Where's Oveur and kieron, Viva Las Vegas and What's New?

Wow, it has been a busy and long few weeks since the Las Vegas player gathering. Oveur returned to Iceland with a pneumonea and is still recovering from his illness, I had another procedure on 29 March to remove the hardware and repair damage done to my left hand caused by a motorcycle accident on Christmas night. As a result, Oveur and I have not been able to communicate with the EVE community as much as we would have liked.

Oveur has returned to the office for half days to catch up, and I'm back to being able to type with both hands. We are both in the process of catching up on 2 weeks worth of e-mails, tasks and other related work duties. Updates, news and forum posts will be coming with more frequency in the coming days.

Las Vegas was a blast. Oveur, ActiveALLI, TomB, LeMonde and I had a great time and would like to thank BlackholeBob, ProCore Productions, EVE-Radio, and EVE News Network for planning, hosting and supporting the event. I'd also like to thank everyone that attended the party, made us feel welcome and showed us a good time. I am certainly looking forward to next year's event.

Speaking of player gatherings, CCP is in the process of arranging FanFest 2006. While there are a lot of logistics to work out, we are looking at holding FanFest by itself. The past 2 fanFests have been partnered with the Airwaves Festival, but we want to try going solo this year. Dates have not been set, but we are targeting the second weekend in November. Yes, that is very late in the year, but this will enable us to avoid the peak travel season, which might result in a possible reduction of the package pricing. Unfortunately, no more information is available yet, but this does give a bit of a heads-up in regards to booking vacation times and budgeting the trip.

E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, is just around the corner, and CCP is going to be there. While this event is limited to "people in the industry", there will be a number of reports from CCP and other game companies about their products. CCP will be showcasing elements of the next major release and other goodies at E3.

Which brings me to the next item on the list, Kali. Taking elements from the In Development and The Drawingboard, EVE's next free expansion is targeted for deployment in the second quarter of this year. Production is ramping up and 'Kali Krunch' is looming on the horizon. More information and a deployment date will be made known as the news becomes available.

Serenity is in early alpha stages and we are happy with the progress being made. If everything falls into place like we hope, Serenity should be launched before the end of the year.

The Power of 2 offer is now over and we are happy with the results. We need to take a look at some metrics, but it would appear that we have over 117k subscriptions, and more than 30k on trials.

So, there's the latest news. A short lull in the flow of information, but we'll be back to normal Soon™. I don't know about anyone else, but I am looking forward to the exciting times that are ahead.

kieron