We’ve recently been seeing a lot of traffic on our proxy servers from non-EVE-client applications. We’ve also noticed that third-party programs have been displaying server statuses to their users. Both instances have resulted in an increase in proxy traffic, which risks service degradation for regular EVE Online players. To prevent this from happening, we’ve created a service in the EVE API which provides server status information, and we ask all third-party developers to point their applications towards this service instead.

This new service is at http://api.eve-online.com/Server/ServerStatus.xml.aspx and currently provides the status of the EVE Online server and the number of online players. The information is cached for 3 minutes by the EVE API. Currently it may not provide all the information the proxies provide but we plan to improve it in the coming weeks and months and we’ll be looking out for your comments and suggestions.

Please keep in mind that a request to the proxies, coming from your application, may result in the player’s IP being evaluated as hostile by our load balancer. The EVE API service is the recommended and only supported public access to server status information

Meet the Delegates of the Second CSM.

This has been a wild ride so far, and we have just begun. The election results have now been confirmed and we’re pleased to introduce the first delegates for the new CSM:

Vuk Lau (character name ‘Vuk Lau’) is the Council’s chairman having received the highest number of votes. The first order of business for the Council will be to elect a vice-chairman, secretary and vice-secretary.

The following candidates were placed in seats 10 to 14 by number of votes received and will serve as alternate Council members:

The First Meeting

The first meeting of the Council will be held in EVE next Saturday, the 29^th of November. Though the session is closed to the public, you can follow the progress and discussions on the CSM forum section where all meeting minutes will be made public.

The Council members will be flown to Iceland the weekend of January 16th to meet with CCP after having deliberated and prioritized topics raised by players. A full listing of election results may be viewed here.

Demographics and Statistics

The format of the following information is identical to the analysis of the first election, to allow for an easy comparison - we will focus on the results from the second election here, while allowing for a seperate blog to compare the two later.

There were 20112 votes cast out of a pool of 233541 eligible voters, amassing a turnout of 8,61%. Of the total votes cast, 1149 voters (5,7%) chose to abstain.

The gender difference between voters closely follow the gender difference in the subscription base, with male voters being 97.1% and female voters being 2.9% of the total voting population compared to 95.4% versus 4.6% male - female ratio of the player base.

The average age of accounts voting is 1.94 years, meaning that most votes were cast by veteran players. 41.5% of the voting accounts are veterans of two years or more whilst those veterans constitute 29% of the eligible voters.

The below information reveals interesting facts. It displays voters sorted by countries, percentage of votes originating from each country, the total number of voters as a percentage of subscribers from that region and lastly the subscription percentage based on region.

What is clear is that the voters from Hungary are very interested in the CSM process, as 40.5% of the players from Hungary cast their votes. Icelanders are apparently interested in the CSM as well, where 13.07% of the Iceland-based voters voted.

We want to thank all of the candidates who threw their hats into the ring and gave it their all. Watching the campaigns unfold was fascinating. We also appreciate those who supported the CSM by voting. There is no way of knowing where this will lead, but we’re all in it together and the promise of what we can accomplish together is astonishing.

EVE Online: Quantum Rise 1.0.1 has been deployed on Tranquility today in order to address critical performance issues that were affecting some of our players. Our team will continue to monitor Tranquility until we’re fully satisfied that the issues have been solved. We appreciate your patience during the extended downtime. Patch notes are available for review and we would encourage anyone who is still experiencing any game play issues to submit a Bug Report and we will investigate the matter as soon as possible.

During deployment we ran into a roadblock, our deployment team quickly mustered and crushed all resistance. This did delay work on the new Quantum Rise 1.0.1 patches and client. Patching from Quantum Rise to Quantum Rise 1.0.1 will work as normal, however patching from older clients will be unavailable until approximately 16:00 GMT and the full Quantum Rise 1.0.1 client download is expected to be back at 15:00 GMT. This is not a major issue as you can simply download the full Quantum Rise client and patch it to Quantum Rise 1.0.1.

Please use this forum thread to post feedback and alert us to any issues that may arise.

CCP is featured on the Windows HPC (High Performance Computing) home page in a video testimonial about the power of supercomputing for the future of EVE Online. The tech-savvy leaders of EVE Online explain why we’re moving forward with Windows HPC and why it is so important in maintaining our “one-world promise”.

Recently, some of our players have experienced performance issues in EVE. As this impaired the player experience and enjoyment of those affected, we consider these issues to be critical. To make sure the weekend is as enjoyable as possible for all players, we went into overdrive and are deploying a patch this Saturday, 22 November. The patch will require an extended downtime starting at 11:00 GMT and we expect to be back up at 13:00 GMT. During this downtime a portion of EVE Online: Quantum Rise 1.0.1 will be deployed and patch notes are available for your perusal.

This patch contains the performance fixes from the originally planned 1.0.1 patch. We will continue to work on other issues that have been found and will deploy those in an upcoming patch which will be released within the next two weeks.

Please discuss the patch in this forum thread.

Recently you may have experienced some issues with client latency and response times, particularly in fleet fights. As we take this issue very seriously our engineering team has been in high-gear working on fixing the problem and we think we are close, but we need your help.

We have a few potential changes that we think will fix the problem, but we want to put these changes through a few proper fleet fights to see which one works best. To that end we will be running a series of fleet fights on our main test server, Singularity. These tests are already under way, but the more people who show up, the better. We need at least 50 pilots, preferably 200+.

Test schedule (this week):

• Wednesday - 11:00 GMT
• Wednesday - 15:00 GMT
• Thursday - 11:00 GMT
• Thursday - 15:00 GMT (Pending results of other tests)

If you want to help us by joining, please do the following:

1. Make a copy of the current Tranquility (TQ) client.
2. Visit the Singularity patch page.
3. Patch the copied client to the Singularity build.
4. Login to the singularity test server.
5. Join the in-game channel “TanisFleet”.
6. Fit yourself with a battleship, close range setup with drones and use weapon grouping.
7. Listen for instructions and ask questions in-channel. 

Please check this forum thread for updates and discussions regarding the testing.

Recently you may have experienced some issues with client latency and response times, particularly in fleet fights. As we take this issue very seriously our engineering team has been in high-gear working on fixing the problem and we think we are close, but we need your help.

We have a few potential changes that we think will fix the problem, but we want to put these changes through a few proper fleet fights to see which one works best. To that end we will be running a series of fleet fights on our main test server, Singularity. These tests are already under way, but the more people who show up, the better. We need at least 50 pilots, preferably 200+.

Test schedule (this week):

• Wednesday - 11:00 GMT
• Wednesday - 15:00 GMT
• Thursday - 11:00 GMT
• Thursday - 15:00 GMT (Pending results of other tests)

If you want to help us by joining, please do the following:

1. Make a copy of the current Tranquility (TQ) client.
2. Visit the Singularity patch page.
3. Patch the copied client to the Singularity build.
4. Login to the singularity test server.
5. Join the in-game channel “TanisFleet”.
6. Fit yourself with a battleship, close range setup with drones and use weapon grouping.
7. Listen for instructions and ask questions in-channel. 

Please check this forum thread for updates and discussions regarding the testing.

To address performance issues in EVE we are making some changes to the EVE Mail system in Quantum Rise 1.0.1. You will now be able to fetch up to 1000 undeleted EVE Mails, however, EVE Mail number 1001 and beyond will not be fetched, whether it has been read or not. To gain access to those EVE Mails, you must delete newer EVE mails. In addition to this all EVE Mails sent by NPCs that are older than 3 months will be deleted.

Please post your feedback in this forum thread.

We are extremely pleased to announce that Audiosurf is featuring EVE Online’s excellent soundtrack on Audiosurf radio this week. Audiosurf is a music game where you can “ride your music.”

We recently featured Audiosurf during our infamous Quiz Show segment of Fanfest 2008. You can watch the videos by clicking one of the links below:

PLAY › 512×288 | .mov | 221.8 Mb
PLAY › 1024×576 | .mov | 520.7 Mb

And if that doesn’t whet your appetite, be sure to check out the track we featured during the Audiosurf segment by pointing your browsers here.

More excellent Fanfest videos can be viewed here.

Through the tireless work of our video crew, we are able to bring you the major events from Fanfest 2008. We’ve sifted through over 30 hours of raw video and have been adding them here.

The Teaser video captures the spirit our players brought to the event.

The World Domination keynote is not to be missed–the focal point of all major EVE announcements.

The CCP Panel is back again, braving unedited player questions from the crowd.

The ever popular EVE Quiz Show pits dev versus dev

The Cutting Edge talk outlines some of our future graphics and tools from, yes, the “cutting edge” of gaming.

The Alliance Panel brings the movers and shakers of the EVE playerbase front and center.

Enjoy!