Bam-zine

PLEX Aid for Haiti

Dear EVE Players,

Along with the rest of the world, we at CCP have been following the devastating impact  of the earthquake of January 12 on the people of Haiti.  The situation is as dire as ever for Haiti’s brave population, even with the rush of goodwill and aid from many countries, international organizations and countless individuals-including many of you.  In 2004 we assisted a collection amongst EVE players to help with the Southeast Asia Tsunami relief efforts and we have figured out a way to use our PLEX system to facilitate such a collection again.

Beginning January 29th, 2010 and ending February 15th, 2010, CCP will accept PLEX donations from players and convert them to a cash donation for the Red Cross efforts in Haiti. 100% of the proceeds will be given to this important charity as a representative gift from EVE’s player community.

· To participate, contract your PLEX to the “CCP PLEX for Haiti” character, and please make sure the character is in the “C C P” corporation and that the name is spelled correctly to avoid scams.

· Contracts will be accepted within 24 hours of submission, though usually sooner than that.

CCP regards any scamming attempts surrounding this effort to be morally reprehensible and they will be met with swiftest action.

This is about one community of people helping another in need.

I urge you to  use your hard earned ISK (or any of the other various ways which you can acquire a PLEX) to do something greater than it could ever do in New Eden.

Back in the day all that was required to reach the whole community was a dev blog. Now more is needed to reach the ears of the 330,000 players. Please help pass the word to your fellow EVE Players.

Sincerely,

Hilmar Veigar Pétursson

EVE Online installer error on PC Gamer DVD

The latest issue of PC Gamer is landing in the mailboxes of their subscribers and includes a special disc that features the EVE Online game client. It’s come to our attention that there is an issue with the disc that prevents a successful installation. The game client is available, along with a free 14-day trial, through our website at http://www.eveonline.com/future.

PC Gamer MMO of the Year

The MMO you are playing is good. Still good. Very good.

The best.

“And more than ever, the players of EVE Online earned this award with their usual shenanigans…” reads the concluding paragraph of PC Gamer’s upcoming Game of the Year Awards section on EVE Online. Look for it (and some interesting cover copy) in the March 2010 issue that will be hitting stands and mailboxes very soon.

Sincere thanks to the EVE community and high fives to the CCP dev team.

Let’s celebrate by blowing some ships up.

Why We Love EVE Online Contest

Crazy Kinux Musings is running a contest focused on why you love EVE Online. Winners will be awarded either EVE Store coupons or two weeks of game time. This special EVE Blog Banter contest ends on January 31, 2010.

EVE Online Dominion 1.1.1 has been deployed

EVE Online: Dominion 1.1.1 deployment has been completed and Tranquility is back in service. We encourage anyone experiencing game play issues to submit a bug report. A feedback thread and issues thread are also available for you to help make us aware of any problems or feedback in general.

Eve Online: Dominion 1.1.1 deployment Thursday, January 28, 2010

EVE Online: Dominion 1.1.1 will be deployed this Thursday, January 28, 2010. The deployment process will begin at 10:00 UTC and is expected to be completed at 10:40 UTC. Patch notes are available for review and a discussion thread is available here.

New Chronicle: The Mercenaries, Part III

When last we saw our intrepid band of mercenaries, they were daringly breaking out of jail. We return to our merry band of mercenaries as they prep to catch their prey.

“The Mercenaries, Part III” is a new EVE Chronicle written by CCP Abraxas. Published every other Monday, Chronicles are intended to examine the various aspects of life in New Eden. The entire list is contained here, and a comment thread for this particular story may be found here.

Mass Testing on Singularity, Wednesday, 27 January.

Mass testing will take place this Wednesday, 27 January at 17:00 UTC in order to investigate the source of the current lag in large fleet fights. We would appreciate as many players as possible joining us so that we can identify and isolate any issues and work on fixing them as soon as possible. CCP and ISD personnel will be available in the “MassTesting” channel to answer questions and help players in general. You can find full details on the testing in this forum thread along with details on how to connect to Singularity here.

EVE Online: Dominion 1.1 has been deployed

EVE Online: Dominion 1.1 deployment has been completed and Tranquility is back in service. Patch notes are available for review. We encourage anyone experiencing game play issues to submit a bug report. A feedback thread and issues thread are also available for you to help make us aware of any problems or feedback in general.

The ALL CAPS Ship Blog

Over the past few months capital ships have been through quite a few changes.  This blog aims to bring all of that under one umbrella and explain where things are headed in Dominion 1.1.

Motherships -> Supercarriers

The biggest news is that Supercarriers will make their long-awaited debut on Tranquility. Intended to be the heavy hitters of capital ship PvP, Supercarriers will feature the following changes from their previous incarnations:

• Fighter Bombers: the only entities capable of firing the advanced new compact citadel torpedoes, a full wing of these little monsters is capable of doing twice the damage of a sieged Dreadnought. With max skills, 20 Fighter Bombers will do 8000 DPS; 10000 DPS with the Nyx. They cannot be delegated like normal Fighters so you’ll have to stay on grid to keep them on target.

• Hit Point boost: ‘Super’ capitals they shall now be. There’s no point dishing out the punishment if you can’t take it.

• Jump Range increase: advances in quantum flux hyper-spatial mechanics n’ stuff now allows these ships to travel along the same jump routes as Dreadnoughts.

Here is a nice shot of some Fighter Bombers on patrol over a lush and prosperous Minmatar Retirement world:

Seeing as how these ships are now all about killing things, we’ve removed their ability to fit the Triage Module as well as their capability to use Clone Vat Bays. The removal of the Clone Vat Bay components will also reduce the construction costs of these ships slightly.

There are still a few ideas on the drawing board for these beasts, but for now we look forward to seeing them dusted off and causing many tears.

Titans

Since Dominion, it’s been good to see Titans coming out of the force fields and being used as more than a mobile stargate or giant smart bombs.  Since everyone likes data, I asked CCP Diagoras to do some work and here is some interesting stuff:

Number of ships killed by Titans (final blow / rookie ships, shuttles and capsules completely filtered out):

November 2009 – 6,450

December 2009 – 406

The doomsday change from an area of effect weapon to a single target weapon is obvious in that entire grids of ships are no longer being wiped out.  What is more interesting though are the types of ships being killed:

So, to help things further along, we’ve made some adjustments to the Ragnarok & Leviathan to ensure all the titans are doing similar levels of damage, which they currently are not.

It’s %@&*ing Vertical

Dreadnoughts are staying pretty much the same except for the Naglfar which we’re returning to the turret-based bonuses (5% Damage & 5% Rate of Fire per level) implemented back in Apocrypha 1.3.  Combined with the projectile ammo changes introduced in Dominion, this should make the Naglfar less horizontal.

Signature Radius Changes

We have changed the signature radius on all Control Towers and POS structures to a minimum signature radius of 2000.  This is so that all capital weapons are capable of doing full damage to their intended targets.

Dreadnoughts will receive their own signature radius bump, a 75% increase, which puts them in the same range as other capital ships.

State Module Changes

We have added a mass multiplier (x10) to Siege Modules, Triage Modules and Industrial Cores. When these modules are activated, the mass of your ship increases exponentially, making it much harder for other ships to move or bump.

To make the Triage Module a bit more tactically useful, we have reduced its duration and fuel consumption by half.

XL Turrets / Citadel Torpedoes / Citadel Cruise Missiles

XL turrets have been adjusted slightly to ensure their damage is balanced and to give the short range weapons a bit more range.

We’ve also changed several things with the Citadel Torps / Missiles in order to balance these weapons with their turret counterparts.  Their new explosion radius’, along with the aforementioned signature radius increases, should ensure they are doing the damage they are supposed to.

We are also adding faction Citadel Cruise Missiles as well. They will receive the same 10% damage bonus that the current faction citadel torpedoes receive.

Big Pew Pew

Hopefully these changes will go a long way toward enhancing your billion-ISK ship experiences.  We’re always watching to see what changes and improvements can be made so please continue to provide constructive feedback. I’ll now leave you with one of my favorite charts:

-  CCP Abathur