The latest dev blog from CCP Dr.EyjoG contains an incredibly interesting analysis of the Orca's entry into the market. According to the blog, the biggest surprise for the team was the huge amount of blueprints sold for the capital-sized industrial command ship.

In the first 13 days of its release, 2,935 Orca blueprints were sold. In comparison, the next highest amount of blueprints sold in that time frame was for the freighter class, which sold only 260 in its first 13 days.

Due to the massive supply of Orcas that will probably come out of these blueprint sales, the team hypothesizes that the price of the ship will fall sharply in the coming weeks due to major competition between producers. In response, many Orca producers may turn to "the production of other capital ships that require similar components but may offer larger profit margins in the long run."

Check out the full blog post here or below.

CCP Mindstar has announced the Sixth Alliance Tournament. It will consist of six days of competition.

These are the dates we have in mind:

• Tournament Signups - Dec 19th - Jan 9th
• Qualifying Round 1 - Jan 24th, Jan 25th
• Qualifying Round 2 - Jan 31st, Feb 1st
• Finals - Feb 7th, Feb 8th

Signups are not open yet, but you can read about the rules here and the format here. If you want to be considered as an expert/commentator for the EVE TV broadcast, which involves flying to Reykjavik, Iceland, to join the team at CCP headquarters, all the information is here. Lastly, the official tournament forum will be updated with the latest information. Keep reading after the jump for Mindstar's full announcement.

In addition to Thanksgiving in the U.S., today also marks the deployment of Quantum Rise 1.0.2.

Quantum Rise 1.0.2 mainly consists of changes and fixes to weapon grouping, graphics and the user interface. Patch Notes are available; updates to the notes may be added should any further items be cleared through the Quality Assurance process. These updates will be highlighted with green text.

The votes have been tallied and the first delegates of the second Council of Stellar Management have been named.

Vuk Lau (character name ‘Vuk Lau') is the Council's chairman having received the highest number of votes (2,033). The first order of business for the Council will be to elect a vice-chairman, secretary and vice-secretary.

This post lists all of the candidates and has a detailed analysis of the statistics and demographics surrounding the election. For example, there were 20,112 votes cast out of a pool of 233,541 eligible voters, and most votes were cast by veteran players who have had their accounts for almost two years.

The full results are copied below. Personally, I find it to be an interesting read.

Critical performance issues have been addressed today through a patch that fixed a number of bugs involving client slowdowns, crashes and memory leaks. The full patch notes can be found here.

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.

The full post from the EVE Online team can be found here or below.

There's some mail changes on the way in Quantum Rise 1.0.1.

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.

Some updates have been added to EVE Online's Buddy Program to make the offer even more worthwhile for everyone involved.

Players can now invite friends to EVE for an extended 21-day Trial, and for each trial user that becomes a subscriber, the person that invited them will get an extra 30 days of game time added to their account.

The extended offer is only valid until Dec. 1. More information can be found here or after the jump.

Also, six videos from Fanfest have been posted on the official EVE Online site. They cover numerous panels and the keynote speeches, as well as quiz show between two teams of online devs.

CCP is warning players about a phishing e-mail circulating that claims to be from EVE Customer Support.

This email claims that we had a database issue and lost some customer information and it asks you to login to make sure your information is still there. They conveniently provide their very own login link. This is of course not true; we have not lost any account information.

We'd also like to add that our knowledge when it comes to English grammar and spelling is far better than what is in the phishing email.

Allakhazam has been selected as the Top Informational Site in the multi-game fansite category of the MMOFury Fansite Awards!

"There is no other site that has been so consistantly putting out helpful information on online games. There was also no other site that received more nominations from its users than Allakhazam. Their World of Warcraft database is gigantic, possibly the largest. If you need information on the biggest games out there (WoW, EQ, EQ2, EVE, Star Wars, etc.) look no further, you have found your intel source."

We'd like to thank MMOFury and everyone who voted for Allakhazam.com as their top gaming information source. You can read the announcement here and see the list of all winners here.

Quantum Rise is upon us! EVE Online's ninth expansion is now available in full to subscribers as a free download.

Quantum Rise improvements include: More upgrades to hardware and software structures; Certificates provide benchmarks for the skill system, goals for new players, help during corporation recruiting and bragging rights; A new medal system allows corporations to build and bestow their own custom rewards; UI changes include a moveable HUD; In-game Subscription Services allow players to convert 60-day EVE Time Codes (ETCs) into two 30-day items in game that can be traded freely through all regular means; The new industrial capital ship, the Orca; Autopilot avoidance and new routes.

A full press release regarding the expansion can be found after the jump. Also, CCP Elerhino has posted a dev blog entry outlining some new pages that were added to the EVE Online Web site to keep track of certificates and medals.