Things have been silent on the dev front since the release of Apocrypha this March. Apocrypha was a major success for EVE Online. We rose to new heights in terms of concurrent players and subscribers, and more importantly, we are very proud of the new features and functionality it provided.

Now we are working hard on our winter expansion.

So to start this off, maybe a quick introduction is in order. I'm CCP Tyr, the new Event Organizer in the CCP Marketing team, working mainly as the Fanfest Coordinator. I was the Event Manager for Fanfest 2007 and 2008 as a contractor bringing you exponentially crazier parties every year.

After the release of the last statistics dev blog, one of the main requests for information to go alongside the PVP data was for information on the actual popularity of various ship types. Instead of raw numbers on how many are blown up, in this blog we shall show the relative popularity of various items against others of its type on the market throughout the past.

...the answer is, you don't! It's nearly that time again - time to stand up and be counted by thousands of your peers in the ultimate expression of internet spaceship gladatorial combat! Seize the moment! Gain untold glory! Backstab your alliance and cause forum drama!

Today the new Alliance Tournament section of the website opens with everything that you need to know about the upcoming competition.

I'm Valar, the senior database administrator on the Virtual World Operations team and I'm here to introduce the changes that we are in the process of doing to Tranquility. Since I'm a database administrator, the main focus of this blog is about upgrades to our back end systems, that is, the database servers, but I will touch upon the hardware replacements we've been doing to the rest of the cluster as well.

The new database servers
We brought in a couple of IBM xSeries 3850 M2's, with 128 GB RAM and two 2.6 GHz six core Xeons (Dunnington) to replace our aging IBM xSeries 3950, with two dual core 3.5 GHz Xeons and 64 GB RAM.

The march towards the summer solstice is fast paced in Iceland.  For those of us used to more moderate latitudes, the vast amount of daylight can be good and bad.  On the one hand we get to go golfing at midnight if so desired in certain parts, on the other it can play havoc with your circadian rhythm and you find yourself writing blogs at unusual hours.

The Days of Apocrypha

Apocrypha has seen two big patches to date.  We have seen the introduction of the fourth variation subsystems with some unique abilities which created a lot of interest in the strategic cruisers.  There was also a set of changes to a range of old and pressing design issues such as the Naglfar revamp which saw it gain some of its pride back (its freakin' vertical after all right :p) and citadel torpedoes not taking several minutes to reach their targets any longer alongside a bunch of other good changes large and small.

Of course, you are all capable of reading patch notes and know all this already so it's time to look forward and talk about some of the upcoming changes in the next big Apocrypha patch.

Spill already!

Apocrypha has been out for a little over three months and we have been watching the intrepid explorers amongst you venture into the unknown through the mysterious wormholes and bring forth the next technological revolution New Eden has witnessed and tackle the ancient sleepers.   It is this we want to focus on in this blog with a set of changes which will increase the supply of tech III production materials.

Advances in Reverse Engineering

Reverse engineering gets most of our love in this patch.   What was clear is that we have plentiful material supply besides a few exceptions and the available blueprints and materials for reverse engineering were lacking.  

Intact and malfunctioning relics will now reflect the greater ease with which the ancient technology can be melded with the current technology within experimental laboratories using these relics.  The number of runs each blueprint will have has been greatly increased on these two making them much more valuable to acquire.

In addition the useful data gathered during reverse engineering which can lead to datacores or hybrid tech decryptors has been increased so any outcome will be more fruitful especially in meeting the overall costs of reverse engineering.

Availability of Datacores and Decryptors

The datacores needed for reverse engineering have been generally increased in potential supply.  The numbers you will get from wormhole sites and the numbers of those sites has been increased which will lead to a much greater supply of datacores and should lower the reverse engineering costs significantly.

Fullerite Volumes

Some of the fullerites have had their volume reduced which will lead to a much faster mining rate and less transportation costs for some of the gases.  Easing a little the effort it takes to get the gases back to known space and the marketplace.

Sleeper Salvage Changes

There has been a set of changes to the amounts of each type possible from a sleeper wreck.  The rate at which some types are dropped has been changed which will lead to easing of some bottlenecks and some parts which were being salvaged too frequently.

Change to Fulleroferrocene Power Conduits material requirements

The Carbon-86 Epoxy Resin material requirement has been switched to Scandium Metallofullerene for the power conduits.  This is one of the more significant changes which will ease the pressure on carbon-86 a lot and the burgeoning costs of acquiring the gases for making carbon-86.

In closing

That wraps up the tech III production changes for the upcoming patch which are focused around reducing the costs of producing the subsystems and hulls.  Feedback is as ever welcome and we will post when these changes arrive on Singularity for testing.  On the drawngboard we have a lot more to come for wormhole space and looking at some of the subsystems roles and bonuses in the future. 

Ave - Chronotis

Dear Capsuleers,

This is the Quarterly Economic Newsletter (QEN) for the first quarter of 2009 (Q1).  In this version we have interesting information on demographics as well as a sneek preview of some statistics for wormholes and tech III.  Of course the standard information on price changes is also there in addition to the market snapshots, showing an interesting development in several items on the EVE market.

Please enjoy and looking forward to the discussion on the forums.

Since Apocrypha, one of the ongoing efforts we've been undertaking in Content is the renovation of old missions and deadspace areas. Part of the incentive for this initiative has to do with the fact that a lot of this stuff has been sitting in the game for years and simply needs some freshening up.

Ladies, Gentlemen and Mentlegen...

It's time again to put the wheels in motion for the Seventh Alliance Tournament.  Starting in early September this year, you can all look forward to three weekends of mayhem and explosive action on the greatest stage in EVE.

We have some pretty exciting ideas for improvements this year to the whole show, and there will be a full blog on the tournament itself in a couple of weeks.  That will be when we announce the instructions on how to sign up, full rules, tournament format and all the rest.

For those who missed the last one - all the matches from Alliance Tournament VI are available on CCP's YouTube channel.

The most important thing we want to announce today is that we will once again be opening up the application process for players who would like to be PVP Experts - who would fly to Iceland for the tournament finals and fill the roles of commentors for the qualifying weekends.

As an Expert you'll be on the set discussing the tournament, tactics, teams and talking with developers about EVE live on air.

Onward we march with the CSM, the progress made so far has been measurable and good. The election results have now been confirmed and we're pleased to introduce the delegates for the third CSM:

Valentijn Geirnaert ('Dierdra Vaal') is the Council's chairman having received the highest number of votes.