The latest expansion to CCP Games' deep space MMO EVE Online has just gone live, bringing space-miners, space-moguls, and space-fighters alike into the Empyrean Age. The expansion focuses on two of the most important aspects of any MMO, storyline and PVP, introducing factional warfare, a system of militia ranks, system occupancy, combat zones, and factional warfare bases for players to capture and control. Each of the factions now has a corporation open to all pilots to help coordinate war efforts.

Along with all of the healthy player killing comes an entirely new region called Black Rise, which contains 49 new star systems and 40 new stations, many of which are already sworn to a specific faction.

It sounds to me like folks hungry for some ship-on-ship PVP might want to sign up for their umpteenth free trial of EVE Online.

Empyrean Age Features Page [EVE Online]

Iceland. It's where all the cool kids go to have a summit. Reagan and Gorbachev rapped about nukes there in 1985; 20 years later, the Supreme Metal Council condemned the overuse of the devil horns hand-signal. And now something billing itself as EVE Online's democratically elected government will meet there, probably because it's too far for Something Awful to show up and grief the shit out of it.

CCP's EVE Online fans have a "surprise gift" in store for current subscribers who log in after May 6th, to celebrate the game's five-year anniversary. Ooh, what is it?

The MMO biz is a capricious one, and most online games tend toward a naturally short lifecycle. Five years is a big deal for EVE, which distinguishes itself through both its aim to develop a realistic player "society" and its sophisticated in-game economy - they were the first MMO I'm aware of to hire a real-world professional economist in Dr. Eyjo Guðmundsson to manage it, and since then other virtual worlds and online games, such as Gaia Online, have followed suit. Many critics, like the PC gaming mavens of Rock Paper Shotgun, believe the industry can learn a lot from EVE.

Full release follows the jump, in which CCP has delineated what it considers EVE's "milestones" over its five-year run.

EVE Online Source Code Leaked, No Worries

The source code for CCP's EVE Online has been popping up on torrent trackers all over the place this week, leading to players worrying about the security of their accounts, as well as having the peace, sleep-inducing serenity of their mining efforts disturbed. CCP assures everyone that the leak will have no adverse effects on the EVE community.

"The server-side interface used by the client is carefully protected to ensure that no abusive or unwanted information is transmitted to, or from the internal EVE server systems. Nothing the EVE client can do can affect the game state, no advantage can be gained by manipulating the EVE client, no advantageous or disadvantageous information can be transmitted to other EVE users by altering the EVE client."

EVE Online Gets New Faces, Places

The EVE Online BOOT.INI Problem Explained

Back on the sixth, popular space MMO EVE Online released their Trinity update, which added an all-new (and quite dazzling) graphics engine, with the unfortunate side-effect of deleting some XP users' BOOT.INI file, effectively stopping their PC from booting. While a "We're so sorry" and a fix would have sufficed, the director of the EVE Online software group Dr. Erlendur S. Thorsteinsson has posted a dev blog explaining the bug in great detail, from origin to fix to helping customers get their PCs up and running again by calling in external tech support like the Geek Squad. While the explanation basically amounts to irresponsibility on the team's part and lack of diverse hardware - which is really inexcusable - CCP showed some real class in fixing the issue, which could explain why they have a fan base so loyal they actually fly to Reykjavík, Iceland to hang out with them.

About the boot.ini issue [EVE Insider Dev Blog - Thanks Tyson]

"We're pleased to extend our relationship with TransGaming, as the company's expertise allows us to deliver the most innovative MMOG to more platforms," said Halldor Fannar, CTO of CCP Games. "By integrating TransGaming's excellent technology, we are able to keep our laser-focus on evolving EVE Online, while simultaneously expanding the EVE universe to even more players."

EVE Online Hires Full-Time Economist

CCP Launches EVE TV

"EVE Online has always been testing the boundaries of online gaming with its massive online universe, so it was a natural progression that such a dynamic and active virtual world had its own TV station." said Magnus Bergsson, CMO of CCP Games.

World of Darkness MMO In 2011?

Speaking of a release date, Bergsson said, "We don't know yet. We're not really hiding any information about it, we just don't know yet. The actual design and exactly how it's going to be is being created right now, so when we actually know all of that we can guestimate how long it's going to take. These games typically take four to five years to make. I don't think this is going to be any different."

White Wolf Merges With CCP

Eve Online Interview Covers Expansion, Eve Vista

EVE Online's Free Two Week Trial