CCP Games continues push EVE Online to an international level as they announced with Nexon yesterday that EVE will launch in Japan on March 28. This new announcement will allow Japanese players to access EVE Online in their native language and play alongside hundreds of thousands of fellow gamers from around the world.

Nexon will manage all billing needs, along with local marketing and PR services while CCP will continue development of the game and gameplay related customer support. CEO of Nexon, Seung-Woo Choi, had this to say about bringing EVE Online to the Japanese market: "We're confident that the Japanese version will attract legions of new players ready to take their part in the endlessly unfolding drama of the EVE universe."

CCP also announced a partnership with online game operator TianCity to distribute EVE in mainland China last week. This will bring the supported language count to five with English, Russian, and German all supported.

In a new blog posted today by Jonathan Lander, Senior Producer of EVE Online, we learn that EVE is an ever evolving process that is constantly be updated to better suit the player base. Since last November's release of Crucible, CCP has brought balancing changes for Assault Frigates, Neocom improvements, Factional Warfare increments, and a host of other changes all designed around making a better experience to play EVE.

As development continues, smaller changes, as well as improvements and usability fixes will be implemented. We can also expect to see details on how collaboration, conflict, and purpose will be between EVE and DUST 514. Jonathan was pretty tight lipped about details for EVE:Online: Inferno, but stressed there will be bundles of information revealed at Fanfest in March.

To read the entire article be sure to check out EVE Online's Dev Blog post. 

EVE Online is setting up a new "Player Experience" team that is set on finding ways to make EVE more accessible to players without dumbing down the game. This new team will be researching to find out where, when, and why players lose interest in EVE through surveys, focus group tests, and hearing directly from the EVE community itself. This means a lot of focus is going to go into the tutorial, so that by the time you leave it a player has a good understanding of what they want to be in New Eden.

The other main focus is creating a gripping experience right at the start of EVE. This will make the first few days, weeks, and months of EVE just as enjoyable, entertaining, and involved as what players get to experience in the late game and hopefully keep players around longer. CCP is looking for as much feedback from the community as possible. So any ideas, big or small, now is the time for your voice to be heard!

Not two particularly well-connected news pieces today, but since they were both released on the same day, that means we'll just double up on our reporting. A two for one, if you will.

For the first piece of news, EVE Online is opening up their CSM 7 Elections! To find out if you qualify for this year's Council of Stellar Management, check out the EVE Dev Blog for criteria and deadlines. For now, potential candidates should make their way to the Jita Park Speakers Corner forum to begin formulating their platform strategy while also gathering supporters to their cause. May the best candidate win!

In other news, CCP has also released a new trailer for EVE Online, which basically serves as wildly enticing piece of propaganda. If you're interested in checking out EVE Online or if you want to see some really fancy in-game footage set to a futuristic soundtrack, well, look no further than here!

CCP has launched their brand new EVE Online website and it is nice. Maybe I'm just biased because this is the second site revamp in comparison to, uh, some not so great ones, but if we were to judge by eye-catching... ness, I think EVE Online's got it down pretty well.

Regardless, with the new EVE Online website also comes some changes and restructuring pushes, including the movement of various community resources to EVE Online's Community Website. Maybe CCP doesn't want to overwhelm players with all that community information up front. If you have any feedback (and currently fans are a little grumpy at navigation issues, even if it does look pretty), be sure to post over at the official feedback thread for EVE Online.

I heard you liked forums, so we're giving you corporation forums in the EVE Online forums so you can... I'll stop. CCP has just announced that a part of their big website revamps also come with forum enhancements, and this includes the option for every corporation in EVE to have its own Corporation Forum hosted on the EVE Online forums. Internet meme references aside, this means that players who want to foster their own corporate cultures can now do so with official support as opposed to creating their own third-party solutions. CCP is planning to have three sub-forums per corporation, including a general discussion board, a board for corporation announcements, and a board room for higher ranked members to discuss things in secret.

All of this also ties in with CCP's desire to connect EVE Online with their upcoming MMOFPS, DUST 514. With the establishment of corporation forums, players will now have a common community to visit for their forum needs.

Who's heading to the Harpa center in Reykjavik for Fanfest 2012? Well, CCP has just revealed some of the various events that will be taking place, including the opportunity to win a VIP tour of the CCP offices and lunch with the developers! CCP will hold an in-game raffle to award the tour, and they plan to announce the winner on their Youtube channel on March 17th, 2012. Of course, not everyone is looking forward to a tour of the offices, and CCP is planning to up the ante by allowing the winner to pitch a game design idea of their choice in a 20-30 minute private meeting with CCP Soundwave, Lead Game Designer for EVE Online. In order to enter, players will simply need to contract a single PLEX to the in-game character "CCP Office Tour."

If raffles and pitching game design concepts isn't in your itinerary, remember that there's still the No Limit Poker Tournament, with the top player getting the first in-game Ishukone Scorpion skin, as well as having their name added to the in-game description of the ship. There is also the Silent Auction, the classic Battle of the Bands, and, of course, CCP's famous Party at the top of the world, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Looks like this Fanfest will be a good one!

CCP Soundwave has taken to Youtube to highlight some of the design decisions behind EVE Online's big Crucible 1.1 patch. While that might not sound so exciting, Soundwave does bring a certain brand of humour to his developer discussions, saying that with the success of Crucible, CCP decided to "do the right thing as a corporation" by cancelling the development teams' Christmas vacations to get a 1.1 patch for January.

Jokes aside, EVE Online's Crucible 1.1 Patch is a solid quality of life update for players, and CCP is certainly doing well on their commitment to re-focusing after Incarna and the nuclear fallout of "Monoclegate." Trailer below!

As EVE Online's next major patch, Cruicible 1.1, draws closer, we have been given a detailed list of features for tomorrow's release. The new patch brings a neocom update, different UI customization and adjustments, as well as changes to issues players have been begging CCP to address since 2008. Tech 2 assault frigates are getting a rebalance to bring them in line with other ships, and alliances can now sign up for faction warfare. 

An increase to all sizes of Null blaster ammo, new deadspace invulnerability fields for shield users, a full portrait viewer, and many other changes are in store for tomorrow, so check out the official Crucible 1.1 feature page for all of the different changes.

CCP has revealed some new details behind their fan festival taking place in March, 2012. The venue is confirmed to be taking place at Harpa, a concert hall and conference center in Reykjavik. CCP is also offering guided tour events for anyone hoping to explore the city of Reykjavik and its countryside. Finally, there will be some great Fanfest events planned, including a pub crawl, Poker, PvP tournaments, Battle of the Bands competitions, and a "Party on the top of the World" blowout.

Check out the reveal trailer below to see how you can get in on CCP's Fanfest 2012!