We have a new guide up, exploring the wonderful world of trading. It's a worthwhile (and potentially lucrative) read and fairly comprehensive. Excerpt:

The skill sets required for trading are both many and diverse. While not as involved as a combat or mining profession, the time investment is substantial none the less. You begin with very limited access to the higher tiered skills (as opposed to the other professions), but they can be quickly gained with just a bit of effort. With a bit of research, you can create a character that has a "leg up" on these basic skills, which gives you room to grow quickly.

You can find it along with the rest of our guides here.

We have a new guide up, written by Joerd Toastius, focusing on one of the new Kali features; exploration. Excerpt:

Kali also introduces proper exploration, in the form of various hidden encounters. These can be any number of things - there are over 250 being introduced in Kali 1, which get more interesting and much harder as you move from Empire to Lowsec to 0.0. I've been playing around in a COSMOS constellation in 0.0 and I've found gas clouds (for booster manufacturing), straight-up complexes, archaeological sites full of rig parts and T2 rig BPCs, hidden databanks loaded with invention material, rogue drone outposts, hidden roid fields full of ark and bistot... There's plenty of riches to be found, but you need to use scan probes to do it.

This, and more, can be found in our guide section.

From CCP's Kieron

On Thursday, 4 January, Tranquility will undergo an extended 24 hour downtime for external network infrastructure changes and database server software updates. We do not expect the changes and upgrade to exceed 12 hours and hope to allow connections to Tranquility sooner; however we cannot guarantee network stability or connectivity until after the end of the scheduled downtime.

Users that log in before the end of the scheduled downtime will be playing 'at risk' and will not be reimbursed for losses incurred by upgrade related issues.

We apologize for the inconvenience the extended downtime will cause for some members of the community and encourage training a long duration skill.

A new guide is up about Faction Ships and the acquisition thereof, written by Joshua Foiritain, covering most all relevant details to getting these ships through agent missions. Excerpt:

Faction ships can be compared to named items, they’re better then the T1 versions but can’t match the T2’s.
Basically they’re ‘named’ ships (Though some are better looking then T2 ships and have ‘unique’ models).

They’re generally considered collectors items rather then real ships, mainly because only the Named Battleships can out perform normal battleships in the battlefield. (Until T2 Battleships come out)
T2 Cruisers and Frigates will kick any faction ships ass.

This, and more, in our Guide Section!

We have a new guide up by Ryysa, detailing the wonderful world of Electronic Warfare, specifically the use of ECM modules. Excerpt:

As you probably noticed, jammers now also have an optimal range and a falloff range (both of which can be increased by skills, but more to that later on).
The falloff works pretty much the same as the falloff of the guns.
For example: Let's say you have an optimal range of 100km and a falloff range of 30km on your jammer. This means that at a range of 130km your jammer will only hit 50% of the time. At 160+ km it will not hit at all....

Be sure to check it out.

From CCP's Community Manager Kieron:

In an effort to ensure the community can enjoy EVE over the holidays, we are publishing an optional patch. This patch will resolve the Crash To Desktop issues caused by corrupt JPG files. If your client has been closing itself while you are at a startgate, in character selection or using the ingame browser, it is recommended you install this patch. Clearing the contents of the IMG folder located in Cache > Browser folder is also recommended.

The patch can be downloaded here and will be deployed to all users on Tuesday December 26th. Please note: Due to the client modification resulting from a manual patch, the patch itself is unsigned and may issue a warning upon installation.

Following at the heels of the Web Cell developer blog, Redundancy blogs about random stuff from the Graphics Cell. Excerpt:

The Christmas wind-down is upon us, the fanfest is over, the merger announced, the patch out. This is never to say that things can't get lively around the office - just this week there's been two incidents of people running around screaming and pulling their hair out that I've been involved in; One has involved our attempts to sort out forum portrait rendering, and the other was a nasty surprise with billboards flipping out and causing hideous lag.

There's a new-ish Devblog up, covering coming changes to the EVE websites.

My particular job in the web cell is to be the "community web person". That means I am taking over a lot of t20's excellent work. He's gone on to a different role within the company as of a few months back, and until now, there's not been anybody dedicated to pick up the things he was on. Now there is!

Well, that's good to hear.

There's a new Chronicle up on the official website. Or, in CCP's own Abraxas's words:

This week's chronicle is the first in a series of four that describe torture in the Empires. Its title, fittingly, is "Methods of Torture - The Amarr".

The story is a farce, a pastiche, and a fairly twisted piece altogether. It's obviously part of canon, but more importantly, it's fun and doesn't take itself too seriously. I wrote the torture stories so that they could play off one another; thus, the Amarr story is light-hearted and the upcoming Minmatar one dead serious, and the Gallente story will be extremely physical while the Caldari one will be far more cerebral.

And those of you who remember a recent post about a hamster may be distressed when you read the story and find no such animal. Instead, a furrier briefly crops up, much to its own displeasure. Do not be misled. It is a hamster.

What else can be said?

We have a new guide up, written by Attrozzo Pox, covering the pandora's box that is group-wide PvP. Excerpt:

Eve PvP is not NPCing or spawn chaining. It’s not quite like 1v1 either and it takes time and practice to get right. All the best skills and the best ships with the best modules won’t help you at all if you haven’t experienced battle. More easy kills in eve are due to panic and ignorance rather than a lack of skill points. That said, it’s imperative for any PvP player to understand at their most basic level that fighting other players is the only way to get better. Practicing on NPCs doesn’t help much at all. There are tricks and tips that you can only learn with practice. To illustrate this point, think about your keyboard controls. In a completely even battle the person who fires the first shot will be sure to win.

Check it out in our guide section.