It’s so hard to believe that EVE Online is ten years old. The sandbox MMO has come so far, and grown into one of the most interesting phenomenon in modern gaming – although it’s not for everyone. The trailer below takes a look back at where it all began which is a nice introduction for those of us a bit baffled by the whole thing and a great nostalgia trip for insiders.

Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

As the EVE Fanfest 2013 continues, senior producer Andie Nordgen took to the stage to discuss the future of the game and the upcoming Odyssey expansion. Among the other features Nordgen mentioned was the possibility of EVE players being able to build their own stargates and access unknown worlds.

“I want to ask you to dream with me here, beyond the details of how EVE Online currently works,” she said. “Think about space colonization—think about the space scale construction required to make it happen. Think about building things, think about destroying things. Think about the rise of the capsuleers taking over what the empires used to control.”

“Imagine what you want to build in EVE Online, from missiles to an empire,” continued Nordgen. “Imagine your corporation flying its own colors. Imagine the might of your alliance used to build up whole areas of space. Think about raiding and stealing from your enemies. Think about all the opportunities for crafty capsuleers to make money and fame in this new area of colonization.”

“Think about home, and then imagine what could lie beyond the known if only you could construct the right kind of stargate.”

Exciting stuff! We’ll learn more as CCP continues to draw back the curtains on what Odyssey will contain.

Source: PC Gamer

CCP and Dark Horse comics have announced that the upcoming comic book series based on the video game will draw directly from actual player events, as catalogued in the True Stories section of the EVE site.

Icelandic filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur, whose work you may have seen in 2 Guns, The Deep, and Contraband, is set to direct a TV series also based on the events of EVE Online‘s players.

The first comic collection, a 64-page outing, is due to be released at the end of the year. A digital edition will be available to download for free.

Thinking of getting into EVE, for the first time or just for another spin? Why not check out our EVE Diaries series?

Source: PC Gamer

I wanted to play. I would jump onto my PC, browse Reddit and Twitter for a bit, and then stare at the client launcher on my desktop. But I knew that once I logged onto the server I’d be swallowed up for hours, catching up on all the time I’d “missed”, and avoiding the requests to jump on TeamSpeak. Burnout is a horrible thing, brought on by a toxic addiction that overrules everything else in your universe. Each full night you ignored your wife or ate dinner at your desk was just another sliver of life debt you added to the pile, like playing a great song on repeat for hours.

Eventually, and inevitably, the thing that you adore morphs into that digital version of hell.

In June, CCP will unleash the latest expansion for EVE Online. Called Odyssey, the update aims to bring back some of the sense of wonder of an unexplored universe – but as well as all those secrets, it also shakes things up closer to home, with an extensive series of improvements to private starbases.

Although the details aren’t yet set in stone, the update will add private starbase hangars similar to corporate hangar arrays; repackage modules in starbase arrays; allow you to swap and fit Strategic Cruiser subsystems at a starbase and access starbase arrays from anywhere within the shield; introduce UI improvements to starbase setup; and finally remove the sovereignty requirement from Capital Ship Maintenance Arrays.

As ever, CCP is keep to liase with the community and get feedback on the proposed changes, so if you do or don’t like what you see, let the developer know via the usual channels.

Source: CCP

The news was good. Two detailed EVE-mails, one from the CEO of my corp, the other from one of the alliance board, both revelling in the success of the month long operation. We had taken over the station, and subsequently, the system. Even though the enemy still had a defense presence in the form of two POS towers, which they used to both taunt and harass us for the next few weeks until we were offered opportunities to blow them up, we began shipping in our stuff and setting up our own infrastructure.

The problem was that — being so far away from everything — outside of the equipment we shipped in from highsec, we had very little available in order to start setting up industry and fitting our growing fleet of available PVP ships.

Most of my alliance are — if they aren’t asleep or working — usually sitting in TeamSpeak, regardless of the situation occurring in game. Whether they are travelling halfway across the galaxy to find ship parts, mining ore in the local belts, or repelling an invasion of enemy ships, they scatter themselves across a series of self defined channels. Some of them are self-explanatory, “Mining”, “Main Lobby” or “AFK/Listening to Music”, while others are a little more specific, designating a certain use or permissions level, such as “Board Room” or “Operations 1″. Most of the time everyone is in the lobby, discussing everything from their son’s first steps to their latest kill or ship loss.

It’s amazing how quickly you can build relationships with complete strangers, especially when you’ve all shared the virtual blood of the enemy, or participated in a very well managed takeover of a contested system. You recognize voices after only a few nights, start to notice power structures and the lines of respect that hold everything together. Unlike guilds or clans in other titles, a corporation in EVE runs very similar to a business in real life.

CCP have announced that their next expansion, titled Odyssey, is set to launch on June 4. Details on exactly what Odyssey will contain are scant, but the official site promises a new ‘Discovery Scanner’, saying that “Using this new system, more pilots will reveal the hidden secrets of the EVE Universe.”

A rebalancing of highsec and nullsec areas is also on the cards as well as an advancement of the ongoing storyline, but perhaps most tantalisingly is the mention of “The War Machines” — “Forged by the lessons learned from countless combat pilots, the four factions will issue forth with the latest tools of war and re-designs of old favorites – ships as awe-inspiring as they are deadly.”

More is expected to be revealed soon, so stay tuned.

Source: EVE Online

CCP are announcing that EVE Online is set to move their launcher and client distribution service to a BitTorrent model, hoping it will reduce data errors and failed downloads.

“The main reason why we are doing this is that BitTorrent itself can utilize a number of different transport channels at the same time and is thus less prone to failing,” writes CCP Aporia on the dev blog.

Worried about the new launcher stealing your bandwidth with sneaky uploads? Don’t be! “By default the new EVE Launcher will only make you share the data required for installing the client while you are downloading; once your download is complete you will not be distributing it to others, unless you explicitly enable this in the options.”

This will be coming to the test server shortly, and thence to your local install.

Source: EVE Online

“They’ve gotta be on the other side of this gate.”

There were 12 of us in the fleet, out on a roam within the deep south of <redacted>*, a region of nullspace — EVE Online‘s barren no-mans land. There are no safeguards here, so our group were out for the blood of the “reds”, our alliance’s standing enemies. We had been jumping from system to system for hours, tracking anyone who dared face our horde, using a complex mix of cloaked scouts, heat maps and scanning systems. Like most players in zero security space, the bewildering array of acronyms and buzzwords such as “bubble”, “POS”, “scram” and “paint” were flown liberally around the operation’s own Teamspeak channel. At the helm was one of the respected leaders of the alliance, at one moment joking with the fleet, while seconds later silencing the chorus with an impatient muttering of  ”check, check” — meaning “everyone needs to shut the hell up, I need to issue some orders”.

We had found ourselves in a unique sort of standoff: while we were heavily armed, well-trained and well-lead, like most encounters in EVE, we were unsure what awaited on the other side of this warpgate. In all actuality, it could have been a single player, one we had tracked through 4 systems. An easy kill, one that my bloodlust-filled corpmates had been baying for over the past hour.

Many potential EVE players find themselves enraptured by the number of outrageous and exciting stories that regularly make headlines. But the high learning curve, mixed with a game designed around what is basically fundamental freedom, usually scares most people off within the space of a few weeks.

My plan is to clear up the myths that prevent people from taking the plunge into this incredible place, and to highlight what makes traversing through Tranquility so incredibly addictive and exciting. I hope you’ll join me.

EVE players have taken to their forums to demand greater transparency after CCP banned an unnamed player for allegedly using bots to manipulate the marketplace.

The player, whose actual name has not been revealed but is referred to as ‘John’ in the discussion, was accused of using bots by CCP and temporarily banned. John escalated the ban process but was denied at all levels, and upon his ban expiring he then proceeded to donate 317 billion ISK to EVE University and quit the game. CCP then confiscated that ISK after EVE University asked them to make sure it was okay to receive the donation.

The incident has sparked calls by EVE University CEO Kelduum Revaan for greater oversight into the evidence that CCP uses to determine if a player is botting, something he strenuously denies John was ever a part of. Instead, Revaan claims that John used a variety of custom tools including custom in-game browser pages that enabled him to “update around 30 orders a minute for 10-20 minutes at a time”.

For their part, CCP have strongly and repeatedly refused claims to provide server logs and other data they use to make banning decisions, and insisted that the appeal process has gone all the way up to their CEO — from which there is no higher authority.

“John was botting. That is not even close to in dispute,” writes CCP Sreegs. “We committed an error in not removing the ISK before it got to EVE-U. However we did rectify this problem and our logs show that it was discussed and approved prior to either them receiving the isk or petitioning. We apologized to EVE-U however the petition was escalated as high as it could be and the decision remained. We cannot typically share this information with them as it’s really none of their business.”

Hit up the source link for the full, massive story.

Source: Destructoid