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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. Winter is quite far away, and we felt because Apocrypha was really early for a summer expansion, we should put out a mini-expansion, rather than wait until winter to release all the stuff we are working on. It should come out mid-August if all goes well. We refer to it as Apocrypha 1.5.

Small, Medium and Large rigs

Ever wanted to build the ultimate speed kite frigate but couldn‘t afford the rigs? Tank your cruiser to the max? Mod your little hauler? Now you can!

We are adding small and medium sized rigs ( existing rigs will be considered large rigs ), which will be cheaper to buy and make. With this we are hoping that more people may get introduced to the joys of rigging and the sorrow of losing your specially fitted beautifully rigged ship. CCP Chronitis will explain further in an upcoming blog.

Level 4 epic arcs in Apocrypha 1.5

Apocrypha 1.5 will be rich with content. We have several new epic mission arcs, which unlike the level 1 epic arc we introduced in Apocrypha are all level 4, meaning they will be more challenging, but also more rewarding. With each themed around a specific race, these captivating stories deal with moral ambiguity, intrigue, honor and some people's lack of it. This should come as no surprise to those who know EVE and what we are about. As before with the epic arc that was released in Apocrypha, they provide a deep, interesting story, where your choices influence the outcome.

Specialized Cargo holds - Fuel bays on black ops

We are introducing a system that allows us to author specialized cargo holds on ships. We will start by adding fuel bays on black ops and possibly other ships. This means we‘re adding more space for your fuel, without the ships becoming horribly unbalanced haulers of death. The technology behind this opens up doors to making other types of bays, just for ammo, just for livestock or whatever. Those options will be explored in future expansions.

Factional Warfare improvements - LP for kills

We have been closely monitoring reports on lag in Factional Warfare, analyzing the network behaviour, player behaviour and scrutinizing code. The reported lag does not always occur and is elusive to track down and resolve. We currently have engineers allocated to the resolution of the problem, working tightly with the quality assurance department and our bughunters.

Meanwhile, in an effort to make Factional Warfare more fun, we are looking at introducing Loyalty Point rewards for kills and captures, with special LP stores for each militia, offering unique goodies for hard working militamen and women. More details to follow in an upcoming blog by CCP Ytterbium.

50% features versus 50% maintenance

A recurring question I get from players is "How much time is spent on new features versus fixing and improving existing stuff?". The answer is simple. We allocate 50% of our developer time to new feature development and the rest to polishing and iterating existing systems and resolving defects. We feel this is a healthy balance between moving forward and maintaining what we have already built. EVE is over 650.000 lines of source code today, compared to 280.000 lines when it was first released, so there's a lot to maintain and refactor. Apocrypha 1.5 will have a considerable amount of fixes and polish coming out from this work.

The Winter Expansion

We will be reporting on the winter expansion as it draws closer. All I can say, is that it is focused on sovereignty and you will not be able to walk in it. Check on the dev blogs in the weeks and months to come for more updates. Those who are into RSS and those kind of things can also subscribe to our RSS feeds.

Thanks for reading!

- Torfi Frans

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. Now I am a part of wonderful CCP dedicating my time making Fanfest 2009 bigger than ever!

Why is Fanfest so awesome:

One would guess that the main reason for attending Fanfest would be to learn about EVE's past, present, and future, on the contrary almost everyone's favorite part of Fanfest is meeting new people making instant friends and  hanging out with fellow pilots with whom they play a game that they all love. That commonality brings a thousand of us together to shake a strangers hand, hug a Dev, and to sit down to have a pint with a person you just met but have known for years. Whether you are traveling solo for the first time to Iceland or a part of a large corp gathering you will meet fellow capsuleers as soon as you hit the gate at your local airport as most flights to Iceland will be fully booked by EVE attendees during this time.

Using the words of Leandra Anor, E-ON #14, Postcards from the Fest;  "Fanfest is a place to put aside differences and see who the actual person is behind the avatar you might be fighting for, with, or against! It's about meeting the EVE legends and at times about making a new EVE legend. It‘s about seeing what the future of the game might be. Most of all though, Fanfest is about having fun in a beautiful place!"

But one of the highlights for many is simply meeting the CCP employees. Some might expect that they are aloof, full of themselves and hidden off in some backroom for press eyes only, but nothing could be further from the truth. Everywhere you look you see CCP Dev's walking about in their black short-sleeve EVE Dev Team shirts (and kilts!), meeting players, accepting and attentive, hanging out, "talking shop," and giving away freely bone crushing Viking-hugs.

And yes! You can even bring your partner! We realize that not everyone coming to Iceland in October wants to discuss the intricacies of ship fittings or market dynamics. We invite players to bring their wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, or just friends, to accompany them on the trip to Iceland and participate in this excursion. Not only that, but Sisters of EVE pass holders are invited to join in at the Party at the Top of the World on Saturday night!

Reykjavik - Cold Beer, Hot Town, Cheap Prices

The Icelandic local currency works in your favor! Your money goes farther, buys more and keeps you partying all weekend even on the most frugal of budgets. Visitors to Iceland often find that it is enjoyably warm compared to its location in the North Atlantic and is often warmer than a lot of places in Europe during winter.

According to reporter Jim Boulden on CNN, "Iceland is back on the map as a low-cost tourist destination." The US Dollar has gained 50% in value against the Icelandic Krona over the last year which puts Iceland in the Top 5 bargain destinations according to USA TODAY. The beauty of Iceland is the same as before and so is the hospitality of Icelanders.

Reykjavik heats up at night, countless pubs and clubs are packed with locals and visitors just minutes from the Fanfest venue. The legendary beauty of Iceland, from its landscape to its ladies, is breathtaking in every regard.

Check out the Experience Iceland, Iceland FAQ, Reykjavík Survival Guide for more information on how to enjoy your stay in Iceland to the fullest.

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. These do not show the total individual numbers of these ships/items, they show the number of them traded on the market. This means that if the same ship was traded through the market twice, it would count for two.

These graphs show October 2003 to March 2009, a span of 66 months, and you can click any of the graphs to see a larger version.

Interestingly, the Scorpion has gone from being the most popular tier one battleship in 2003 through mid 2005, to being the least popular from 2007 to now. This can largely be attributed to balancing changes to ECM in April 2005 and the introduction of other, preferred ECM platforms such as the Caldari Recon ships in December 2005.

The popularity of each of the ships has remained stable since early 2007, with the Dominix being by far the most popular tier one battleship. The Dominix accounted for 48.26% of all tier one battleships market transactions in the April 2007 to March 2009 period. It can be speculated that the Dominix is the most popular tier one battleship due to its versatility, with it being effective in both PVE and PVP environments due to it's main weapon being drones, leaving the high slots available for whatever utilities people may want - energy neutralizers, remote repair modules and so on.

Tier two battleships have remained fairly stable since early 2006, with the Raven being by far the most popular battleship. The last year has seen significant growth in the popularity of the Apocalypse after it was boosted in the Trinity 1.1 patch, and there has been a slow decline in the popularity of the Raven since late 2007.  

Missiles were reworked considerably in the Cold War expansion of July 2005, from a system where all missiles did full damage to their targets to the current system that takes the signature radius and velocity into account. This explains the dip in the popularity of the Raven at that time. Interestingly, the actual number Raven trades through the market has stabilised over the past year, whilst other battleships have continued to grow as expected in terms of numbers traded. During 2008, Ravens were traded through the market an average of 16,542 times per month. The least popular tier two battleship in terms of market trades was the Tempest, with a monthly average of only 2,362.

As can been seen from the combined statistics for the tier one and two battleships, shown grouped by race, Minmatar tier one and two battleships have been the least popular in terms of market transactions in the October 2003 to March 2009 period, with the exception of October 2007. In October 2007, Amarr tier one and two battleships had less market transaction than Minmatar ones.

Regarding Minmatar, there doesn't seem to be any real consensus on why their battleships are the least popular. If you have any theories on why this is, feel free to discuss this in the comments thread.

Starbases were added to EVE with the Exodus expansion in November 2004. At first, only large control towers were available, with small and medium control towers being added in the first half of 2005. Upon first being released, the size of a control tower did not affect sovereignty - so ten small control towers would beat the claim of nine large control towers and so on. This led to small control towers being the most popular type, until these mechanics were revised. Medium control towers have been the least popular since their introduction except for only one month, making it seem that there is less demand for a middle ground, with the wish being for either as large a starbase as possible or as small a starbase as possible.

In March 2009, 2,821 large control towers were traded through the market. The 2008 average was 1,616. February 2009 had the highest number of large control towers traded so far, with 3,027 being traded in that month.

Taking a look at the racial comparisons for starbase towers, it can be seen that Caldari starbases have been the most popular most of the time. Minmatar starbases had a period of increased popularity from early 2006 to early 2007, which can be at least partially attributed to the primary choice of starbase type for alliances engaged in territorial warfare in that period.

The various types of isotope are used as fuel for both starbases and jump drive capable ships and were introduced in November 2004 in the Exodus expansion. Interestingly, the isotope market does not follow the starbase market quite as closely as would perhaps be expected. This suggests that jump drive capable ships also have a significant impact.

In 2007, an average of 3,285,019,553 isotopes were traded on the market each month. In 2008 this number increased drastically to an average of 5,990,842,951 isotopes traded per month. The average for the January-March period of 2009 was 9,710,071,318 units.

This graph has been cut down to show only from January 2006, as these ships were introduced during December 2005. Force Recon ships are very specialised and each have their own roles (such as ECM, warp disrupting or webifying). The comparative popularity of these ships for the first two years after their release was been surprisingly similar, likely due to each race having its own unique role. Since early 2008 though, we have seen two interesting events - the rise and fall of the Rapier, which lost a lot of popularity after a rebalancing of speed and stasis webifiers, and the rise of the Falcon to become the most popular by a very large margin. This can be attributed to its role as an ECM ship becoming increasingly popular in a variety of situations.

In this graph, the most used tech two large turrets of each weapon type are shown. With the introduction of the Rokh in Revelations II (November 28^th, 2006), the market share of the 425mm Railgun increased drastically as this provided the Caldari with a battleship railgun platform. In line with the trends for Amarr battleships, the Tachyon Beam Laser has increased in popularity in recent months. This can be largely attributed to the changes to the Apocalypse in the Trinity 1.1 patch, which was released on March 12^th, 2008.

500,545 tech two large turrets were traded on the market in 2008, an increase from 314,085 in 2007. This means that the monthly average increased from 26,174 to 41,712. In January through March 2009, the average was 68,680.

Tech two missile launchers were introduced in July 2005 as part of the Cold War expansion. In the Trinity expansion of December 2007 there were significant balancing changes to torpedoes to turn them into short range weapons, which led to a very significant reduction in their popularity when compared to cruise missiles.

The average number of tech two large missile launchers traded on the market per month in 2007 was 32,948. In 2008 it was 56,843 and in Jan-March 2009 it was 67,921.

So, that's it for now. We will be taking a look into some of the other requests there have been and will see what we can do regarding more graphs for you all, but no promises! As always, please give any suggestions for things you'd like to see on this front in the comments thread on the forums.

-CCP Diagoras

...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. Alliance Tournament VII hasn't undergone a huge amount of changes from Alliance Tournament VI, however it has undergone some important ones, so we thought it would be a good idea to explain the reasoning behind them.

Signup Changes

We're changing the way we do signups this time around, and moving away from the 'first come first served' method. A few people had problems signing up last time, many of which we weren't made aware of until it was too late for us to do anything about it. Also, the system was unneccessarily rigid in a few ways as well as being a little bit dependant on time zone and some other factors. So, this time, we're going to autoqualify 16 teams from the previous tournament, and then have the remaining 48 teams drawn randomly. This ensures that everyone has a fair chance of getting to play, and ensures that the people who fought hard previously get to do so again. We're also upping the signup fee to 2 billion ISK, which will be non refundable for teams that are drawn for a spot, and will become part of the prize pool. So on top of everything else we'll be giving away as prizes (more details on that soon^TM) we'll have 128 billion ISK to give out, too. You can see the full signup rules (and when signups open, actually, well, sign up too) here.

Rules Changes

The rules are again very similar to last time, but there are a number of significant changes both for reasons of balance and reasons of keeping the format fresh. You can see the full rules for Alliance Tournament VII here.

Firstly, we will be making Logistics Ships legal again, with a maximum of one per team. Logistics modules will still be banned except when used on Logistics Ships. This should allow more flexibility in tactics and allow logistics pilots to do what they do best, without the undesirable effect of perma running, nigh unbreakable tanks.

Secondly, we will be limiting each ship to a maximum of two. Same-hull ships will be fine (so you could still run 2x Cyclone, 2x Sleipnir, 2x Claymore for example), rather this is a limitation on specific ships. The idea of this is to again create some variation in tactics; goal-focused setups will of course still be possible (such as some of the focused setups we saw in AT6 involving multiple, different T1 battlecruisers and cruisers) but will require a little more thought, a little more setting up, and of course more co-ordination on the battlefield.

Thirdly, the points values have again been altered. Time and again, in the microcosm of Eve combat that is the Alliance Tournament, we have seen the importance in the number of ships on the battlefield as much as the class of ship. Smaller ships such as frigates and cruisers are very economical in terms of points cost per slot, and slots are what dictate the ability to disable an enemy ship. Essentially, the 'all eggs in one basket' approach of fielding battleships was viable, but the many smaller ships approach was generally a better tactic. Thus the metagame strengths of the ship classes, as well as their statistics in-game, have to be reflected in the points values, and this has led to a general increase in points for smaller ships and a general cost reduction for the higher end ships.

Fourth, Tech 3 ships have been added to the points table. As well as haulers. Yes, really.

Finally, we've rewritten a lot of the rules to be a bit clearer and less ambiguous, and clear up some frequently asked questions.

I'm excited!

Very excited actually. I'm really looking forward to seeing battleships as even more viable. I'm really looking forward to see how Tech 3 is used (and even more interested to see the commentators trying to remember every Tech 3 hull variant so they can call what the ship does....). I'm looking forward to seeing Bombers with torpedoes after CCP Chronotis' awesome changes (he is the best dev). Most of all I'm looking forward to another fantastic alliance tournament and seeing more epic fights; I'd really like to see if anyone can out-hero the Hero Vigil, or out-tank the Tempest Hero Issue from Alliance Tournament VI.

On the subject of heroes, we are still looking for experts to come to Iceland and commentate on the final live weekend! Applications are open until Sunday, so if you havent applied and would like a free trip to Iceland and a huge amount of free e-fame (not to mention the opportunity to commentate on the best e-sports event around) then click here to go to CCP Charlie's blog and submit an application!

I hope this blog gives a little bit of an insight into the changes being made this tournament. I wish you all the best of luck; I'll see you on the battlefield in a few months! (But you won't see me. I'll be cloaked.)

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. This upgrade doubles the RAM of our database servers, but that helps with page cache lifetime and decreases IO and CPU load.

Our old database hardware was not nearing its capacity, however, due to our desire to decrease downtime and our goal to do maintenance and other previously downtime-regulated tasks while EVE-Online is online, we decided that increasing the capacity of our hardware was prudent.

The new database software
Since we are replacing the database hardware, why not replace the software as well. The new database servers run Windows 2008 Server Enterprise x64. The plan is to upgrade to SQL Server 2008 Enterprise x64 SP1 as well, but I will outline that better later in the blog.
Both the old and the new SQL servers run as a 2 node Windows cluster, with a SQL Server failover cluster in active/passive mode. There will be no change there.

Phase 1 - Hardware upgrade
With help from top experts from Microsoft, we created a plan to do both the hardware and software upgrades with a minimum of downtime. The downtime required for the hardware upgrade was actually so minimal that we planned to do it within the regular downtime window. We did the upgrade on Monday, May 11th during the regular downtime, however, due to unforeseen technical problems, the downtime got extended by 20 minutes.

This was accomplished by having the new servers set up with SQL failover clustering, connected to the disk array that was used before we installed the RamSan-500, with the storage laid out in the same way as the live servers. During the downtime we reconfigured our storage, or basically switched the cables so the new servers were connected to the RamSans and the old servers to the old DS4800 disk array. This is an oversimplification to say the least, but this is the essential step that allowed us to do this without an extended downtime.

We are now running on Windows 2008 Server, however we are still running on SQL Server 2005. This will be addressed in the next step.
As a result of this part of the upgrade the time to start the server has gone from ~6-8 minutes to ~2.5-3.5 minutes. We have shortened the startup countdown from 10 minutes to 7 minutes and will likely move it even lower if the startup time stays as it is when we have finished this project.

Phase 2 - Upgrade to SQL Server 2008
As I said in the last section, we didn't upgrade to SQL Server 2008 at the same time as we upgraded the hardware. There are a few reasons for this:

• Measurability, we want to be able to measure the impact of the Windows 2008 server upgrade on the new hardware individually from SQL Server 2008.
• Ability to rollback with as little downtime as possible in phase 1. As soon as you attach a database to SQL Server 2008, it cannot go back to SQL Server 2005.
• Minimal downtime. By splitting up in phases, each step can be fitted within a smaller downtime window.
• Ability to go back to SQL Server 2005 after running on SQL Server 2008 for a while. I'll go into this below.

We've been doing test upon test that have ensured compatibility and that Eve does not perform worse on SQL Server 2008. We still want to have the option to go back to our old setup without data loss and extensive downtime, as I mentioned above.

To be able to perform the upgrade to SQL Server 2008 and still be able to go back to SQL Server 2005 with not too much downtime and without doubling our storage hardware, we are going to start replication between the new servers and the old server (that are connected to our DS4800) while both servers are on SQL Server 2005.

We will leave this running for some days, just to make sure this works properly, before scheduling a downtime to do an in-place upgrade to SQL Server 2008 on the new servers.

We originally planned to do this upgrade during the daily scheduled downtime period, but we've decided that it's prudent to have the QA department run their dry-runs on the server after we upgrade to SQL Server 2008, just to make sure that everything is 100% okay.

When the servers are back up, the replication will work like nothing happened. If we decide to go back to SQL Server 2005 for any reason, we schedule a downtime and use the plan from phase 1 to go back, with the exception that we need to move the datafiles from the DS4800 array to the RamSans before starting up from SQL Server 2005 and old servers again.

We could then do a storage switch to the new servers on SQL Server 2005 again a few days later after.

Benefits?
The benefits of the upgrade for you are quicker responses from database intensive operations, such as logging in. The shortened countdown after server startup is another obvious benefit as well as the shorter downtime as database jobs that run at downtime take a shorter time to run. However the benefits are mostly in the backend. We, the database administrators, can do more maintenance outside of downtime, leading to fewer downtimes where we have to use the full hour.

It also gives our developers the chance to expose more data through the API and perhaps through other future projects. Reporting for our research and statistic department can also be done in larger part on our live database now.

We can also utilize a new feature of SQL Server 2008 to prevent reporting, websites, maintenance or the API from affecting Tranquility negatively. The feature is called Resource governor and would for example allow us to prevent the API to use more than 10% CPU or 10 GB RAM. It also allows prioritization of workloads, so for example, the websites would have priority over the API while Tranquility would have priority over everything. If we'd have a run-away query on the websites, it would not take Tranquility down. There are more things in SQL Server 2008, like backup and datafile compression, filtered indexes, sparse columns, new date and time data types and other things that we are interested in, but thats outside the scope of this blog.

But you mentioned other hardware upgrades?!
As Mindstar mentioned in apocrypharrrrrdware!, we replaced half of the cluster around Christmas. Around 3 weeks ago we replaced the other half of our sol servers. The new servers have 3.3 GHz Wolfdale CPUs and 16 GB of RAM and replace our old 2.8 GHz AMDs that have 4 GB of RAM. With this upgrade we were able to start running all of our cluster on 64-bit processes, but we had to run 32-bit processes on machines that had 4 GB RAM due to the RAM usage overhead of 64-bit processes.

By now I've overwhelmed you with tech talk and if you've reached this far, you get a cookie.

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. Just as we've renovated all of our graphics and effects in the last year or so, now we want to make improvements to content. EVE has always been, and must remain, beautiful.

As an example of the sorts of things we're working on, some legacy complexes have literally scores or even hundreds of structures in them, most serving little purpose other than to clutter up the overview; similarly, some missions have massive numbers of small, fast NPCs in them, which is a nuisance especially in level 3 missions and beyond (and of course also increases server load). So we've been sorting through old dungeons, changing out, rebuilding, and reducing the numbers of structures; tweaking NPC numbers; and so on, all with a view to making things run more smoothly.

Another aspect of our content renovation effort concerns the busiest mission hubs. Naturally, the more players we have running missions in and around a given system, the more cluttered those systems become. So, as part of our long-term plan, we've added twenty-three new level 4 agents to TQ and also moved one agent, most of them Caldari (since a substantial majority of players running missions do so in Caldari space).

All of these agents are just far enough away from the busy mission hubs that we hope they'll draw a substantial number of mission-runners over to the new agents and thus help fill up some of the empty space in our growing universe.

So, with no further a due, I give you... your new agents. Just one thing to note about the following table: The "Old Agent" column refers to extant agents in the game who are currently overrun with players. If you currently run missions for an agent from that column, consider trying out the new agent who correlates to that entry instead.

*Note: This agent was moved away from other agents of similar quality who reside the same station, but does not have a newly added agent nearby.

Now all that's left is for you to get out there and make them feel wanted - 'cause there's no agent like a happy agent. And we all want to associate with happy people, right? Right?

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. You'll also take shifts in the commentary booth providing live commentary on the matches themselves. You need to know your PvP and you need to know how to keep on talking!

You'll also be commenting on the two qualifying weekends from your own home. You'll be given special access to the tournament arena so you can give your view on the action which then will be relayed over EVE Voice and through partner radio stations!

But the final weekend is where the fun is. You'll be flown out to Reykjavik, Iceland to join the team here at CCP HQ to help us run the show during the live broadcast of the final weekend. Flights (from all Icelandair destinations) and accommodation are supplied by us. All you need is a little spending money.

So you're interested? Next step is to check this short list and make sure you match what we're looking for!

• Can you come out and play? Selected experts will need to hold a valid passport (we will require scans to confirm this at a later stage) and be available to fly to Iceland on the 16th and back on the 21st of September.

• Available to commentate live from their home on the non video broadcast qualifiers on the 5^th & 6^th as well as the 12^th & 13^th of September (the two weekends prior to the live show), a good microphone and reliable internet connection is required.

• A sense of humor is a must: Experts will need to be sharp-witted, knowledgeable, presentable and comfortable with talking on camera and into a microphone. To greater the chances of getting through, we highly recommend submitting any pre-made or purpose filmed video you have of yourself (link to a YouTube clip!) as part of your application.

• You need to know your PvP: We don't despise industrialists, mission-runners and miners but as this is a PvP tournament, you need to be well versed.

• You must be 21+ in order to apply: This is both for legal reasons and to avoid any problems if the group is out in Reykjavik (a lot of bars are 21+).

If you are interested in taking part, please email us at evetv@ccpgames.com by 23:59 GMT (Eve Time) on Sunday the 14th of June with the following information. Those lucky enough to be selected for the second round of eliminations must be available to attend voice chat interviews on Saturday the 20th of June. The chosen experts will be announced by the 24th of June.

• Character and real name.

• Date of birth.

• Nationality and current country of residence.

• Tell us about yourself, both in game and out. Remember what your applying for and sell yourself to that effect.

• Confirm you are available between the 16th and 21st of September to fly to Iceland. If you need to book time off work / school please don't do it until we accept you but please check that it is possible, if there is any doubt here please let us know.

• Remember your applying to be on TV! Include any multimedia you think shows you off, all of the experts chosen for the last Tournament had sent in video clips/links to youtube!

Remember applications close on the 14th of June! So get mailing!

A final note: The Tournament from the perspective of an Expert is an amazing experience. You get to take part in an unique production, fly to Iceland, get a tour around the CCP office and chat to developers like almost no other players will ever get the chance to. But with great power comes great responsibility, attending and taking part in all qualifier weekends, radio or televised is a must. Planning and promotional shows take place during the weeks up to the final show and you may not be asked to fly to Iceland if you fail to take part, or become unavailable during this time!

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. 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 30^th of May. 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 August 28^th 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 and the second election, to allow for an easy comparison.

There were 27848 votes cast out of the number of eligible voters (i.e. older than 30 days and thus able to vote), amassing a turnout of 9,74% compared to 11,08% in the first election and 8,61% in the second. As can be seen when comparing the elections, the subscriber numbers have gone up by a significant number meaning that the total number of voters has to follow if the % is to keep up. Of the total votes cast, 992 voters (3,56%) 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 95.5% versus 4.5% male - female ratio of the player base.

The average age of accounts voting is 2 years, meaning that most votes were cast by veteran players - the age going a bit up from the last election where the average age was 1.94 years. 44.6% 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 the subscription percentage based on region.

What is clear is that the voters from Bulgaria are very interested in the CSM process, as 38,10% of the players from Bulgaria cast their votes.

We want to thank all of the candidates who threw their hats into the ring and gave it their all. As the last two election 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.