EVE Online

The updated radial menu will be connected to the underutilized left mouse button and is confined to eight segments that will change depending on what the user is clicking. The studio wrote up a blog post on the subject, promising that the redesign is intuitive and will result in faster access to relevant commands.

Initially, the radial menu upgrade will be for ship flight only, although CCP is willing to expand its domain if players find it useful. This feature is currently available on the test server.

If you've ever been involved in a discussion about EVE Online, you've heard it referred to as a sequence of spreadsheets which occasionally let you fly a spaceship. Which certainly has some basis in truth. Certainly it's a game with many possible systems that could be ported to a mobile client, something that CCP's Jon Lander is claiming will be a reality in the near future. Lander has moved from being EVE's executive producer to mobile development, but his new position is clearly still tied to the same game.

Rather than simply being a series of spreadsheets for your smartphone, Lander has made it clear that the mobile team wants for the various EVE mobile apps to be functional games in their own right. It's a field that CCP has explored before, stopping either due to technical hurdles or business concerns. But Lander's confident that players will be using the mobile applications by the time next year's Fanfest rolls around.

Last month saw the huge tenth anniversary EVE Online Fanfest, a three-day convention packed full of exclusive reveals, behind-the-scenes talks, and community events. This year's Fanfest was the biggest one yet, celebrating EVE's tenth anniversary with special guest speakers from the scientific community, the reveal of a new virtual reality dogfighter, DUST 514's launch, and details of the upcoming Odyssey expansion. Massively was there to bring you coverage of the big news as it happened, and CCP streamed some of the key talks and events live to viewers at home.

This year's Fanfest sold out so quickly that many people who wanted to go didn't get a chance to, and only a select few talks were shown on the public livestream. With such a packed event schedule, even players in attendance couldn't be there for every interesting talk. Thankfully, CCP recorded over 30 of the most anticipated events and has now uploaded the videos to YouTube. Highlights include the Make EVE Real videos, the EVE keynote, the CCP Presents Keynote, and the talks on how DUST 514 integrates with the EVE economy.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I round up all of the EVE Fanfest videos in a handy list.

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Hey Gwen, how's it hanging? Find that flute yet? Yeah, don't worry, I'm sure it'll turn up around here somewhere. Don't get too near the river there, girl; those skale have a nasty bite! Say, what's that sulfurous smell in the air? And those distant screams that are drawing nearer at an incredible rate? And a sudden looming premonition that the property values around here are about to take a nosedive?

Reader Sharvis sent in this Guild Wars picture with a modicum of pity: "Here is Gwen moments before the Searing. Poor girl."

Don't feel too sorry for her, Sharvis! She gets an entire expansion, after all!

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Want to be a part of EVE Online's 11th annual Alliance Tournament that starts on July 20th, 2013, but not from the cockpit of your ship? You can apply to be one of the PvP commentators who will discuss the tourney, tactics, and teams involved live on air with developers as well as providing commentary on matches as they unfold. Yes, live means you'll actually be in Iceland for this gig! Qualifications include having a valid passport, being over 21, having a sharp wit, and being well-versed in PvP. Full details for the application process are available on the official site.

If you'd prefer to participate in the battles themselves, note that there will be a few changes to the tourney from years past. To start, Alliance Tournament XI will run over only three weekends, not four. Second, qualifying rounds and group stages have been replaced by double elimination from the get go. Next, from the second weekend onward, two ship types will be banned from the match by team captains. And finally, to fly with an alliance you had to have been a member since downtime this morning. Dev blogs covering all the rules, the broadcast schedule, and sign-up details will be coming soon.

[Update: CCP has been busy today! The official site has now also been updated with a dev blog announcing that dual character training will ship with the Odyssey expansion next month.]

Playing EVE on my couch is bizarre. I know, technically it's called DUST 514, but let's be serious. DUST is basically the beginnings of a massive EVE Online expansion if you subscribe to the notion that EVE is a virtual world as opposed to merely a strategy game featuring internet spaceships and internet drama.

I've played EVE in some strange places prior to this. In an airport terminal, for example. On my toilet, even (yes, nature occasionally calls in the middle of a fleet fight and thank God for laptops). But DUST marks the first -- OK, technically the second -- time I've ever played in New Eden with a controller.

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June 4th is coming up fast, and with it EVE Online's new Odyssey expansion. The content drop will feature improved explorer pursuits, with particular emphasis on removing the "'sit and wait' aspect of exploration gameplay" in favor of "something interesting to do."

In the case of today's dev blog, the interesting thing to do is hacking, and CCP says that it drew inspiration from roguelikes for the new minigame's "procedurally generated levels, turn-based combat, and permadeath." You can read all about it on the official EVE Online website.

A few weeks ago, the EVE Online community went nuts for EVR, CCP's exciting new virtual reality dogfighter developed for the upcoming Oculus Rift gaming headset. The game demo was produced by a team of just a handful of developers in just seven weeks using nothing but their spare time, but attendees and press at EVE Fanfest 2013 were nevertheless blown away during test sessions. Though EVR isn't going to be integrated with the EVE universe, Senior Producer Andie Nordgren stated in her Keynote address that CCP will be looking into more immersive flight and combat mechanics for some the game's ships. This comment has sparked a lot of discussion over the possibility of finally getting some direct flight controls in EVE.

The lack of direct twitch-based controls in EVE is often cited by gamers as a big part of the reason they can't get into the game. There's no active dodging of missiles, manual ship targeting, or really complex tactical maneuvers in EVE, but that's kind of the point. Most ships in EVE are colossal lumbering hulks more akin to today's seafaring battleships than fighter planes, and combat with them is more a game of strategy and teamwork than a battle of reaction speeds. But that isn't exactly true of all ships; interceptors and fast microwarpdrive frigates move at several kilometres per second and are so agile that pilots can already pull off some interesting tactical maneuvers. So isn't it about time we made the combat for those ships a bit more visceral and immersive?

In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the fast-paced world of interceptors and explore how twitch controls and weapon aiming could possibly be implemented without killing the server.

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Pocket Galaxy, a new sci-fi mobile MMO, is relatively impressive at first. It's a nice looking game that feels like a cross between Dark Orbit, Asteroids, and EVE Online and seems to be pretty casual and cheap to play. These things make me happy. I've adopted a casual playstyle because of my need to be the guy who plays every single game he sees, and that has had the side effect of making casual gaming perfect for me.

For example, a Pocket Galaxy player who wants to craft more ammo for one of her guns needs to create the items by waiting a certain amount of real time that can be shortened by using cash. Many players might see this as some sort of money-grab. I see it as a casual game with the option to speed up build times, but then again... I'm patient.

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Sci-fi MMO EVE Online has seen phenomenal success recently, from breaking through the 500,000 subscriber boundary to successfully relaunching in China. The game officially turned ten years old today, and CCP celebrated the occasion with events and gifts for all current subcribers. The part-jovian Gnosis battlecruiser was given to every subscribed account at midnight last night and can be claimed before the end of the month, and players logging in yesterday or today will have found a whole slew of bonus gifts.

EVE smashed its previous Peak Concurrent User total during the festivities by a clear margin, replacing 2011's record of 63,170 with a new figure of 65,303 players logged in simultaneously. Part of the reason for the record was the huge number of player-run events taking place that evening, such as the ever-popular Flight of a Thousand Rifters. The event saw almost 2,500 players join together to take down player Marlona Sky's expensive supercarrier. Most of the participants were in small frigates like Rifters and ended up being easy prey when a nullsec sniper Loki fleet turned up. The event was nevertheless a massive success and huge fun for those involved. Continue reading for a gallery of screenshots from the event and video footage from player Scott Manley.

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Tomorrow marks a huge milestone in MMO history as sci-fi sandbox EVE Online officially turns ten years old. Released by a tiny icelandic development studio whose only previous release was a board game featuring Reykjavik's favourite cross-dressing mayor, EVE has slowly grown over the past decade to become one of the industry's biggest and most stable subscription titles. Following 2011's monoclegate scandal that led to around 8% of players quitting and CCP Games shedding 20% of its employees, this year saw EVE Online climb to new heights as it regained the playerbase's confidence and smashed the 500,000 subscriber barrier. As a special side-note, the EVE Evolved column also turned five years old last week; it has now officially been running for over half of EVE's lifetime.

The past year has been remarkably successful for CCP, with both of the year's EVE expansions being extremely well received and console MMOFPS DUST 514 finally starting to take shape. The Inferno and Retribution expansions fixed a staggering number of small issues that were broken in the game while also making big changes to bounty-hunting, piracy, and PvP across the board. We also saw huge emergent events like the Battle of Asakai, a $6,000 ship kill, and the five trillion ISK faction warfare exploit this year. With DUST 514 officially launching in just over a week on May 14th and players fired up about the upcoming Odyssey expansion, the future's looking bright for EVE Online as it heads into its second decade.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I look back at some of year's top EVE stories, stories that touched real life, and what the future holds for EVE's second decade.

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This year's CCP fan festival featured a bunch of interesting news items including DUST 514's official release date, more info on EVE's upcoming Odyssey expansion, and even a glimpse of the progress being made on World of Darkness.

There was also talk of EVE tales being immortalized in more traditional media formats, a ginormous 10-year collector's edition, and an early look at EVR, a new virtual reality EVE game designed for the Oculus Rift. Now that you've had a chance to digest all of the details, what was your favorite Fanfest 2013 reveal? Vote after the cut!

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The results are in for EVE Online's eighth Council of Stellar Management (CSM8) as announced by Hilmar Veigar Pétursson during EVE Fanfest this weekend in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Since this is the first time the Single Transferrable Vote mechanic has been used, each elected member received the necessary amount of votes (out of a total 49,702 votes) to get onto the CSM. When the council convenes for the first time, a chairman, vice-chairman, secretary, and vice-secretary will be chosen.

Be sure to read the complete election results for the names of all 14 CSM8 members and more on how the votes were calculated this year.