It's only two hours, so hopefully your withdrawls won't be to bad!

The downtime this Wednesday, 7 May, will be extended by one hour and last from 11.00 to 13.00 GMT. During this time we will make some load balancer changes to Tranquility.

While we do not expect any problems we recommend that you set a bit of a longer skill training just-in-case™.

EVE Stratics is returning, and to celebrate is holding a Build-a-Billboard contest!

• Image size must be 1024x768 or smaller and can in JPG or GIF (single frame, no animation) format. If you'd like a 'billboard' frame to stick the image in, click the image at the right and save it to your computer. Frame is optional and will not affect judging.
• No vulgarity, graphic nudity, copyrighted, or overly offensive material. Slightly offensive is usually pretty damn funny, so we'll let that slide.
• Contest runs Monday, April 28th, 2008 to 11:59PM on May 19th, 2008
• Judging will be done by a panel of Stratics staff, and will be based on creativity and originalty

Full contest details can be found here. Good luck!

EVE Online has announed some of the statistics for those who have applied for the Council of Stellar Management!

These are interesting times we live in. Setting up a democratic structure in EVE has not been the easiest process we have undertaken, but we truly feel it is well worth the effort because of the interest you have shown in the project.

Now, this blog is to tell you a thing or two about the statistics of the applications received and the approved applicants, now lovingly referred to as candidates.*

But on to the statistics.

• We received 97 applications.
• We accepted 64.
• We rejected 33.

The breakdown of the stts follows, and is also available here.

Here's some of the patch notes:

Ships & Modules

• Ships with more modules fitted then the slot layout allows will no longer be able to undock. This can happen if the slot layout is balanced in a release and the ship is fully fitted during the deployment downtime. Simply unfitting the excess modules will allow the ship to undock again.

New Player Experience and User Interface

• The insurance, repair shop, medical and bounty station services have been transformed into windows to allow for welcome pages.

Graphics – General

• In an effort to prepare for future graphics projects we are collecting information about graphics cards. This will allow us to better target the hardware of EVE's player base.

For the rest, try the patch page !

While EVE Online developer CCP has not responded to our request for comment, Games Industry.biz does have a comment from them.  Their current conundrem is the leaking of source code that found its way to the torrents across the net.

Developer CCP has moved to reassure consumers that the leak of the source code for EVE Online will not jeopardise security for the games subscribers.

The source code has appeared on a number of torrent tracking websites this week, but CCP says that neither players, the game or the developer itself faces any risks.

"CCP is aware that an individual claims to have access to the source code of the EVE client. This access is not a security risk to CCP in any way," stated the developer.

"Access to the source code for the EVE client exposes no security vulnerabilities, has no privacy protection issues, and poses no threat to our customers' billing information.

"The server-side interface used by the client is carefully protected to ensure that no abusive or unwanted information is transmitted to, or from the internal EVE server systems. Nothing the EVE client can do can affect the game state, no advantage can be gained by manipulating the EVE client, no advantageous or disadvantageous information can be transmitted to other EVE users by altering the EVE client," added the company.

Although the company has acknowledged the theft of the game source code, it would not disclose any information on how the code had been accessed.

"CCP does not confirm or deny, nor make any comment, regarding issues of internal security, and will not be doing so in this case," it said.

Rumors regarding EVE's client source code that's being distributed across the internet are flying today! Reports originated from blog Dream Not of Today, and include a supposed chat transcript.

In a more believable response, it appears that CCP has not taken kindly to EVE players who have posted about it on the official forums, and some believe that now that the secret is supposedly out, CCP is seeding the download themselves, and actively banning any IP that is found requesting the files, from their game.

The only communication line open from our end to CCP was email, so of course, they haven't had a chance to respond yet. As soon as, and if, they do - we'll update you on the situation!

As this situation is even now unfolding, it's hard to sort rumor from truth. Let's hope that CCP has the time and chance to deal with this on their end, before damage to the game is done.

I missed this interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun, that EVE creator Reynir Harðarson did about a week ago, and it's got some amazing ways of looking at EVE!

Frankly I don’t give a crap whether you liked Eve, or found it boring, or unplayable or anything else: what you need to understand are the principles that are at its foundations, because they’re principles that can be applied to stop MMOs becoming stale and inflexible in the future.

The number of people I’ve encountered working on MMOs who don’t really know anything about Eve Online is shocking, and I regard that lack of knowledge of the work of people like Harðarson as one of the key reasons why MMOs are progressing so slowly, and regurgitating the same tired, tiresome ideas over and over again.

Whether you've played and loved or hated it, or just never tried it out, it's an amazing read with what CCP is doing to change the future of MMOs.

Scientific American interviewed EVE economist Eyjólfur Guðmundsson in a look at how virtual worlds mirror real world economics, and socioeconomics.

"The players are very specialized," Guðmundsson notes. "All some do is mine, move stuff around and trade, just like any other industrialist. Pilots need bigger and better weapons and people to trade them. They all need information to communicate [about] the economy, just like any community needs to know how interest and inflation affect its wealth. It's important to have a visible economist to analyze events and participate in discussion[s]."

It's a great look at the work that's being done in game, and how it can move into real world applications.

EVE has announced the timeline that will govern their Council of Stellar Management, a player body that will represent player interests to developer CCP.

Below is the timeline for the next half a year concerning the CSM so you should be able to make preparations in time should you wish to throw your hat in the ring as a candidate. Two additional documents are included that describe the election process: one that details the reasons, background and the intention of the CSM and the second is a brief summary that contains the gut mechanism of the council’s functions.

It cannot be stressed enough that the council will not have any formal power within CCP; it will function solely as an advisory council to CCP by serving as a communication conduit between the playerbase and CCP.

The timeline is clearly explained in the announcement.  It's truly exciting to see that a company has chosen to allow their players such representation in their game!  Good luck to all who go out for the posititions!

EVE had this update when I logged on this morning!

Due to problems with certain New Player missions they will be disabled during today’s Downtime, Thursday, 13 March. We will work hard on fixing this and the missions will hopefully be enabled during our next scheduled Downtime on Friday, 14 March. If you are playing a new character and run through the tutorial this means you will not be able to continue to the New Player mission series. If you were in the middle of doing any of these mission series you will not be able to finish them. Once we have enabled these missions you will be able to talk to the agents again and get the missions.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

They've also announced that the API features are not currently working, but they plan to have it up after downtime!