It looks like CCP saved an important EVE Online announcement for after Fanfest. The team revealed today, April 1, that mounts are coming in Incarna. There are two tiers to this new pet system:

• Smaller pets that will initially live in your Captain's Quarters. In time, we will allow them to venture out into stations with you, remaining within a certain user-defined radius of your avatar while you're out and about, with a chance-based risk that they will run away.
• Larger pets which are true mounts, and can be ridden, raced, and used in combat scenarios in specialized station environments. Unlike pets, these mounts will have hitpoints and an array of combat or performance-centric enhancements swappable via a simplified fitting screen.

Players will also gain access to five new skills: obedience training, mount control, animal husbandry, veterinarian, and gene splicing. I always wanted to be a veterinarian. Now I can be a vet on a segway! Incarna's shaping up to be the best EVE expansion yet.

EVE Fanfest has come and gone, and CCP has provided players will a recap of the three-day event in two blog entries.

Day 1 was focused mainly on games, entertainment and roundtables. In the first three matchess of the poker tournament, over 125,000 ISK was raised for charity. Also, the developers emphasized that "EVE is real."

Days 2 and 3 were packed with all sorts of festivities. Roundtables and presentations covered topics ranging from the New Player Experience to the Captain's Quarters, and there was some PvP and chess boxing (seen above) tossed in for good measure. Videos of the new turrets and nebula graphics were shown, as was the much applauded Future Vision trailer. You can watch them all after the jump.

Be sure to check out all of our EVE Fanfest coverage, including our exclusive interview with Executive Producer Nathan Richardsson about the present and future of EVE Online.

During our time at Fanfest, we noticed a strong focus on the future of the EVE Universe. Developers emphasized that "EVE is real," and the Future Vision trailer demonstrated how EVE Online and DUST 514 can fuse two different genres into an entirely new experience.

Keeping EVE's exciting new direction in mind, we had the chance to sit down with Executive Producer Nathan Richardsson to talk about both the present and future of EVE Online. We discussed the possibility of walking around with our new avatars, gambling our ships away, "physically" meeting with warring factions to host peace talks, and much more.

Keep reading after the jump for Richardsson's thoughts on the changing face of EVE Online.

The elections for the sixth Council of Stellar Management have ended, and the results were announced at EVE Fanfest over the weekend. Nine players were chosen as delegates, and Alexander "The Mittani" Gianturco will fill the role of chairman since he received the most votes.

According to the dev blog entry, this election season was one for the record books: "We yet again saw record turnout, smashing the previous results with almost 10,000 more votes cast this election than last and the highest level of campaigning we've ever seen."

The first CSM6-CCP summit will be held at the CCP HQ in Reykjavik, Iceland from May 18-20. If you have any issues you'd like them to bring up, share them in the Assembly Hall forum.

At the EVE Fanfest keynote, CCP unveiled an amazing trailer that shows off the team's future vision for EVE Online. This forward-looking video combines the ship-filled gameplay of EVE with the action-packed combat of DUST 514.

Watch the video after the jump to see an ambitious future vision of the EVE Universe "where your choices always have an impact... and consequences."

At the top of the world, you might think there’s something a little strange in the water. Or the whale meat. Or the "cured" shark. Because one of the first things that the developers at CCP pronounced to a room full of wide-eyed, Iceland-shocked press members was just a little left of center.

"EVE is real."

I heard this statement multiple times while sitting in the first two press-only sessions that kicked off EVE Fanfest. Initially, that statement will strike anyone as odd. EVE Online’s just a game, right? It’s just a bunch of talking spaceships floating through a virtual space. Why would the developers want to come forward and say something so… daring?

That was the question I had to answer. Why would – after years of service as an online game – the developers behind EVE suddenly take this stance?

EVE Online's new character creator is already incredibly impressive, but CCP is striving to make it even better. The team is adding a free re-customization option to the system, which means you'll be able to change the appearance of your character at any time.

To go along with the increased flexibility in customization, CCP is adding tattoos, scars, piercings and some new clothes to the character creator. Get ready to spend even more time at the customization screen!

CCP just announced that the ninth EVE Online Alliance Tournament will be kicking off in June. You can currently apply to be a PvP expert commentator, which means you'll be flown to Reykjavik, Iceland from June 9-20 to help CCP run the show. The application process ends on April 3, so submit yours as soon as possible.

In case you missed them, you can view videos from the seventh and eighth Alliance Tournaments on YouTube.

CCP announced in a dev blog entry today that EVE Online is about to get a second test server called, appropriately enough, Duality. So why does the game need two test servers? Test Lead CCP Hypnotic explains:

"The product of an internal QA naming contest, Duality, already being nicknamed 'Ducie,' will be our brand new public facing Event Server. This is in contrast to Singularity, which is a Public Server. The difference is that where Singularity is up and running and open to players almost 24/7, Duality will only be opened for special CCP run events. You're already familiar with these events because we've been running them on Singularity up until now. Things like the weekly mass tests, or guided play tests will, in the future, happen on Duality with much better coordination and preparation than what was capable on Singularity in the past. These events are vitally important to the quality of EVE Online."

More information about Duality can be found on the EVElopedia page.

As many of you are aware, a massive earthquake off the coast of Japan resulted in a tsunami that devastated large portions of the Japanese coastline. In response, CCP will be accepting PLEX donations for PLEX for Good: Japan through March 31. Each donation will be converted into cash currency and donated to the Red Cross.

For details on how to donate, read the dev blog entry or check out the FAQ. To date, EVE Online players have donated over $63,000 to those in need via the PLEX for Good program, with almost $100,000 being donated by EVE Online players to charity since 2004.