EVE Online Tyrannis 1.0.3 has been deployed successfully and here are the patch notes.

FIXES

• The autopilot was mistakenly providing the shortest route to your destination even when you had the prefer safer option selected. We sent it back to flight school and the safer option is again working correctly.
• Some blueprint icons were being displayed incorrectly based on their type. This has been corrected.
• An error was being generated while trying to access items in a corp hanger while in space.
• You are now able to trash items normally that are located in a corporate hangar array at a POS.
• The Planetary Commodities cargo hold on the Primae could not be loaded with Water or Oxygen. It can now.
• An error was being generated while you tried to edit more than one contact at the same time. This now works as intended.

For any feedback and issues, go to the official forum threads.

The Tranquility (TQ) cluster will be down for maintenance on Wednesday, June 23, 2010 from 0900 to 1500 UTC. The gist of it is that they are making some much-needed hardware upgrades, but if you would like to know the techie details of it, CCP Yokai has written a dev blog on what they are hoping to do during tomorrow's down time.

CCP has just posted both a video tutorial and complete how-to instructions on the new feature in EVE Online, Planetary Interaction. The video covers the basics of creating a colony, managing a supply chain, and moving items to and from planets.

Read the EVElopedia entry or watch the video on You Tube.

For those of you who have been waiting, the Tyrannis patch has been deployed and is now live! And for those of you who have no clue, Tyrannis is the latest major expansion to EVE Online, allowing the players to finally interact with the beautiful planets introduced in Dominion.

Planetary Interaction brings a new dimension of industrial gameplay to EVE Online. Players will be able to establish colonies on planet surfaces to reap, refine and process materials into high-demand commodities for use or sale on the EVE market. New skills have been introduced, offering even more options for those capsuleers looking to turbo-charge their colonies. New players and veterans alike can dive into this exciting new feature the minute Tyrannis goes live.

To find out more about the expansion, visit the EVE Online Tyrannis website.

The elections for the 5th Council of Stellar Management have ended and the results are out. Nine delegates, headed by a woman, Carole "Mynxee" Pivarnik, are headed for Iceland in June to participate in the CSM-CCP Summit.

The winners are as follows:

Votes	Character Name	Real Name	Country
4,116	Mynxee	Carole Pivarnik	United States
3,360	Ankhesentapemkah	Eva Jobse	Netherlands
2,521	Dierdra Vaal	Valentijn Geirnaert	Netherlands
2,196	Korvin	Andrey Antonov	Russia
1,649	Vuk Lau	Vuk Lau	Serbia
1,553	TeaDaze	Jason Renouf	Guernsey
1,519	Meissa Anunthiel	Stephan Pirson	Belgium
1,463	Trebor Daehdoow	Robert Woodhead	United States
1,260	Sokratesz	Tim Heusschen	Netherlands

You can read the full story on the EVE Online official website.

Hey EVE Vault!

We're going to shake a little dust off the site, starting with the latest network preview of EVE's next expansion over on Voodoo Extreme.

I'm going to do a little chipping away at the game myself, so I'll be sure to let you all know what my in-game name is so you can blow me up.

What are you most excited about for EVE's future?

I hope everyone had a fantastic New Year celebration! To kick off the new year I've made a quick little calendar for you. Enjoy and watch for a new one in Febuary:



You can download the calendar by clicking the image above, or following this January Eve Calendar link.

Records were made to be broken and EVE Online has a tendency to adhere to that statement.

They have recently broken their Peak Concurrent User record with an astonishing 54,181 players logged in simultaneously.

"The weather outside is frightful as powerful solar winds buffet the battleworn armor of a Myrmidon aligning for warp. The fire so delightful of the Heavy Pulse Laser IIs as they carve through the hulls of Sansha's despicable followers.

What really warms our hearts this time of year is the recent breaking of our all-time Peak Concurrent User Record. This past Sunday, 54,181 pilots were flying in New Eden, unfettered and unbound but by the limits of their own imagination and skill. Thank you all for flying with us."

Impressive CCP, and congratulations!

Tomorrow, December 1 marks the launch of Dominion. Currently the game servers (and official website) are down for the count to bring this latest expansion into the world (as in GMT, it's already December 1).

Since it's a huge addition to the game world, they expect to bring the servers up in about 19 hours. A day without EVE for the Europeans, but not too painful for those in North America.

Take advantage of Direct2Drive's 5 year anniversary sale and pick up EVE Online for only $5.

The sale is good all week long until they switch to their next category.

You can also snag titles like Assassin's Creed Director's Cut, Neverwinter Nights 2 and Age of Conan.

Today, CCP has announced their new game DUST 514.

It's a console game that mixes MMO, FPS and RTS gameplay, but ties into the universe and story of EVE Online. Their aim is to be able to bring PC and console gamers together in the same universe.



In development for three years via CCP's Shanghai studio, the details are still scarce, but CCP plans to announce more at their FanFest in October.



You can read the full press release below.

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CCP Unveils DUST 514
Award-Winning EVE Online Developer Taking Console Gaming to New Heights

Cologne, GERMANY, Game Developers Conference Europe – August 18, 2009 – CCP today revealed DUST 514™, a console-based hybrid MMO/FPS set within the EVE universe. The announcement, which included a video featuring gameplay footage, was made during a keynote address by CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Petursson at the Game Developers Conference in Cologne, Germany.

DUST 514, featuring first-person shooter and RTS-style gameplay, will interact directly with EVE Online, CCP’s critically acclaimed flagship MMO. This interplay between the two games opens the EVE universe to console gamers and gives them a chance to become part of one of the most massive cooperative play and social experiences ever.

“We launched EVE Online in 2003 and have experienced steady annual growth– a fact we appreciate as a rarity in the world of MMOs, especially given the global economy of the past year,” said Petursson. “Our success with EVE Online has afforded us the highest caliber global design and production talent in gaming. With a team of the best minds in the industry, we conceived an ambitious new take on virtual world development with DUST 514.”

The primary gameplay of DUST 514 features brutal ground combat that takes place on the surface of planets from EVE, delivering the visceral, adrenaline-fueled experience of futuristic firefights. Developed for the current generation of consoles, DUST 514 combines equal parts battlefield reflexes and strategic planning, giving commanders and ground infantry real-time configurable weapons and modular vehicles to manage dynamic battlefield conditions.

Now entering its third year of production, DUST 514 is the primary development focus of CCP’s Shanghai studio. The team includes veteran designers of EVE Online and experienced talent from various sectors of the video game industry.

“Since opening our Shanghai studio, we have invested in building a team that wants to push the envelope in gaming and be pioneers in the industry,” said Kjartan Pierre Emilsson, Managing Director of CCP Shanghai. “Having led the design and development efforts of the project from start to finish, our studio is honored to call DUST 514 our first title release.”

Further details will be revealed at CCP’s annual Fanfest event October 1-3, 2009 in Reykjavik, Iceland.

CCP has announced that the Apocrypha 1.5 update will be going live on August 20, 2009.

The update brings new content to New Eden including four new mission arcs, changes to Factional Warfare, and fixes all around.

The official announcement is up at EVE Online's official site.

Straight from the source: "Due to unforeseen circumstances, we have decided to perform the SQL upgrade in early September after we deploy Apocrypha 1.5. More information regarding this downtime will be available at that time."

We'll keep you posted as we get a more solid date on when it's happening.

This Wednesday, there's going to be some extended downtime for the EVE Online Universe:

"Tranquility will be offline for an extended downtime on Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 in order to upgrade the database to SQL Server 2008. Downtime will begin at 08.30 GMT and will be completed by 12.00 GMT."

That's not too bad for those in North America, as by my count that'll be 12:30am to 2:00am for the West Coast.

The EVE Online team has put together a fantastic video chronicling how each player can have an effect on the entire game.

It's about the ripple effect, the butterfly caused monsoon.

They titled the video, "The Butterfly Effect," but mention in the video that they like to refer to the condition as "The Sandbox."

Either way, cool to see that each little event is at least slightly important.

EVE Online continues to thrive in new ways.