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.

That’s right, the greater EVE community can now convert their hard earned ISK into cash donations that will go to help out the people of Haiti.  Let me repeat: you can go out and mine a bunch of Veldspar, refine it and sell the trit on the market, and use that ISK to heal/feed/clothe someone in dire need.

There is no better game out there, and in a way there’s no better reason out there to play it right now.  Give what you can.

CCP…  wow.  Kudos.  Big time kudos.

Sources:

• Dev Blog: Plex Aid for Haiti

That’s right.  I mean, was there ever any doubt?  I mean lets look at the sad sacks we had as competition for the award this year:

• Aion (you fly around with wings, for crying out loud)
• Lord of the Rings Online (ok I suppose this one’s reasonable)
• World of Warcraft (has anyone even heard of this one?)
• Wizard 101 (couldn’t get the Harry Potter license, eh?)

I jest of course.  There’s some decent competition there, so how the hell did our humble EVE get past the legions of artards still fattening themselves up in Azeroth?  Quoth MMORPG.com’s Jon Wood:

Coming up with a Game of the Year winner this time around was a difficult task. In the end, it came down to factors like: game growth, originality, overall contributions to the industry, fun factor, population and technological advancement and more.

Booyah.  *fistbump*

Sources:

• EVE Online: 2009 Game of the Year

One of the neato things about CCP is how much they engage the players with their vision of the future, and take feedback on upcoming changes.

No seriously, stop laughing.

Sure there has been the odd bump in the road in this, but overall they’ve had a pretty solid track record in the past.  Carrying on with that tradition, the cuddly CCP Abathur comes to the Test Feedback Forum with a new thread detailing their upcoming capital ship changes.  The following categories of tweaks are represented:

• Structure Signature Radius
• State Module Changes
• Dreadnoughts
• XL Turrets
• Citadel Torpedoes / Cruise Missiles
• Motherships becoming Supercarriers
• Titans

All of this will be going to SiSi in the next couple days. While future iteration on capitals is still possible, all of the above is what we consider to be updates and fixes to current issues. We look forward to your constructive and always enthusiastic feedback.

If you’re a student of recent history, especially a capital pilot, you’d know about what happened with capital ships just before Dominion hit.  A lot of the details of these changes seem to address the problems with Dominion, what players generally regarded as 100% pure grade-A bullshit.  Most notably, now mothersh– er, supercarriers — will have their HP boosted, and have a new breed of deployable death in the form of the fighter bomber.

Hit the thread below, read up on the changes, and most importantly: try them out on the test server and give your feedback to CCP.

Sources:

• Capital Ships in Dominion 1.1 (Thread)

It’s no surprise to anyone who plays EVE that lag has reared its ugly ass again, especially since the recent Dominion expansion.  Luckily for us, CCP Tanis is on the case:

Howdy folks,

We are looking into the situation surrounding medium/large scale fleet battles, both in low-sec and also in 0.0. To get to the bottom of this we must run a series of mass-tests against both Dominion code and pre-dominion code.

“Howdy”?  People still say that?  Anyway it looks like the problem will be solved just in time for the holidays–

These tests will begin Tuesday, January 5 at 5pm UTC. They are expected to last for about 2 hours, each. We need at least 100 pilots, preferably 500+… the more people who show up, the better.

Test schedule:
Tuesday January 5 @ 17:00 GMT (0.0 Fleet/Sov tests)
Thursday January 7 @ 17:00 GMT (Low-sec FacWar tests)

– oh.  Well… holidays 2010 then.  Bummer.

Anyways, click below for the full details on how to take part in the test.  For those who haven’t worked on the test server before, you might want to pay special attention for how to set up a test client, lest ye mangle thine own Tranquility client.

These are really good opportunities to help CCP out with issues like these, so if you have the time on those days then I highly recommend at least trying to get in there, so they can collect whatever data they need to.

Sources:

• Hunting the Lag Monster

The Zephyr is a unique starship design, relying almost entirely on solar winds for sublight propulsion. Super-light sails allow it to ride the torrents of photons streaming through space, and its barebones construction gives it a tiny sensor footprint and almost negligible mass.

She’s definitely pretty, but can she cook?

It has it‘s own special probe launcher (for wormholes) and Sleeper NPC‘s won‘t shoot it in the same way that all NPCs won‘t shoot pods.

Hellooooooo wormhole exploration ship. Not bad, not bad at all. If you’re curious where the name came from, Wiki tells us the following:

Zephyrus, or just Zephyr (Greek: Ζέφυρος, Zéphuros), in Latin Favonius, is the Greek god of the west wind. The gentlest of the winds, Zephyrus is known as the fructifying wind, the messenger of spring. It was thought that Zephyrus lived in a cave in Thrace. Zephyrus was reported as having several wives in different stories.

Nice double entendre, CCP.

Click through below for all the other sordid details of this new awesomeness, as well as how you’ll be able to get your hands on your new ship.

Sources:

• Holiday Gift for All Capsuleers – The Zephyr
• Zephyrus (Wikipedia)

Hot Drop Target: Zapatero, FinnAgain, LaVista Vista

Direct Download

Yesterday I had the pleasure of sitting down (virtually speaking of course) with Zapatero of EON, FinnAgain of EVE Tribune, and LaVista Vista of EBank (lol), and we had a nice discussion about the last year in EVE, and where we think it’s going in the next year.

This is the first of three parts, and I’ll be staggering their release between normal Hot Drop episodes.  Enjoy!

In other news, apparently I totally missed the Warp Drive Active birthday a few days ago, so go me. :)  A new comic is coming soon though, so woot.

Episode Music:

Govinda
“Breathe You In” (mp3)
from “Sound Sutras”
(Intentcity)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
More On This Album

No sooner does that happen, but Somal Thundir of Pandemic Legion hits the boards with this gem:

(14:31:27) jogyn: 13:30:37 Notify One of sniggerdly’s Sovereignty Blockade Units has been destroyed
(14:31:46) jogyn: they just destroyed our sbu that said invulnerable x)

mad props IT.

Broken mechanic, or exploit?  Or both?  Comedy either way given the level of irony being wielded there.

Update (14 December 2009): CCP have officially labeled this as an exploit.  Abuse it at you own peril.

So far I haven’t heard of any major news happening yet from the frontlines of the player wars, pertaining to the new sov mechanics.  Keeping an eye out though, but if you have anything to report please feel free to comment away.

EVE also celebrated breaking its PCU record last weekend, with 54181 pilots logging in at once.  Not too shabby, but at the time of this writing it doesn’t look like this weekend is going to be breaking that record.

Last week the podcast made a return, and the feedback I’ve received from folks by EVEMail and Twitter has been amazing. I’ve also got a crapload of new Skype contacts to call upon, so if you’re one of those who have sent me an add request thanks a bunch.  A new podcast should be up in a day or two, and should be something special.

In the meantime, by popular demand, I’d like to bring back the Failmail section of the podcast again (it was always planned to come back!).  There’ll be a bit of a twist, which you’ll have to wait for one of the next episodes when it comes back to find out what it is. *evil laugh*  If you have a ridiculous killmail showcasing some manner of fitting failure on the part of the unfortunate victim, toss me an EVEMail with the killboard link, or if you’re a Delicious user feel free to share the link through that to the podcast’s Delicious profile.  If you like, include any other information about the kill that you might know of.

I’ll leave you for now with a last little tidbit… in less than one week the return podcast snared well over a thousand downloads.  That’s amazing, especially since we’ve been out of print for so long.  Thanks for the support, keep the feedback coming (I listen!) and keep an eye out soon for the next ep.

Sources:

• CAOD thread from PL
• New PCU Record of 54,181 Pilots
• Exploit Regarding Outposts and Infrastructure Hubs

Hot Drop Target: Wollari

Direct Download

Behold, out of the darkness comes a new podcast.  Sporting a new format (please comment on likes/dislikes!) that is leaner and more community-driven, I hope to involve more people in the madness that is WDA.  Listen for more information on this.

One big improvement is that I’m not going to use VirginWorlds anymore for this, since the days-long delay in getting the file on iTunes was frustrating me to no end.  This won’t be an issue going forward, once the new syndication feed goes up on that service.

Update: iTunes feed is up and working.  Click the icon below to subscribe, back catalog for the new feed will be available over time.

Episode Music:

This Will Destroy You
“Threads” (mp3)
from “S/T”
(Magic Bullet)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
More On This Album

There are some interesting  fixes in there, including the one allowing Russian clients to open Strontium bays (in Soviet Russia, Strontium bays open YOU), but my favorite has to be this one:

Scooping your own drones will no longer be counted as looting in the loot logging fleet tool.

Oh come on… that’s comedy, handed to us on a silver platter. But now I’m curious if someone’s in fleet but doing a mission somewhere, does looting  a Damsel show in the fleet loot log?

Feel free to check out the full patch notes below.

Source: Dominion 1.0.1 Patch Notes

I deliberately avoided the test server so as to experience the new planets and vistas first hand when the expansion went live, and to say the game looks gorgeous is an understatement.  Heh, well I mean EVE’s always looked amazing, but the planets, my God.. the most hilariously pointless thingies in space now rank among the most striking features of the game.  Check out this shot of the graveyard in Luminaire.

I can only assume people are having similar feelings of amazement at the visuals, but more importantly there’s some seriously great features here in this update.

The fleet finder is an incredibly intuitive way to find a group of friends to get blown up with, and I don’t think people are going to be able to live without it now that it’s around.  One of the things I always hated was having to interrogate people in multiple mediums (TS/vent, chat, etc.) in order to find out what’s going on.  Now it’s all there for you to find out that information yourself.  In short: you have no excuse to not get into a gang.

Unless of course you just got blown up because you were staring at the new planets.  Hell even the Jukebox can be legitimately manhandled into playing custom music.  And finally.. FINALLY, you can whore the EVE forums in the game itself, since the browser is actually capable of rendering something designed to post-1996 standards.

No, I’m not kidding.  Hell even this site renders properly.  This has to be some sort of CCP trickery.

All of this is window dressing though, pure icing on the moist, chocolatey cake at the heart of this thing: the changes to sovereignty.

While you’ve been reading this, practically every single alliance with leadership worth their weight in metal scraps is hard at work figuring out how to harden (lol?), improve, and redesign their territories to take advantage of the new system.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but my eye’s on the map to see how things shake down, and to see if CCP’s wet dream of properly-utilized space will come true.

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