If you have any snowballs left from CCP's winter event in EVE Online, you might want to start launching them. The event ends on Jan. 6, but CCP has a much more fun way of putting it :

We have been working closely with weather specialists regarding this matter. They have been ceaselessly running weather prediction simulations since the mysterious arrival of these snowballs. According to their models, temperatures will rise .0001 K on 6 January 2009. This slight temperature change will result in the complete melting of all snowballs in New Eden, regardless of their location.

The CCP team always goes above and beyond to make sure their events and announcements remain within in the theme of the world they've created. Oh, and if you're worried that universal warming is the cause of all this, scientists are assuring us it's just seasonal temprature variations. Regardless, I think Al Gore should make a stop in New Eden.

CCP is great at fleshing out the world of EVE Online with it series of EVE Chronicles, which are short stories written by CCP staff that "examine the various aspects of life in New Eden." If you've never read one before or want to catch up to the most recent story, you can find the full list here. The two newest chronicles promise to bring holiday cheer to every reader.

In his newest Chronicle, "Chained to the Sky," CCP Gnauton liberates more information about life as a slave in the Amarr Empire. Something is afoot, and it may have far-reaching consequences for the certain members of the slave population in the Amarr Empire. In CCP Abraxas' "Two Deaths," we witness the warm, passionate homecoming of New Eden's two most notorious traitors, Anvent Eturrer of the Gallente Federation and Chamberlain Karsoth of the Amarr Empire.

CCP is currently warning players about the newest phishing e-mail making the rounds to EVE Online players.

There is currently a phishing email circulating that claims to be sent from EVE Customer Support. This email claims that we had a database issue and lost some customer information and it asks you to login to make sure your information is still there. They conveniently provide their very own login link. This is of course not true; we have not lost any account information.

As always, use extreme care when any e-mail asks you to log in with your name and password. It's always a good idea to visit the game's official site first to confirm whether the e-mail is valid.

Last week, the EVE Online team posted an update regarding an expoit with Starbase reactors. Well, the team has now posted details of their investigation, stating "we are working on the assumption that this bug has been exploitable since the release of player owned structures on November 24, 2004."

Our actions so far have included the eradication of 178 starbases that were exploiting this issue. Some had multiple reactors running in the bugged state.  We have also banned all those we have found directly involved and all accounts we have found to be connected to those players. The investigation is still under way and will take a while to conclude.

The full investigation will take weeks according to the post. You can read the full thing here or below.

If you're interested in competing in the Sixth Alliance Tournament, the time is approaching to sign up. You can register for the event tomorrow, Dec. 19, at 11 a.m. GMT. Everything you could ever want to know about the sign-up process can be found here.

CCP Claw and the team have been hard at work finalizing the rules, and we are pleased to announce that the final set of match rules are now available in the Official Rules Thread. These changes include a small re-balance in the points cost of Heavy Assault Cruisers and Battlecruisers.

Keep reading below for the full announcement, which contains information on the team of expert commentators who will join CCP in Iceland in February and the list of prizes.

Quantum Rise 1.0.4 has been deployed to "address performance issues regarding memory leaks that were affecting some of our players." In addition, it adds a new utlility feature to EVE Online:

Need for Speed

• A new graph is now accessible in the performance monitor that displays information about memory usage in the client.

The full patch notes can be found here or below.

CCP has teamed up with Xfire for its holiday event, EVE 'til EVE, which offers some great prizes for playing EVE Online.

All you have to do is create an Xfire account, download the client and join the Official Xfire EVE Online Guild. Then, simply play EVE Online while the Xfire client is running. That's it. Depending on the amount of hours you play between today and Dec. 31, you'll be eligible for numerous prizes.

One (1) Grand Prize Winner:  40+ Hours : 1 EVE model ship of choice, 1 Year EVE Online Subscription, 1 Year Subscription: EON Magazine, EVE Strategic Maps book, EVE Online T-shirt.

All the rules and the rest of the prizes can be found here or after the jump. The minimum amount of time you have to play is two hours for a chance at a three-month EVE subscription.

The EVE Online team has posted an update regarding an exploit with Starbase reactors.

We discovered seven corporations with multiple Starbases set up for the express purpose of exploiting the issue.  Three of those corporations were members of two alliances. We took immediate action against the offenders and banned over 70 accounts and destroyed all the Starbases run by the corporations in question.  All the offending corporations are now effectively inactive as a result of our actions.

This matter will be further discussed by the team at a meeting this weekend, so there may be more developments regarding this exploit. More information can be found here or below.

If you play EVE Online on a Mac, you're going to need to update your Cider engine so your Mac client will automatically update when patches go live. Also, the new Cider engine build includes some fixes that should boost your performance.

We would ask all Mac users to click 'Yes' when prompted to update their Cider engine. Not doing this will require you to manually locate patch downloads and start the patch process for any client updates manually.

Basically, all you need to do is log in and click "Yes." The full announcement can be found here or below.

UPDATE: Due to unforseen network issues, Quantum Rise 1.0.3 was actually deployed on Dec. 11.

Quantum Rise 1.0.3 will be deployed on Dec. 10 while Tranquility is offline from 11 a.m. to 3:40 p.m. GMT. This patch promises to boost performance for all players.

This year we are giving you the gift of the Christmas Performance Patch which contains a massive boost to both large fleet and small gang engagements as well as much improved game play for every player in New Eden. Focusing on improvements to the Need for Speed initative, this very special patch streamlines performance to significantly increase frames per second (fps) and makes improvements to the patching process to allow for a smoother patching performance in general.

That's a great present, indeed. The full patch notes can be found here or below. Also, Technical Director Jon Bjarnason goes incredibly in depth in today's dev blog entry to explain exactly how the new patch will drastically improve the performance of the EVE client. Bjarnason seems quite proud of his teams for this update, and his excitement shines through in the blog entry.