/apocrypha, including links to blogs on specific features written by members of the development team. The page also contains interviews with our developers, screenshots, our teaser trailer and more. Check back in for regular updates as we reveal even more of Apocrypha leading up to launch.

Availability

EVE Online: Apocrypha will be available for subscribers as a free download at www.eveonline.com/download/. Non-subscribers should visit the EVE website to sign up for a free 14-day trial account at any time.

The manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) for the retail version of EVE Online is $39.99/€39.99. Price in some regions may vary. Check with your favorite local or online retailer for availability and pricing come March 10th. The EVE Online: Apocrypha expansion will be included along with all previous EVE expansions.

It seems to happen a lot of late - Eve Online keeps breaking it’s Peak Concurrent User (PCU) records, this time hitting a staggering 51,675 players - all online on the one single shard server. Not even World of Warcraft or Warhammer can claim anywhere near that number of players on the same server.

Due in large to the Alliance Tournament VI finale this weekend, the PCU (Peak Concurrent User) record was broken the third time this year with 51,675 pilots logging in to the single-shard world that is EVE Online. That’s well above the previous record of 48,065 and signifies the largest PCU jump we’ve ever had to break the 50k milestone.

In addition, recent goings on between major player Alliances, a vengeance-fueled assassination during last weekend’s Tournament rounds and general excitement about the impending release of EVE Online: Apocrypha have all combined to energize just about everyone–players, the CCP Dev Team, media and people who have never even encountered EVE before but are now quite curious.

Like always the true credit goes to you, the players, who give EVE the unmeasurable depth that makes it unique. Thank you.

NOL-M9 - A few hours after midnight on 05.02.111, Band of Brothers alliance was disbanded. The loss of formal alliance status forcibly relinquished all Band of Brothers held sovereignty, and thus is expected to render all their outposts vulnerable, pause the construction of all motherships and titans currently being built in their capital assembly arrays and interfere with the proper fuctioning of cynojammers and jump bridge waystations at their control towers. This effect has never been seen before on such a huge scale, so there is much uncertainty about the precise effects.

There are currently multiple theories as to the actual cause of the disbanding of the alliance. A director in Band of Brother’s executor corp, TinFoil, and director Haargoth Agamar of Black Nova Corp are alleged to have disbanded the alliance and handed over Black Nova Corp assets at the instigation of The Mittani of Goonswarm. Comments on the Corporation, Alliance and Organization Discussions section of GalNet, however, shed doubt on this claim.

Tin Foil pilot Agaue asserted on GalNet that the disbanding was not caused by a spy:

“I like how everyone is stating their opinions like it is fact… when in truth they have no idea what happened. I will state as a fact: 

“1) it wasnt a bill/money issue. 
“2) it wasnt spy related. 

“Mittani isnt dumb enough to put his hand up and say he is responsible.”

Elitus of Reikoku stated on GalNet that the issue was not an unpaid bill:

“I’ll go and say this: previous bill was paid on the 6th of Janurary. Previous bill before that was paid on the 6th of December. Currently looks like HAT was compromised… Log shows 500 mil was removed from the wallet stating ‘mittani says hi.’ We are investigating.”

A new corporation named “Band of Brothers” has been created, allegedly by GoonSwarm affiliates, in an apparent attempt to keep the alliance name and ticker out of the hands of former BoB members.

The Mittani further claims on GalNet that he has archived the Band of Brothers directorial forum and will be publishing it in full for the public eye.

The Interstellar Correspondents are looking into this story in-depth and will bring you updates and interviews in the coming hours as we attempt to learn the truth behind these events and their consequences.

GalNet References

Constructive Thread - What Happened to BoB?
There is no BoB
Evidence of the Theft

Online’s January Newsletter’s focused on the new Eve Online Apocrypha Expansion coming in just a few months.

APOCRYPHA - New Expansion Opens Doors to the Unknown

As wormholes tear open new passageways throughout the universe, whole new regions of space that were once hidden away will be revealed, expanding the known universe to previously unimaginable limits. Tech 3 ships, epic mission arcs, and new adversaries are on the way in EVE Online’s anxiously awaited next expansion, Apocrypha, coming in March 2009.

Peak Concurrent User Record Broken… Again!

And again… and again! For several weeks now, EVE players have been breaking Peak Concurrent User (PCU) records on a regular basis. We kicked off 2009 with a record PCU of just over 45,000 and have steadily climbed each week to this past Sunday’s massive 48,065 pilots across New Eden.

Alliance Tournament VI - Qualifying Rounds Start January 24th

The schedule has been posted for the sixty-four teams in Alliance Tournament VI. Here’s a quick overview of the dates and coverage of the events:

• Qualifying Round 1 – January 24-25, 1500 - 2100 GMT. Listen to coverage live via EVE Voice!
• Qualifying Round 2 – 31 January - 1 February, 1500 - 2100 GMT. Listen to coverage live via EVE Voice!
• Finals – 7-8 February, 1500 – 2100 GMT. All matches streamed live for your viewing pleasure!

Good luck, to all the participants! Read More

Buddy Program Extended!

Due to the overwhelming response to the Buddy Program, we’ve decided to let it keep running so that more players can take advantage of the 30-day game time reward we’re offering for each trial user that becomes a subscriber. Visit the Buddy Program page to send out the new 21-day trial invites.
 
DevBlog: Fury of the Apocrypha

The first of several blogs covering the incredible content coming in Apocrypha has arrived. T0rfifrans tells about the teams involved and presents a quick overview of what is in store for EVE Online players. Watch for more DevBlogs from various team members with information on several of the new features being introduced in the massive summer expansion being released this March … Apocrypha! Read More

DevBlog: ZuluPark Introduces… Premium Lite!

The Classic client will soon be retired as the CCP Dev Team brings the graphics of Trinity to lower end computers. Replacing Classic and Premium will be the new Premium Lite client, which will operate on systems with graphics cards supporting Shader 2.0 and higher. Zulupark details the changes and requests the community’s feedback in his latest DevBlog entitled I Can Totally Run That on My Amiga, and follows it up with The Results are In, relaying the results of the player feedback that was received. Read More

Check out the full E-Newsletter here!

The way things are

One of EVE’s unique features (along with being an awesome game on a single server) is that it can run on pretty much any computer built after 1998. The minimum spec for graphics card and CPU has always been very reasonable to say the least, so the barrier for entry into EVE has been relatively low compared to other games. Developing the client in this manner hasn’t always been a given.  It requires us to downtune our graphics engine quite a bit, for one, as well as maintain the “Classic” client version of EVE along with the Premium one. That means creating two versions of each art asset we want to put into the game. It complicates build and patching processes considerably and, for the most part, it simply doesn’t allow us to make EVE look as beautiful as we want. The core issues we deal with are:

 • Spending too much time and resources maintaining 2 clients

 • Due to a dual pipeline we have less time implementing performance enhancements

Where do we go from here?

Currently, EVE can be played on GeForce 2 or ATi Radeon 7000 series cards. The support of these cards was discontinued in 2002 by their manufacturers, a full year before EVE was first published. The development in graphics and graphics cards since then has been, to put it mildly, phenomenal. What we want to do is simplifying our development as well as exploit these new technologies to their full extent. The benefits of doing so are many, including:

 • Simplification of pipeline

  • Less development overhead

  • Greater output from software developers and artists

  • Less redundant testing for different engines and art assets

 • Faster turnaround on fixes

 • Ability to focus on performance improvements in one graphics engine

 • Simpler troubleshooting for bugs

 • Overall better quality of the client and better quality of service to players

Out with Classic, in with Premium Lite

Currently we have two content packs, Classic and Premium. Classic has the low barrier of entry, and Premium requires modern ShaderModel 3.0 hardware. To accommodate older PCs and those who prefer to run twenty clients of EVE while they run SETI@Home and ray trace while compressing HD movies, we will deliver what we refer to as “Premium Lite.” Premium Lite will only require ShaderModel 2.0 hardware, and far less texture memory than the current Premium, ensuring good framerates on older hardware. We won’t stop there - we are providing two flavors of ShaderModel 2.0 compatible shaders, currently named “lo” and “hi”.  What does this mean?  It means that framerate enthusiasts can get even more performance when running under ShaderModel 2.0.  We will also allow people to select any ShaderModel below what their hardware supports - thus allowing players to trade quality for performance and vice versa.  Due to instruction limits within each ShaderModel we will have to use different techniques to render the ships but the goal is the same in every scenario: beautiful.  Now, this does sound like extra work for us and in a way it is - however, what we gain is:

1. We can use the same assets as Premium.  Admittedly people will most likely choose to run with textures that have lower resolution as well, but these will simply be downsampled (lower resolution mipmaps) from the existing Premium textures. Some textures will also be skipped entirely like, for instance, normal maps.  This means less content for us to maintain as we get rid of all the classic content. 

2. We can use the same rendering pipeline - the only fork in the road is the different ShaderModels.  This means less code for us to maintain once we sunset the classic rendering path. 

To summarize: older hardware will use the same assets as Premium - they just won’t look as detailed and shiny.

The Plan

What we’d like to do is a two step approach to ensure that EVE continues to be jaw-dropping gorgeous:

Step 1: In Apocrypha, March 10^th, we discontinue support for ShaderModel 1, making ShaderModel 2 (GeForce FX (5 series) or ATi R300 series cards or compatible) the minimum requirement and discontinue the “Classic client” version of EVE, replacing it with “Premium Lite”

Step 2: In the Winter Expansion 2009 we are considering discontinuing support for ShaderModel 2  and make the minimum specification ShaderModel 3(GeForce 6 class cards or ATi x1300 or compatible)

We know this will affect some players out there. What we don’t know is exactly how many. We estimate that about 95% of all subscribers currently have hardware that is SM2 compatible. We further predict that in q4 this year over 97% of subscribers will have SM3 capable hardware. This means that an estimate of anywhere from 3%-5% of current subscribers would have to update their computers or graphics cards to be able to continue playing.

Discuss and follow up on this news on the official Eve-Online forums discussion here.

EVE Online: Apocrypha Uncovers a New Version of the Universe Itself

CCP, one of the world’s leading independent game developers, today announced the launch of the tenth free expansion for EVE Online, its popular science-fiction massively multi-player online game (MMOG). EVE Online: Apocrypha is the most ambitious EVE expansion in the game’s over five year history and it coincides with the March 10th, 2009 release of EVE Online as a boxed product through a partnership with Atari.

Eve Online has again been shaken recently by the discovery of a major exploit in which several very large player run corporations have been exploting and taking advantage of for some time.

Eve Online recently announced this in their press release (see below). There is also a massive discussion thread on the forums here.

There’s also an interesting thread on Scrap Heap Challenge here.

We have discovered an exploit involving starbases that made it possible for some players to gain an unfair advantage over others. We have taken measures to address this by removing the starbases used in the exploit. Additionally, assets gained from its use have been seized and bans levied against the players involved. We will continue to monitor the game for issues such as this one. We encourage players to create a petition if become aware of any activities which may permit others to gain an unfair advantage in the game.

Update by Customer Support:

On December 7th 2008, a date which will live in infamy, a petition from a concerned player alerted us to a serious problem with Starbase reactors. The petition had been filed five days earlier, a far longer waiting time than we can accept with our current queue status and we have now taken measures to fix that. We immediately started investigating the issue and found that there was indeed a problem and that it was being exploited to gain unfair advantages.

We discovered seven corporations with multiple Starbases set up for the express purpose of exploiting the issue. Three of those corporations were members of two alliances. We took immediate action against the offenders and banned over 70 accounts and destroyed all the Starbases run by the corporations in question. All the offending corporations are now effectively inactive as a result of our actions.

The corporations were producing high end materials for T2 production. Working with the Research & Statistics team we have established that the effects on the markets have been considerable and far reaching. The effects of our actions against the exploiters will also be felt on the market as the production of the materials has been cut substantially. However, supply should increase again once players have mastered the alchemy process.

We are still conducting operations to deal with this matter and we will keep you posted on the progress and results as things develop.

Update: 11th December 2008:

Here is an update on the investigation into the Starbase reactor exploit that we are currently conducting:

1.  CCP has confirmed that this bug has been exploitable since February 2007.  Changes to the Starbases code from launch until February 2007 are minimal and very unlikely to have caused the bug.  So at this point we are working on the assumption that this bug has been exploitable since the release of player owned structures on November 24th, 2004.  We will therefore focus solely on looking at Starbases data in order to determine who has been using this exploit, and for how long.

2.  CCP has been able to restore older databases that show us that the bug has been exploited since at least January this year, but at a lower scale than in the last few months. The players involved then were the same ones that we found and banned recently.  We are now working on restoring data from 2006 which will take us several days.  It is uncertain if we will be able to have answers on that before holiday vacations.

3.  CCP has been able to access data from our old petition system.  We have been unable to confirm that a petition was filed in 2004, 2005 or 2006 pointing out this bug with Starbases. We urge anyone with information on who and when a petition on this issue was filed to contact us directly through the petition system under the Exploit Category. Alternatively, an email sent to community@eve-online.com with details on the matter would be much appreciated.

4.  The full investigation will take several weeks.  CCP will be in direct contact with the CSM to discuss this issue and we will provide information to the community as it becomes available. 

5.  We have done a thorough investigation on our staff members and CSM members and found no links to this exploit.

6.  Our actions so far have included the eradication of 178 starbases that were exploiting this issue. Some had multiple reactors running in the bugged state.  We have also banned all those we have found directly involved and all accounts we have found to be connected to those players. The investigation is still under way and will take a while to conclude.

Possibly one of the funniest and yet informative video reviews ever of Eve Online is the very amusing review by Yahtzee from The Escapist.

Personally I think Eve Online is the most challenging, engaging and interesting MMO games available today. Having been a player for over four years now, I still find that I am just scratching the service in terms of finding things to keep me entertained - and keep me paying my subscription.

But here’s the video - it’s still a classic.

EvE Mag recently published an “anonymous” letter from an alleged eve player who has developed and uses a Macro to mine.

As all good eve players know, this is against the EULA and will get you banned. RPGN.net do NOT condone this activity, but it’s an interesting article and I’m going to re-post it here.

You can also read the original at EvE Mag here.

(mac – ro).Computer Science. An instruction that represents a sequence of instructions in abbreviated form.

Not only am I LIKE the Cheshire cat, I’m also just like you! ~The Evil Macro’er

Please let me introduce myself. I am an American, in my early thirties and I have two kids, two cats, and a neurotic dog with a Quaker Parrot buddy. I’ve played some MMOs for 4 years at a time. I like Front Lines: Fuel of War and ketchup goes on just about everything but a good steak. I am a degreed professional but not a programmer, I served in the military and I knew Obama would be the winner. I am also an amateur macro’er. Yes, I have macro’ed the holy crap out of certain video games. I’ve been doing it for more than 8 years now so tell me; at what point did you notice your Eve gaming experience going down the tubes because of me? I’ll bet your downward spiral really has nothing to do with me macro’ing, now does it?

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