For all you machinima fans out there, Stanford Law School is hosting an interesting seminar this Friday and Saturday on the legalities of creating movies using online games. According to the event's Web site, topics for discussion will include "game art, game hacking, open source and 'modding,' player/consumer-driven innovation, cultural/technology studies, fan culture, legal and business issues, transgressive play, game preservation, and notions of collaborative co-creation drawn from virtual worlds and online games."

Of course, films will be shown throughout the conference, including Joshua Diltz's "Mercy of the Sea" from World of Warcraft and Ian Chisholm's "Clear Skies" from EVE Online and Half-Life 2. You can even watch an original WoW machinima announcing the conference here.

Visit the school's event page to register or for more information, including a full agenda and list of speakers.

Apocrypha 1.1 is scheduled to go live tomorrow with downtime starting at 11 a.m. GMT and concluding at 4:15 p.m. Here's some of the highlights of what the patch will bring to players:

"New Tech 3 subsystems will be availble for the Legion, Loki, Proteus and Tengu to provide pilots with more variation along with improvements to ECM ships such as the Falcon, Rook, Scorpion and Widow. This patch will fix issues that have been reported following the release of Apocrypha 1.0.2 including a wide variety of fixes to the skill queue, agents and missions, user interface and localized clients."

You can read the full patch notes here here or below.

Fans of EVE Online Chronicles, which are stories that examine the various aspects of life in New Eden, have a couple new items to check out on the game's official Web site.

First, CCP Abraxas has written a new Chronicle called "Scars," which focuses on a younger Thukker named Yane who saves an older Thukker, Olaer. When they get back to Yane's apartment, Olaer discovers a "profound history" while there. You can find a list of all Chronicles here.

Second, EVE player Dire Lauthris created a fan video based on a Chronicle called "The Breakout." According to the producer, "This film covers a bit from the Caldari-Gallente war. It's set 200 years ago, before any of the 4 races had pod technology." It features in-game footage, and you can check it out here.

If you're an EVE Online fan who's looking to take a vacation, mark Oct. 1-3 on your calendar and book your flight to Reykjavik, Iceland in preparation for the 2009 Fanfest. The sixth annual event will take place at the Laugardalshöll Convention Center, and while access pass availability and pricing are not available yet, CCP has compiled a list of special Icelandair Fanfest packages, which include airfare and hotel. For example, the trip from the U.S. begins at $719. CCP warns flights to Iceland sold out last year, so begin planning your trip as soon as possible.

If you decide to go, here's what you can expect to enjoy: "Get ready for another weekend of PVP tournaments, hanging out with the developers, and partying in a sea of fellow EVE Online fans. As always, Fanfest attendees will be treated to videos and announcements on the future of EVE and what players can expect in the upcoming expansions."

The EVE Online team has created a Fanfest teaser video to get fans excited about the event. For more information, check out this developer's blog entry. As always, more details will be released as we get closer to Fanfest since it's six months away, but it's always good to plan ahead.

Apocrypha 1.2 has been deployed today to address issues with the skill queue, epic mission arcs, user interface and other bugs. The patch has also addressed a critical issue where a crash was being caused when new icons were generated in systems with a secondary sun, such as some wormhole systems.

You can read the full patch notes after the jump.

Are you enjoying Apocrypha? Well, as you fly through wormholes and explore all the expansion has to offer, you may want to consider participating in E-ON magazine's screenshot contest. All you need to do is submit your favorite shots from inside New Eden along with a brief description. The best shots will be published in the April edition of the magazine.

While the possibility of publication is exciting enough, there's also a nice prize to go along with each selected image: 100m ISK! There's also the possibility that a NVIDIA graphics card will be thrown into the mix, but that's not definite.

And while we're on the topic of Apocrypha, the EVE team has acknowledged petition queues have grown with the release of the expansion. The team has offered some tips on how you can help achieve quicker service. So if you run into a problem while taking your screenshots, make sure you file your petitions in the correct category and don't do it more than once.

Apocrypha, EVE Online's 10th expansion, is here! There's all sorts of ways to get involved in the action if you haven't yet. First, check out the features page for a trailer, details on the storyline and a massive list of updates, from wormholes to the New Player Experience, which helps ease the learning curve for gamers who are entering New Eden for the first time.

Next, prepare to download a huge patch (1.35 GB for PC or 2.17 GB for Mac), as well as some smaller patches to get to the final build. If you have any questions or problems on the patching process, this post should help.

CCP is known for making New Eden come alive through the high level of roleplaying found in its announcements. The team has gone all out for Apocrypha, filling its news feed with items "chronicling the cataclysmic arrival of Apocrypha." Read the "End of the World" chronicle series here for details on the expansion's storyline, and keep an eye out for the epilogue, which will be published today.

Also, EVE Online is now available in retail stores in U.S. and Canada, and will be available elsewhere beginning tomorrow. More information on Apocrypha and the retail box can be found after the jump.

Tomorrow may be the release of Apocrypha, the 10th expansion for EVE Online, but March is also noteworthy in New Eden because it marks the opening of candidacy runs for the third Council of Stellar Management. For those who don't know, the CSM is a group of gamers that brings suggestions for game improvements to CCP. Currently, the first and second CSMs have brought 128 topics to the table and have seen some success in getting their suggestions implemented.

"Out of the 128 topics discussed, 50 have been added to and/or given increased priority in the backlog, 47 have been bumped into the pipeline from the backlog and/or given increased priority there, 20 topics are considered to have been implemented (some will appear in Apocrypha) and 9 have been denied implementation (mostly because of technical reasons)."

So if you'd like to be a part of this council, you can apply to become a candidate from March 17-31. Voting begins May 12. All of the relevant information can be found here or below.

EVE Online will be unavailable for up to 13 hours tomorrow due to the launch of its latest free expansion, "Apocrypha". The servers will go down at 3:00am GMT and should be back up again by 4:00pm. While you wait, why not check out the Apocrypha trailer on Youtube?

More details on the planned downtime can be found on EVE Online's official website.

As you know, Apocrypha, the 10th expansion for EVE Online, will be released March 10 in conjunction with the game's first retail box. As Tuesday quickly approaches, CCP, which just won awards for innovation, has been busy releasing all sorts of information surrounding Apocrypha, as well as asking players for help with testing.

• Fleet fight tests will be held on the Singularity test server starting tonight. Visit this thread to find out how to participate. The dev team would like to have 400+ pilots involved in the mayhem.
• Asteroids will be getting a graphical facelift to help players tell which types of Ore lie within simply through the look of the rock. This dev blog has all the details.
• CCP Abuther has discussed wormholes at length in his blog: "in W-space you will see things you've never seen in EVE before.  Black Holes, Pulsars and Red Giants are just some of these wonders." This new system will bring exploration to an entirely new level in EVE.