Next Tuesday, March 13th, Crucible 1.5 will be deployed, bringing new Rookie ships to EVE, new DED complexes, and a variety of UI and performance improvements.

Please go the Crucible Feature Site for more information.

As reported in a recent dev blog, we've been working on adding corporation forums to the EVE forums. The launch got pushed back from the original date of February the 8th because we wanted to do more load testing and security testing, but now the results are in and we will deploy the corporation forums on Thursday, March 8th.

And just earlier today we deployed a few changes to the forums, the most notable being an autosave feature which will save a draft of your post every 45 seconds in case something happens that would otherwise cause you to lose your post. Bring on the long posts!

We also replaced the subforum "Breaking the Language Barrier" on the localized forums, with a "Features and Ideas" subforum.

A new venue, the latest on Inferno, live DUST 514 matches and a massive concert line-up are just some of the great reasons that EVE players from around the world will be meeting up in Reykjavik, Iceland for Fanfest 2012. Ticket sales are fast approaching last year's record breaking numbers, so grab your ticket before it's too late and join us at the beautiful new Harpa Convention Centre. 

A tip for booking flights: If Icelandair is sold out for the days/times you are looking to travel, visit http://www.dohop.com and check for incoming flights to Iceland.

Related links:

• Special Tours for you and your travelmates
• Charity Dinner with CEO and the Devs
• Pub Crawl and Other Events
• Passes and Event Tickets (can even buy with PLEX!)

Most of us still remember our first time in EVE and that special feeling of piloting our very first ship. We didn't have the comparison to the infinitely more powerful vessels we would soon command so to our fresh and unspoiled minds we were the king of the stars for a little while and the rookie ships were our chariots of destruction. At least until we met Tank CEO at a gate and were „gently“ removed from the throne.

Apart from the obvious fact that the Impairor, the Velator, the Ibis and the Reaper hold great importance being the first ships any new pilot is granted upon being born into the EVE Universe, they hold a special place in all our hearts.

The rookie ships are being re-designed and given a long overdue makeover. This is part of our ongoing effort to continously update the art assets in EVE Online and making sure it remains the most beautiful MMO out there.

We wanted to show you the new rookie ships, and use the opportunity to give you a little insight into the process behind adding new assets to the game. Enjoy!

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As part of our plan to cause death to the Session Change Timer, we will once again reduce it in tomorrow's daily downtime.

It is currently at 15 seconds but will be set to 10 seconds tomorrow.

"A new pilot, reborn as one of the universe's immortal elite, is presented with a glimpse of the dangerous and opportunity-filled future that awaits them."

We proudly present the latest work from our video team, The Awakening.

Crucible 1.2 will be deployed during the regular daily downtime tomorrow, Thursday the 16th of February. No extended downtime is scheduled.

Most notably, Crucible 1.2 brings some exciting performance improvements to the EVE client which we hope will make your space violence all the more enjoyable.

The patch notes can be found here.

Every pilot attending Fanfest in Iceland at the end of March, will receive a couple of unique in-game collectors items. An Iteron Mark IV Quafe Ultra edition ship, and a Quafe 2012 t-shirt.

Click here to read more about the two items and click here to buy your Fanfest ticket!

A couple of EVE Gate features were deployed today, pseudo-stealthily-style.

EVE Gate has gotten an improved login system and a navigation menu to the other EVE webpages, located in the top right corner of the page. As part of these changes you can now switch active characters more conveniently than before.

Additionally you can now click the DEV bar next to a topic on the forums to be taken directly to the first dev post in that thread.

These changes are part of our ongoing commitment to improve and expand the EVE Online web presence and we hope you like them!

The Corporation forums discussed in this dev blog as possibly getting released today, need a little more work and will not be opened today.

We will keep you posted on the progress and let you know when we have a new release date in sight.