Incursions are coming! CCP just made this short announcement on the official EVE Online site:

"Master Kuvakei's great invasion Sunday was just the beginning. He continues to gather his minions and supporters in preparation for more incursions into known space. CONCORD reports indicate that probable invasions will begin sometime after noon UTC on Tuesday, January 25, 2011. The question is: are you ready?"

The Sansha's Nation incursions are part of the latest expansion update. Incursion 1.1.0 went live last week and introduced features like the new character creator, updates to the contracts system and more.

It looks like the launch of Incursion 1.1.0 has succeeded in enticing old and new players to log into EVE Online. CCP announced on the game's Facebook yesterday that it had reached a new peak concurrent user record, and then followed up a few hours ago with the official total:

"2011.01.23 @ 20:23: 63,170 pilots in EVE Online. /highfive"

CCP has been using the launch of its new character creator to push EVE Online's Buddy Program. Players with active subscriptions can treat their friends to a 21-day free trial. You can send three invites per month and, for each buddy that subscribes, you'll earn 30 free days of game time.

CCP has announced the return of EVE Online Live Dev Blogs. The first Live Dev Blog will take place on January 24, at 22:00 UTC, with a focus on game design in the Incursion expansion. The blogs are audio broadcasts from CCP heard in-game through EVE Voice.

The EVE devs will also be focusing on fan-submitted questions in the Q&A segments. This will be a three-part series with a new live dev blog once each month through March, and each with a different focus.

For more information and a list of who will be speaking during the first Dev Blog, head over to the offical EVE site.

EVE Online Incursion 1.1.0 is officially live on Tranquility. This update includes the highly anticipated features of the Incursion expansion, such as the new character creator, the Sansha incursions, updates to the contracts system and more. You can read the full patches notes for all the details.

CCP Soundwave announced in a dev blog entry last week that the Sansha's Nation incursions will be released in a staged manner, so don't be surprised if you're unable to see any Incursions on the starmap the second you log into the game.

Head over to the official Incursion page for more information on the update and to view quite a few dev blog videos from the team.

When Incursion 1.1.0 launches tomorrow, Jan. 18, all EVE Online players will need to create to create new portraits for their characters using the new avatar creation system. So what happens to the old portaits that you've used for the past seven years? Will they just disappear? No, thanks to  CCP's Portrait Preservation Project!

All of the outdated portraits will be stored on the old portraits webserver at a size of 256x256. Be sure to check out CCP Purple Tentacle's dev blog entry for instructions on how to retrieve your old portrait.

If you want a higher resolution of your old portrait, your only chance is to capture it using the EVE Online client today. Once Incursion 1.1.0 goes live tomorrow, your high resolution portrait will be gone forever. However, you'll still be able to grab the 256x256 version off the webserver.

Incursion 1.1.0 is scheduled to launch tomorrow, Jan. 18, but it looks like a very low number of EVE Online players won't be able to log in due to some CPU changes. Here are the details from a new dev blog entry:

"CPUs that don't support the SSE2 instruction set will not be able to run EVE Online after the Incursion 1.1.0 deployment on Tuesday, January 18, 2011. This will cause players still using Intel Pentium 3 or older and AMD Athlon XP or older CPUs to not be able to run the EVE Online client. Athlon 64 CPUs are not affected."

CCP estimates that around 0.3% of the playerbase will be affected. The number is so low because this generation of CPUs is nearly extinct.

EVE Online Incursion 1.1.0 is scheduled to launch on Jan. 18, and it will bring with it the highly anticipated Sansha Incursions and the new character creator. CCP Soundwave mentioned in a short blog entry today that Incursions will be released in a staged manner, so don't be surprised if you're unable to see any Incursions on the starmap the moment maintenance ends. Here's Soundwave's key quote:

"Keep your eye open for events and just generally things being a little 'out of place' following the Incursion deployment."

If you haven't seen the new character creator in action, check out the video after the jump. It's definitely worth a look.

CCP has announced a special post-holiday sale in the EVE Online store. You can get great discounts by using the following coupon codes:

• EVE Ships 25% off use coupon code: NYFreshShipJ11
• EVE Board Game 30% off use coupon code: NYFreshBGJ11

This sale will be going on now through January 31, so head on over to the EVE Store and start saving!

EVE Online's newest Dev Blog reveals some of the changes coming to EVE Gate as part of the Incursion expansion. The EVE Gate forum will be seeing a major graphics overhaul (see above) that includes a simple and sleek front page, updated channel and thread views, changes to DEV, GM, CSM and ISD avatars, an added quick reply page, and more.

Head on over to the official EVE Online Dev Blog for more images and an in-depth look at all the new features.

CCP has released the first of three sets of minutes from December's EVE Online Council of Stellar Management summit, which held in Reykjavik, Iceland. The CSM is made up of fans from around the world. The summit joins the players with the makers of EVE Online to share their ideas.

The first set of minutes covers the following issues:

• CSM and the EVE websites
• Permanent CCP-administered Charity
• CSM processes, tools and evolution
• CSM Issues
• CSM Activities at FanFest 2011

The full PDF file containing the minutes is available on the EVE official site. The remaining sections will be released within the next week. (UPDATE: The second and third parts have been released.)