To ensure that players can easily easily re-activate their EVE Online subscription using PLEX, CCP has introduced the "Hours for PLEX" feature. Here are the details:

"Hours for PLEX" is accessible through the account management pages and allows players, with disabled accounts, to activate their accounts for 4 hours. Once the account has been activated, the customer has 4 hours to add a PLEX, or another available subscription to his account. This option will then become available again once the account is disabled. Please note that if no subscription is added with a PLEX to the account during the 4 hours timeframe, the "Hours for PLEX" option will be deactivated for that account and can only be re-instated by a member of Customer Support. This is to make sure that it's used for the intended purpose only.

The change will free GMs from spending too much time opening accounts to facilitate PLEX activation.

The polls for EVE Online's sixth Council of Stellar Management elections are now open! The polls close on March 22, so be sure to head over to the voting page as soon as possible to make your voice heard.

The voting page contains the summary campaign messages from each candidate. If you need some help deciding who's going to get your vote, head over the Vote Match site to fill out a questionnaire and compare it to the answers that were submitted by participating candidates. The site will pair you up with the candidate that best matches your vision for the game.

If you're interested in EVE Online's fiction and content, you may want to tune into the live dev blog that's being held tomorrow, March 8, at 22:00 UTC in-game. All you need to do is join the "Live Dev Blog" channel, right click on the channel name and select “Join Audio."

During the broadcast, CCP t0nyG (IP Development Manager, author of The Empyrean Age) and CCP Abraxas (Senior Writer, author of over half of the EVE Chronicles) will discuss their work. Also, CCP Big Dumb Object (Content Developer) and CCP Headfirst (Associate Content Developer) will talk about what they do at CCP.

The team will answer questions that were submitted in this thread on the official EVE forums. CCP plans to host another live dev blog in the future, so keep an eye out for details.

Not able to make it to Fanfest in Iceland? Well, you may just have your chance for some state-side EVE Online partying! CCP has annouced that there will be an event taking place at PAX East for EVE Online fans. Simply send an email to paxeast2011@ccpgames.com titled "PAX East Gathering" including your real name and one of your character names. Here's a quick Q&A to help you get a better idea of what will be taking place:

Q. Do I need to be 21 to get in?
A. You most certainly do. this will be taking place at a bar and ID will be checked.

Q. What day and time will this be?
A. Saturday - March 12th starting at 7:30PM.

Q. Where is this party happening?
A. At an undisclosed location in Boston's Financial District. Only a quick ride away from the PAX Venue. This will be revealed on your invite.

Read the rest of the Q&A after the jump!

Producer CCP Chiliad has written an EVE Online dev blog entry that takes an in-depth look at the Captain's Quarters, which is a major feature that's coming in the Incarna expansion. Here is Chiliad's definition of the feature:

"Captain's Quarters are your place of power, center of your control, operational nucleus, living room and home office. They are the dusty motel room for the vagabond capsuleer. Whether docking your ship to a station or entering EVE for the first time through the character creation, you will enter the Captain's Quarters as the living, breathing EVE You. It's a new dimension of immersion. For all players (the future newbies/future points on your killboard), it finally gives EVE a human face, a sense of familiarity to 'real life' and other games."

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."

The first stage of the Captain's Quarters will be single player and private. CCP plans to release it on the Singularity test server before Fanfest, which is scheduled for March 24-26, and will launch it on Tranquility this summer.

Now that Incursions have been released in EVE Online, CCP will be working to fix any small inconveniences that are bothering players in the game. According to CCP Soundwave's latest dev blog entry, the team will be scanning the message boards and talking to the Council of Stellar Management to track down these minor annoyances and improve them.

The blog entry lists a number of fixes that have already been worked on since Incursions came out, and they include updates to clones, Incursions, the UI and NPCs. If you'd like to see any other changes implemented, mention them in the official forums. CCP will be watching and compiling a list of noteworthy changes.

Also, Incursion 1.2 will be deployed during an extended downtime on Tuesday, January 15. It will bring a host of requested optimizations including enhancements for clones and jump clones, market improvements, the return of character portrait capturing in game and much more.

CCP has announced that they will be accepting applications for the sixth Council of Stellar Management. Candidates may apply on February 9 starting at the turn of midnight. The candidacy application period will end just prior to midnight on February 23.

"The purpose of the CSM is to represent society interests to CCP. This requires active engagement with the player community to master EVE issue awareness, understanding, and evaluation in the context of the 'greatest good for the greater player base'. "

Think you have what it takes to represent the EVE community? Head on over to the official EVE CSM application page.

The Sansha incursions kicked off on Jan. 25 in EVE Online and CCP plans to make some tweaks and fixes to the system. Yesterday, the team deployed the first set of changes to the invasions:

Based on your feedback, we’ve cut the system control regain in half. That means Sanshas will regain control much slower than before. This is a first tweak of this value, and we’ll be monitoring the Incursions over the weekend to see if this was too much/too little.

One of the things we found out initially was that sites were being kept “alive” for a long time after they were completed. The number of players in each system meant that you’d always have traffic going into sites, which means they didn’t de-spawn. Hopefully we’ve dealt with that problem by removing the beacon from overview when a site is completed. This should decrease the traffic going into completed sites. This, combined with optimization of the sites should mean the re-spawning of content is quicker and more graceful.

The journal, specifically the global report, was not updating properly. We’ve put in a fix that should make it update accurately.

CCP has set up a feedback thread so players can share their thoughts on the incursions and help direct future changes. For more details on Sansha's Nation and why they're invading, check out the introductory video on YouTube.

With Incursion 1.1.0 now live, CCP has announced that EVE Online players will have an opportunity to recreate their characters on Friday, January 28 after downtime. With this patch they will be providing a chance to re-customize all characters again, in case you need one last chance to get it perfect. Players can practice with the character creator on the test server before attempting to re-customize their character again for the last time.

The test server, Singularity, can be reached by following the EVE wiki guide.

The launch of Incursion 1.1.0 brought the highly anticipated character creator to EVE Online, as well as the Sansha incursions. If you're not familiar with Sansha Kuvakei, CCP has posted a video to provide "current and future pilots with the historical context of the threat."

Check out the video after the jump for the background behind Sansha's Nation and the New Eden incursions.