Today, CCP announced that the re-launch of EVE Online in China with new partner TianCity is complete. This marks the first time since April of this year that Chinese players will be able to log into the Serenity server, which powers New Eden in China.

It’s been a busy year for CCP Games. The Icelandic developer’s been hard at work preparing Dust 514 for launch next year, expanding the EVE Online universe to the PlayStation 3. New Eden Open – their first eSports tournament – attracted a $10,000 prize fund from Own3d and sponsorship from Razer. EVE has even been inducted into the Museum of Modern Art, with CCP now recruiting players to help document a day in the spacefaring MMO.

With further eSports tournaments promised for next year, and plans for their tenth anniversary FanFest well underway, the team hasn’t lost focus on providing regular expansions for their core game. Launched this week, Retribution is the eighteenth in a series of continual updates and improvements. For Lead Game Designer Kristoffer Touborg, much of the year has been spent addressing the core issues that come with a ten-year legacy.

When you deal with games that are considered art, obvious ones pop up. Another World is a favorite of mine, possibly the definition of an artistically gorgeous game rendered decades ago, or a game like Katamari Damacy, which is just so unique it deserves it, or Tetris, which is Tetris. These all made it onto this new list, but MMORPGs are frequently overlooked.

Not by the Museum of Modern Art.

EVE Online has been accepted into their gallery, and will make an appearance in March next year, at Philip Johnson Galleries. It might seem like an odd choice when so many other games are, say, more univerally known, but remember that in EVE, no matter what happens, there's always something worth talking about.

Nuking the first battleship? A massively expensive destroyed ship? A huge conspiracy that destroys the biggest corporation in the game? These make headline news on gaming sites. That's reason enough for me.

The induction into MoMA comes just before tomorrow's launch of EVE Online's latest expansion: Retribution. IGN have the launch trailer in anticipation of the latest addition to the world's most intense excuse for virtual skullduggery. Head on over to sample the sumptuous art of New Eden.

Julian "Mirai" Williams

There's always a lot of detail involved with EVE Online, but here we go - there's going to be a huge inventory overhaul in the upcoming Retribution expansion. The way that you handle and control windows will actually persist after you close them, such as after you leave corporate hangers. The obnoxious loading times for multiple windows has been nixed at last, and looting has been streamlined and improved to better broadcast information of what it is you're doing.

You know how great it was when World of Warcraft finally added the additional hotbutton rows? This is like that for EVE Online, except maybe if you didn't know who you were looting and crafting windows lagged for up to a minute. 

Julian "Mirai" Williams

It's a heck of a weekend for high-profile gaming tournaments. Not only is Blizzard running its Battle.net World Championship all weekend in Shanghai, but CCP is kicking off the first-ever New Eden Open for EVE Online.

Never one to rest on its laurels, especially with yet another new EVE Online expansion scheduled to hit the pixels on December 4th, CCP took to the interwebs to talk about the ship rebalancing that will be a part of the festivities.

If you're American, this might not be too important to you, but to Russian gamers who are into EVE Online, this might sound nice - CCP has opened the doors for them. CCP has started accepting Russian Rubles, as 399 RUB per month, with no charges for expansions or patches (as per ususal). Additionally, Yandex.Money (a Russian version of PayPayl, so to speak) is also accepted now. 

The full Ruble pricing for subscriptions and PLEX (in-game subscription purchase, dubbed Pilot License Extension) is as follows: 

New account activation fee - 149 RUB

1 month subscription - 399 RUB

3 months subscription - 1049 RUB

6 month subscription - 1899 RUB

12 month subscription - 3499 RUB

1 PLEX - 649 RUB

2 PLEX - 1099 RUB

6 PLEX - 3299 RUB

12 PLEX - 6499 RUB

28 PLEX - 14999 RUB

Julian "Mirai" Williams

On October 30, 2012, CCP Ripley, Senior Producer for Release Development over at CCP Games gave us an overview of some of the exciting changes slated for the upcoming EVE Online expansion. She and her team have been diligently working on Retribution, due out on December 4th.

If I ever have to explain to someone why I do not play, but incessantly report and watch about events in EVE Online, this is the kind of story I talk about. 

Player stewie Zanjoahir, as reported by EVE Kill.net, lost a massive amount of expensive ship blueprints, at least ten of them over 7k ISK and one totaling up to 14k, when his ship (a quick and fragile Atron) was destroyed. The total damage was over 213 billion ISK lost. Factoring in the PLEX service, which allows you to spend 580 million ISK for a month of subscription, he could have bought 367 of them, meaning he lost $6,400. And this is guesswork on a lot of it.

EVE Kill has said it has passed API verification, something CCP Games has set up to confirm said kills. One Facebook poster named Stuart (potentially 'Stewie' being his nickname) has claimed that it was his ship and most of them were copies, but he has not responded to our attempts to contact him. Still, even if they were copies, and even if (as many have suggested) this was a set up, that's a lot of losses to deal with. 

Julian "Mirai" Williams

EVE Online has been in the news for multiple reasons. From huge corporation scandals, to outright player rebellion, to exploits that cause rifts in the game, it's always at the forefront for something big that happens.

At GDC 2012, Senior Game Designer for CCP Games Matthew Woodward talked about what makes EVE Online tick, and how they have been so consistent about keeping ahead of the competition. Really, it's all just based on those exact big 'moments' that pop out almost entirely on their own. 

The big win is that emergence is cheap. A lot of emergent gameplay discussion is about the One Big Moment. In EVE, the big heist that happened six years ago, in Ultima Online, the assassination of Lord British. They're great because they make players feel like that could be them, but the big win of emergence is that it lets us keep players cheaply.

Imagine if GM events - a sad relic of a bygone age from EverQuest - were more of a focus. That is what CCP's flagship delivers. Further, he's also talked about how social games - not as in Facebook, but as in online games - are critical to success.

Everyone knows the social aspect is important, but it's taken me five years to actually find out how important it is. Social is not just about friends. Social is everything to do with other people, every time it matters that a character is a person, not an NPC. We want to hit this as much as possible, we want our game to be about this. 

Given that the perceived majority of EVE Online's playerbase is full of ruthless, efficient pirates -- and corporation-controlling powermongers -- I'd say he knows best. 

Julian "Mirai" Williams