Tweet Early this morning, the EVE Online server underwent an extended scheduled downtime for the deployment of the Tyrannis 1.2 patch. The patch deployment proceeded as planned and almost exactly to schedule, with the entire downtime lasting around 12 hours. When the servers came up, however, members of some nullsec alliances noticed that something was amiss. All of a sudden, a number of systems in Delve that had been vacant before the downtime were now owned by Reddit-based alliance Test Alliance Please Ignore.

It soon became apparent that Test Alliance had placed territorial control units in the systems just before the extended downtime began. Under normal circumstances, territorial claim units must be protected by a fleet for the six hours they need to start up. During that time, enemy fleets have a chance to engage the hostile force and destroy their claim unit. If the six hours pass without event, ownership of the system is then awarded to the alliance that placed the structure. By placing the structures immediately prior to the extended downtime, enemies of Test Alliance were unable to contest the claim, which meant it automatically succeeded. What happened next has been the cause of a great deal of controversy on the EVE forums and Reddit.

Skip past the cut for a run-down of what happened next.

When EVE Online launched over seven years ago, it was a small game with a niche place in the MMO world. Sci-fi fans were drawn from across the world to the potential offered by the fledgling universe of New Eden. As a small independent studio, CCP Games made up for its lack of funds with an incredible creativity and a willingness to work closely with players. Much of the early development was focused on working with players, from updates to the user interface to balance issues and ideas for new ships and modules.

In 2004, CCP began involving players directly in the game's evolving storyline through massive storyline events. I have fond memories of the time the Serpentis pirate corporation hijacked and stole a Federation Navy titan, an event orchestrated as much for the enjoyment of players as for showcasing the new titan class of ship CCP had been working on. Another particularly memorable storyline arc was the Crielere event, in which players assisted NPCs with research into mysterious new Guristas prototype cloaking devices. These events formed part of EVE Online's living storyline, affecting the game on a fundamental level through the introduction of new ships and items.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I look back at the history of EVE's storyline and forward to what the future might hold.

Tweet While many of us haven't actively taken part in EVE Online's territorial warfare, news routinely surfaces of the massive alliance wars that take place in the game's lawless nullsec regions. As the number of players subscribed to EVE increases, so too does the size of the average nullsec fleet. Since there's no disadvantage to bringing additional pilots, each side in a heated war will try to bring as many people as it can physically get to attend. At a certain point, however, the server hardware strains under the weight of hundreds or thousands of players, and lag sets in. The point at which this happens has been rising over the years as CCP performs server upgrades, with previous expansions seeing fights as large as 500-1000 per side with quite manageable lag.

A landmark battle is currently raging in the system of LXQ2-T, with thousands of pilots fighting for control of the system. The number of players in the system peaked at over 3,110 pilots, with alliances from the Northern Coalition political conglomeration facing off against the Russian power block from the drone regions. Lag began to set in at around the 2,400-player mark, with pilots facing several-minute delays on warp commands and module activations. Several pilots have launched live video streams of the event, though much of the action has ceased for the moment as the server begins to recover from a severe clash with the lag monster.

The often-repeated joke that EVE Online is a 23/7 game may soon be put to rest. EVE currently has an hour each day, between 11AM and noon GMT, designated for server maintenance. During this time, important tasks that ensure the smooth functioning of the game are carried out, such as respawning asteroids and load-balancing the server. Over the past year or so, CCP Games has been working to reduce the daily downtime by changing many of these essential downtime functions to happen while the server is up without impacting game performance.

CCP's efforts have not been in vain, as the past few years have seen the duration of downtime drop from an average of 50-60 minutes to under 20 minutes. In a new devblog, CCP Hunter explains what has been done to reduce downtime and what the future holds for New Eden's daily slumber. The devblog reveals that most of the current downtime is taken up by server shutdown and startup procedures, with only five minutes of actual maintenance processes per day. Once all the processes required for the daily downtime are removed, the plan is to have the server running permanently.

EVE Online's starship design contest has had EVE players and deviantART users excited for this past month. Hundreds of entries were submitted in a bid to win some massive prizes. Last week, the deviantART team picked 15 semi-finalists from all the submitted entries. Those 15 were then sent on to CCP's own art department for appraisal to select the first, second and third place winners. There was some controversy over the quality of the selected semi-finalists, with many popular entries being left out and others that might not fit with EVE's graphic style being put in their place.

Yesterday, the final three winners were selected and announced on the competition page. First place went to deviantART user dreamwa1ker for his impressive Minmatar battleship Tornado, drawn in a truly dark and cinematic style that perfectly fits in with EVE. Second place went to Baranha with the sleek Gallente design Naru-Kami Final, with third place going to machinefire for his Minmatar cruiser Tsunami. The three finalists win an impressive array of prizes, and the first place ship will be forever emblazoned in EVE as an actual in-game ship to be released in a future expansion. As an added bonus to the competition, CCP has announced that they'll be running a second contest in the near future in which EVE players will vote on their favourite entries. This comes as good news for those disappointed by the semi-finalist selection first time around.

In EVE Online's player-run economy, the flow of ISK is a vital concept. While there are many ways to make ISK in EVE, most of them only move it around from one player to another. When you mine ore and sell it on the market, for example, the mining process doesn't introduce any new ISK to the game. Only a few game mechanics can be called ISK faucets, as the game mechanics actually create ISK from thin air. Similarly, the ISK sink mechanics destroy ISK or remove it from the game in some manner.

To the individual player, the difference between something being an ISK faucet or not is largely immaterial. When you sell something on the market for a few million ISK, or get the insurance payout on a lost ship, it doesn't really matter to you where that ISK came from. Where the concept really matters is in discussions on inflation and how the game chooses to reward us in PvE. Are ISK bounties and rewards always a good idea, or could their over-use eventually lead to runaway inflation?

In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the various ways in which ISK flows in and out of EVE Online, and why we should care about inflation.

Whether you like EVE Online or hate it, it's hard to deny that the game's community produces some incredible creative works. We've seen examples of the community's creative output in a myriad of forms, from impressive videos and fiction to useful tools and websites. In recognition of the community's ongoing efforts, EVE Online's Associate Community Manager CCP Fallout has started a new monthly devblog series highlighting the community's creative accomplishments. In the first installment of this new blog series, CCP Fallout discusses two of her favourite EVE websites -- EVE News 24 and Skill Training Complete.

Covering all the recent goings-on in the world of EVE politics, EVE News 24 is a great way to keep up-to-date with what's happening in New Eden. Skill Training Complete is an innovative tool that allows players to ask and answer questions about EVE Online, giving newer players a great new way to shortcut the game's infamously steep learning curve. Fallout makes a special note about the EVE Blog Pack, an invaluable community resource maintained by social media guru and long-time EVE player CrazyKinux. Visit the EVE devblog page to read more about the new monthly blog series, and stay tuned for next month's installment when CCP will be looking at the amazing artwork EVE players create that blows them away.

Last month, EVE Online developers CCP Games teamed up with the folks at deviantART to run an exciting competition. Artists from across the globe were given the opportunity to design their very own starship. For artists, the opportunity to show off their skills to a professional game development studio proved to be a strong motivator. To sweeten the deal, a prize fund worth several thousand dollars was included for the winning entrants. Yesterday, the deviantART team picked 15 semi-finalists from an uncountable number of submitted entries. Congratulations go out to the semi-finalists, who each take home a $50 iTunes gift card.

While the contest has produced some incredible artwork, it seems that not everyone is happy with how the 15 semi-finalists were selected. Some players have complained that the deviantART team removed some excellent entries from the running in favour of submissions that don't really fit with EVE's art style. The 15 winning entries will now be passed on to CCP's very own art department, where deliberations will take place to select the best three entries. The second and third place winners will receive $750 and $500 respectively, while the first place winner walks away with $900. Perhaps more importantly, the first place entry will be transformed into an actual ship in EVE Online, allowing the winner to make a permanant mark on the game.

Of all the small issues players want to see fixed in EVE Online, few have gained as much community support as the campaign to boost rockets. Rockets are intended to be short-range but high-damage anti-frigate missiles for tech 1 and 2 frigates with missile hardpoints. Unfortunately, their damage output and effectiveness against other frigates has been extremely poor since missiles and ship signature radii were rebalanced years ago. The issue has gained so much support in the community because it's seen as one of the few problems in EVE that could possibly be fixed in a matter of minutes. Players assert that all it would take is changing a few numbers in the EVE database, and yet the problem has remained unsolved for so long.

Missile-slinging frigate pilots across New Eden will breathe a sigh of relief today as a new devblog has finally answered their prayers. In the upcoming Incursion expansion, rockets will have their explosion velocity and base damage increased to make them effective against frigate-sized ships. In addition, several neglected and underused types of tech 2 ammunition are being boosted to make them desirable to use instead of faction ammo. Further changes covered in the devblog include some performance optimisations with the Supercarrier Fighter Bombers and the inclusion of faction ships in the standard market browser. With easier access to faction ships and boosts to underused ammo, players taking part in the expansion's new group PvE feature will be pleased with the changes.

EVE Online is said to be a game in which you can do literally anything you set your mind to. It doesn't matter whether your ambition is to climb the alliance ranks, become the scourge of low-security space or even just fly around space telling jokes. If you can conceive of an idea that can be carried out in-game, it's probably a perfectly viable way to play the game. Over the years, players have come up with a number of unique and unconventional gameplay styles. Most of them began as ways for the pilots involved to make ISK or gain notoriety, but some were created just to see if it could be done. I've seen everything from player-run graveyards for the victims of piracy to players renting kill-boards for ISK, and yet the EVE community never ceases to amaze me with the new ways people find to play the game.

The most recent development to blow me away is SOMER.blink, a website where players can gamble their ISK to win fabulous prizes. Gambling in EVE is nothing particularly new; players have been wagering ISK on everything from lotteries to hands of poker for a long time. What makes SOMER.blink special is its absolutely flawless execution. Almost everything is automated, from the transfer of ISK into your account balance to the prize lotteries themselves. The website itself is even accessible from outside EVE once ISK has been deposited in your wallet. I've spent hours so far blinking away on lotteries and losing quite a bit of ISK, but I'll be damned if it hasn't been fun.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I look into the addictive phenomena of Somer.BLINK and try to explain where all my damn ISK went.