EVE Online's upcoming Captain's Quarters feature became available for testing yesterday, and CCP has posted a link to one of the first player-made videos on the game's Facebook page. The feature is coming in Incarna and provides a 3D space for characters outside of their ships.

It's important to emphasize that the Captain's Quarters is currently in the testing phase. What you're about to see is not finished or polished, so keep that in mind. With that reminder out of the way, check out the video and let us know what you think in the comments below.

Starting today, players can try out EVE Online's upcoming Captain's Quarters feature on the Duality test server in the Emrayur system. New tutorials and a new crash-course are also available for testing. CCP emphasizes that this is all a work in progress, so hold off on passing judgement until the whole package is officially released in the Incarna expansion.

As stated in CCP Chiliad's recent dev blog entry, the Captain's Quarters will provide a 3D physical space for your character to help change the perception of EVE Online into "a true science fiction universe." In addition, "the current station hangar will be replaced with an enhanced balcony view where your character can gaze upwards at the majesty of your vessel as it looms above you inside the station."

Last week, the delegates of the newly elected sixth Council of Stellar Management wrote a letter outlining their plan to focus on open communication with EVE Online players. To kick things off, they held their first of many "Fireside Chats" over the weekend, and they've made the audio available for download.

According to Delegate Rob "Draco Llasa" Weatherly, nearly 450 people joined the voice chat and 200 people interacted in the CSM public chat channel. At least one CCP developer participated in the chat as well.

A full transcript of the two-hour Fireside Chat isn't available, but will likely be posted at a later date. Until then, you can look over the timestamped notes after the jump.

The winners of EVE Online's "Create a Starship" competition have been announced, and Alexey M took home the grand prize for his Mentor Battlecruiser design (seen above). Alexey wins a prize package which includes $900, a battleship model, a mousepad, a 3-piece decal set, a poster and a one-year EVE Online subscription.

The runners up are Eric A with the Oblivion Battleship, Shawn N with an unnamed Amarr Command Ship, Eric A with the Serval Battlecuiser and Christian H with the Myriad industrial carrier. You can browse through all of the finalists on the contest page.

EVE Online's shiny new forums launched last week, but they didn't stay up for long. According to a new dev blog entry, helpful players helped point out a wide variety of possible vulnerabilities in the forums. Players could:

• Post as anyone.
• Read any forum anyone had access to.
• Inject HTML (NOT SCRIPT) into your signature.
• Inject HTML (and possibly script) in the post reporting feature. (Something someone without roles would not have been able to see i.e. not you unless you were exploiting)
• Edit anyone else's posts

CCP Sreegs said that CCP doesn't see any way for players to access your personal information or credit cards. "In essence, the vulnerabilities were limited to people's ability to escalate their privileges on the forum itself and nowhere else," he said.

Sreegs also commented that he trying to formalize a program that will reward players who provide information that helps CCP better secure their systems. Regardless, it's always a good idea to submit vulnerabilities if you find them.

The delegates for EVE Online's sixth Council of Stellar Management were recently announced at Fanfest, and they just published a letter to the community that outlines their game plan. Their main focus appears to be on open communication; they're in a Skype channel 24/7 and want to keep players informed on what they're doing.

The CSM6 actually plans to host fireside chats, which are named after a series of radio speeches given by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The first fireside chat will be held on April 16 at at 20:00 EVE time at the following address: public-mumble.goonfleet.com.

The group also states in the letter that its first "issue spotlight" will be on Time Dilation: "CSM6 believes that the real frustration with lag comes from the unfairness it causes. Time Dilation promises to ensure that every command issued in a fight gets a response from the server, every space-bullet travels to its destination, and every desperately-mashed warp-out will actually engage your warp drive."

The new EVE Online forums are officially live and fully integrated into EVE Gate. They include all sorts of new features, such as:

• The ability to Like posts and see number of Likes per post
• The ability to add threads to a favorites list
• Simple and advanced searching options
• RSS feeds for threads and search criteria

The old forums have been closed, but you can read through the old threads in the archives. For more details on the new forums, check out CCP Elais' dev blog entry.

CCP has released a new EVE Online tutorial video. The latest topic is Planetary Interaction:

"Even if you are new to Planetary Interaction or consider yourself a veteran you will find this video very educational. Learn how to create a colony, manage a supply chain, and move your commodities from your planet."

Check out the full video after the jump!

CCP has announced that their recent charity drive for the devastation in Japan has raised $44,607.50. EVE Online players donated over a two-week period to raise the above amount.

The breakdown of donations was as follows:

2497 PLEX were donated through 665 contracts.

There were 18 ISK donations totaling 19.6 billion ISK. 52 PLEX were purchased in-game using these donations.

In total, 2549 PLEX were collected, and 100% of the proceeds will be donated to the Red Cross in the name of "EVE Online Community."

PLEX for Good is an on-going charitable program initiated by the players of EVE Online. Past drives have assisted the victims of the Haiti earthquake and excessive flooding in Pakistan. To date, EVE Online players have donated over $108,000 (over 6100 PLEX) to those in need via this program, with almost $155,000 being donated by EVE Online players to charity since 2004.

If you're the type of player who enjoys charts, figures and demographic data, you'll want to check out the economic newsletter for EVE Online's fourth quarter 2010. The lengthy PDF document contains all sorts of interesting facts. For example, EVE ended the year with around 360,000 accounts, with 725,000 character in-game.

Lead Economist Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson said that numerous factors contributed to a very active fourth quarter:

"So active, in fact, that we saw the daily trade value record increasing twice in December, ending in an incredible 1.8 trillion ISK’s worth of trades in a 24-hour period, in more than 1.2 million individual trades – and this is only on the main EVE market, not taking into account contracts or direct trade between players."

For much more information, browse through the quarterly economic newsletter.