Marshal the fleet, commanders. CCP has just announced that the 5th Alliance Tournament in EVE Online will begin by the next weekend. Faction combat ships better be rolling out shipyards by the dozens, because this won't be a cakewalk. Turrets will swerve, guns will overheat, decks will be breached, and glorious space faring vessels will be reduced to empty, lifeless metal carcasses - all in the name of glory and...unknown prizes? More at the full story.

EVE Fanfest 2007, a three day-celebration for EVE Online held in Reykjavik, Iceland, is wrapping up today so we should hear news about the event soon. This year's Fanfest also held The Sisters of EVE program that allowed a discounted rate for the significant others of those who are attending.

EVE Fanfest 2007 also held PVP and CCG tournaments (wouldn't be complete without it) and a silent auction where proceedings will go to charities in several countries. Bidders got the chance to get some EVE collectibles. We'll know more of who bought what soon enough.

 

MMORPG EVE Online developer CCP Games, a long time supporter for the Child's Play charity for children, will be conducting a silent auction in line with its EVE Online Fanfest 2007 event.

The auction aims to provide gaming equipment, toys, and crafting materials for children's hospitals for the benefit of patients and their families. This isn't the first time a gaming-related company has supported a charitable institution.

Child's Play itself was originally founded by Penny Arcade, a famous name in the web comics and gaming circle. Several EVE collectible pieces will be up for grabs in the auction, as well as a chance to own a rare EVE object.

Aside from that, solicitors will also be helping out kids all over the world by contributing to the event. One of the biggest prizes being auctioned, however, is a chance to visit the CCP offices in Reykjavik, Iceland. Winners can take a backstage look at one of the biggest sci-fi MMORPGs out there today.

Bidding starts today until November 1. Multiple bids are allowed and can be made through the EVE Online official website, which can be accessed through the Read link below.

 

The weather isn't the only thing that's cool over there in Reykjavik, Iceland. MMORPG players all over the country are getting ready for one of the biggest annual events in the online gaming community there and hereabouts. The 2007 EVE Online Fanfest gives everyone the chance to get together with other gamers and fans of the MMORPG in their yearly event which sports quite a hefty agenda.

Whether or not you're friends or foes on the EVE Online battlefield, everyone can have a good time at the Fanfest through the many scheduled events, as well as meeting the CCP Devs behind the scenes of the game. Asides from discussing PvP tactics or the latest nerfs over a glass of Quafe, visitors can also savor the real-life hotspots in Reykjavik such as the geothermal spa, shops in the downtown district, or a tour the Icelandic countryside.

Here are just some of the events scheduled during the event this coming November 1 to 3:

• PVP Tournament. Think of a cage match for capsuleers: your name and ship on a giant screen, battering your opponent into scrap before the rabid cheers of hundreds of fans. The prize: undisputed bragging rights and interstellar fame-plus some very cool EVE Stuff™ to be decided. Think you have what it takes? Then make sure you sign up for the action! Registration begins in September.
• CCG Tournament. A battle of wits and strategy versus fellow card game enthusiasts in a round-robin contest that draws some of the best collectible card players in the world. Think you can hold your own? Bring your A-game to Reykjavik and find out! Registration begins in September at the CCG website.
• Presentations. CCP's creative, technical, and production leads give you an up-close-and-personal view of what's being done to make EVE better now, plus a glimpse at the future of EVE.
• Roundtables. A personal discussion between groups of players and devs covering EVE topics such as content, game design, storyline, and more. Signups will be at the venue on the day of the event.
• Jita. Are your corpmates planning a strong showing at this year's Fanfest? Then register for your own dedicated meeting area for your corporation or alliance on the venue floor! Signup instructions will be announced later.

CCP Games' EVE Online gets ready to blast off with its fourth annual Alliance Player vs. Player Championship even beginning August 31, 2007. What's more, this year will have live coverage on EVE TV, with commentaries given out by experienced EVE Online players.

More than 40 teams will be participating in this major event and show off their piloting skills and tactical expertise against other players. Fans can watch the action online and support their favorite players as streaming videos will deliver the action to everyone from a studio near the CCP Games offices in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Eliminations will be made through an eight round-robin system, with the top two in each progressing up the bracket. Four single-elimination rounds will follow including the final. The final four alliances earn loyalty points, while the top three will receive medals, loyalty points and pilot bonuses.

Lína Ingvarsdóttir, a producer at CCP Games, had this to say about the event:

The Alliance PVP Championship is a highly anticipated event for the EVE Online community as it is their Olympics in combat and gives new and smaller alliances a chance to earn respect, a very valuable commodity in EVE Online. The championship demonstrates everything that makes EVE what it is: extensive teamwork in preparation and execution, high-level strategy and planning and gut-wrenching PVP. With a new format and revised rules, the championship promises to be even more diverse and exciting than ever before.

 

In a previous article, we covered EVE Online's investigation of allegations and attacks that have been directed towards them. CCP Games, the company running the game, was concerned about the possible loss of trust from the gaming community due to these occurrences.

CCP has decided to resolve the issue by allowing a select group of players who will be elected by their peers to go to their headquarters in Iceland to show them that the company is running the game in a professional manner. The chief executive of CCP Hilmar Petursson gave word on how they intend to implement this.

I envision this council being made up of nine members selected by the players themselves, where you announce your candidacy, and if you win the election, they come here to Iceland, and they can look at every nook and cranny and get to see that we are here to run this company on a professional basis. They can see that we did not make this game to win it.

The community has stated their lack of trust in CCP via the forums and other lines of communication with the company. This response by the company looks to be a very good way of gaining back part of the lost trust, however as with most situations such as this, it will take time. Petursson spoke about their decision in gain back the trust of players and how it must be done.

Perception is reality, and if a substantial part of our community feels like we are biased, whether it is true or not, it is true to them. Eve Online is not a computer game. It is an emerging nation, and we have to address it like a nation being accused of corruption.

A government can’t just keep saying, "We are not corrupt." No one will believe them. Instead you have to create transparency and robust institutions and oversight in order to maintain the confidence of the population.

While waiting for their plans to take effect, CCP will have to strengthen their security to avoid another Band of Brothers hacking incident. Another measure that the company should seriously consider as well is to not allow their employees to play the game on their own time to remove all allegations of cheating on the part of the moderators.

 

The creators of EVE Online CCP has recently been under attack on multiple levels with various allegations. This was compounded by what they called a "carefully constructed and well-timed social engineering effort by one of the largest player groups in our community" with the eventual goal of discrediting both the game and CCP.

The CCP folks have posted responses on various allegations leveled against them such as CCP Sharkbait joining a player corporation to spy on their alliance, the Aurora event team rigging an event arc, and the unfair dismissal of an ISD member from the volunteer program. However, what would interest most people is the conclusion they've drawn regarding the perpetrators of the allegations and attacks. Here's a short overview of it:

An unnamed corporation posted over 4000 times on EVE's message boards concerning these allegations. In addition, 1046 posts were made on Digg.com; 235 comments were added on Slashdot; and made multiple EVE-related edits on Wikipedia.

Each of these sites was hit within a few hours of each other, at the start of the three-day Memorial Day weekend in the US and a three-day weekend in Iceland.

The guys at CCP pointed out that it was done over a three day weekend, thus lessening their ability to react to the problem. They believe this was pre-meditated. Another thing they pointed out was the fact that the entire EVE community was being readied as a weapon to use against CCP through this propaganda.

So far, CCP hasn't given word on which group has performed these attacks, and we doubt that they'll be disclosing that information. Be sure to click on our read link for full details on this.

It's finally confirmed. Icelandic game developer has finally given the word that they will be developing a new MMORPG title, World of Darkness.

Abstracting from the title itself, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that this game ain't for the faint-hearted. There won't be any blobs of joy bouncing about here, nor would there be funnily idiotic plunger-wielding rabbids out to dominate the world as your enemy. World of Darkness will be a world where vampires and werewolves reside.

Joining in the quest for this game's development is White Wolf, the board game company that merged with CCP last year. Although CCP can't reveal any more information as to the game, they do say that the wheels will start turning definitely in the next few months.

CCP brought us the massively popular EVE Online, which has over 180, 000 subscribers to date. Hmmm...interesting how this new title would turn out, then.

It is not derogatory to say that not many names from Iceland make it big worldwide. After all, it is quality that matters and not quantity. In music, probably, the most popular Iceland-based band is Sigur Ros who wrote and performed the song Njosnavelin for the movie, Vanilla Sky. Not to be left behind, the Iceland gaming industry boasts of EVE Online, developed by Icelandic developer, CCP Games.

The latter is making news today as they announced a definitive agreement to merge with U.S.-based White Wolf Publishing. This certainly is big in terms of impact and size. As we all know, EVE Online resides in a really massive virtual universe while White Wolf is the world's second-largest developer of offline role-playing, strategy and collectible card games. The most successful and familiar of its works include Worlds of Darkness and Exalted.

"Virtual worlds are a new form of entertainment, separate from traditional computer games. By combining forces, we will create a company unsurpassed in quality, innovation, and scope which will keep us at the forefront of this emerging trend," stated CCP CEO Hilmar Petursson. White Wolf President Mike Tinney then responded, by saying -"Together, we will create the industry's most innovative games leveraging both online and offline systems."

The effects of the merger are basic and obvious that they are almost impossible not to see. By 2007, EVE Online will finally expand to the offline universe with the release of strategy guides, enhanced collectible card games, role-playing games as well as novels. Discussions are currently going on as to how White Wolf's creations can be brought online.

EVE Online's getting an upgrade on the 1st of November. The devs says they're adding more internet backbones and stuff. But more importantly, they're getting new hardware, including another RamSan Fibre Channel disk for more tables in their SQL server, and 33 blades servers by mid-November.

Now, you're probably wondering why the heck are they buying all that hardware. No doubt that's a lot of stuff, but thing is, they need all that to make way for the public testing of KALI, the second major EVE Online expansion. And what can you expect from KALI? Let's quote our source:

Kali contains a lot of improvements, fixes and optimizations that are too big to deploy in the Tranquility codebase, the changes are simply touching too many systems. So Kali isn't just "new stuff", it's a lot of fixes. A whole parking lot of fixes. A parking lot the size of Iceland of fixes. And Iceland is bigger than ... oh, never mind.

Of course, that was a bit fragmented, but who cares? "A lot of improvements" sounds good enough, don't you think? And it's sure something to look forward to. We sure need to thank these CCP guys for continuously improving EVE Online for us. Kudos to you, folks!