news 28 Posted December 2, 2008 Greetings from CCP. Every year we are amazed at the experience of Fanfest. For our staff, it is a cathartic chance to meet face-to-face in with fans in celebration of a shared love, EVE Online. This year proved no different. Hundreds of fans traveled to Reykjavik, Iceland for the 5th Annual Party At the Top of the World. Here's a quick rundown of major announcements made at Fanfest 2008. --In defiance of our traditional Winter/Summer expansion schedule, we announced the acceleration of our production schedule to bring the next major expansion to you on March 10th. A few hints at its contents were made including wormholes, exploration, modular ships, epic mission arcs, a new focus on the new player experience and Tech 3 items. --We announced a distribution deal with Atari (yes, that Atari!) to bring the next major expansion to retail stores in a boxed form in early March. The CEO of Atari, David Gardner, provided a special address to attendees about the deal. This is big news for a 5 year-strong MMO which has grown to these heights over time using just digital distribution. We also provided a full, hands-on demo of a "vertical slice" of our Walking in Stations project, where pilots can leave their spaceships and interact as full-bodied avatars in stations. A few parts of the planned design were revealed, including a fully-playable mini-game and the experience of walking around in the captain's quarters, the promenade and a bar. As fans of our fans, EVE developers let go a bit and presaged the future of EVE during major talks like the "World Domination" Keynote as well as intimate conversations with individual players throughout the show. While Fanfest was a huge success, it wasn't the only November News. I've already told you all a fair amount about our ninth free expansion, EVE Online: Quantum Rise, which went live on the 11th. Server and hardware changes with StacklessIO and EVE64 have pushed us into unbelievable single-system battles (of over 800 players) and almost completely killed latency issues in all major market hubs. The Council Of Stellar Management held their second elections and the results are in. Check out the second iteration of EVE's democratically-elected player council here: myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=606 ( http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=606 ) Other important assets to explore: --Videos from Fanfest allow you to live it vicariously through EVE TV's eyes. They are housed here: myeve.eve-online.com/download/videos/?type=7 ( http://myeve.eve-online.com/download/videos/?type=7%3c/li ) --The Quantum Rise teaser and trailer videos are here: myeve.eve-online.com/download/videos/?type=2 ( http://myeve.eve-online.com/download/videos/?type=2%3c/li ) --Finally, for all other EVE Online assets, our Electronic Press Kit houses more screenshots (for Walking in Stations), more videos (including a short informative video about our partnership with Microsoft) and more information than you can possibly imagine. Ask me for access to this always-up-to-date asset for the press. Once again, I'm there for any press requests you may have or general questions about CCP or EVE Online. Don't hesitate to drop me an e-mail Regards, Ned CCP Manifest =----------= Ned Coker CCP P.R. Associate | Iniquitous Brute 404-292-1819 x258 nedcoker ( -at -) ccpgames.com Share this post Link to post
