Blood is inherited and virtue is acquired

I found this Venezuelan Proverb quite fitting for our new release, Blood. As the name suggests, it introduces the long-awaited Bloodlines. If you are like me and can't wait to start a new character with them, I'd suggest you check them out on Singularity. Some have already started doing so and a discussion on "hawt chix", "O RLY" facial expressions and, of course, the attributes of the new Bloodlines is underway here.

There isn't very much else in Blood - well, except for some fixes and optimizations we believe you will enjoy. The reason is simple: we're trying to achieve a more stable build on Tranquility, giving us time to assign more resources on our next major release.

So what's this fixing stuff all about?

The patch notes are still being massaged in the hot tub, but these are the highlights of fixes that are in the build at this point in time in no particular order.

• You can now defend yourself when being attacked by someone with a Kill Right on you. They also expire after 30 days.
• Loot rights have had a number of fixes and improvements.
• Flickering / Black screening on character selection page is fixed
• Police response/pursuit improved significantly, mainly the timer controlling concord reactions to a crime now matches the agression/criminal flag timer displayed in the UI
• A number of fixes and code improvements have been made to reduce/eliminate stuck issues.
• Added the ability to turn off damage message displays. This will make combat alot smoother when you are being engaged by multiple hostiles
• More code optimizations to improve combat
• Improvements made to right click menu control to decrease lag
• Only 1000 items can now be stored in a single location. A location is any location you can store stuff in. A container is also a location so you can have 1000 containers containing 1000 stacks of items each. Stacks are NOT limited, you can have 1000 stacks of 10 million trit. This is done to address database performance issues with so many items in the same location. As a further improvement, you can also disable the automatic locking of items which you put inside secure and station containers.
• Mining drones now stop mining and return correctly when so ordered and other improvements to drones in general.
• Military faction police have reviewed their manuals, and updated their KoS lists. If you have a faction standing of -5 or worse, they will now attack you
• Damage controls will now correctly increase your hull resistance (structure tanking anyone?)
• Buddy list online/offline indicator is now fixed (again)
• Fitting at a Ship Maintenance array will no longer use cap to bring modules online
• Stacking nerf adjusted to prevent exploitable setups and situations
• NPC's have taken training courses in how to use ABs/MWDs correctly, and should now make better use of them
• Carriers can now access their own ship maintenance, corp hanger arrays when docked and their relevant Capital Support module blueprints seeded and their Ship storage is ten times bigger.
• Cargo containers that do not belong to you are now yellow, not red
• Being jammed by an NPC should display the jam timers correctly
• A number of fixes and improvements to Science & Industry, such as Mobile laboratorys now work correctly and can be accessed
• New General Freight Containers have been seeded on the market throughout the galaxy. They fit in Freighters and allow pilots to organize their shipments.
• A number of fixes and improvements to agent missions.
• Agent mission default bonus rewards will no longer offer civilian modules or charges.
• Modules that are under the influence of the stacking nerf penality no longer share ranks with counter-modules, i.e. Tracking Disruptor no longer get affected by Tracking Computers.
• Various ships have had balance changes.
• Covert Ops and Recon Ops now have a time reduction bonus to recloaking.

All in all, some good stuff. There are still fixes for crash bugs, performance issues and memory leaks in the pipes but if they don't get into this patch, it's because we're not confident that they actually fix the issue or that the current fix actually breaks more than it fixes. Such is the life of software development, but we just want you to be sure that we're aware as always and working on solving the problems. You'll get full details in patch notes which are just around the corner.

This crazy little thing called Tech 2

There's been an increasing number of threads on Tech 2 and various issues connected to it. They have been answered, but since we haven't overhauled our forums in a while, we still haven't got a dev post tracker there ... well, nor search. Nor ... well, you get the idea. We'll also start over with the Patch Notes sections which disappeared in the MyEVE server upgrades, they are a part of this problem. Usually you would have information like this available there, so sorry about that :(

If you checked out the next major release, you will see that we are indeed planning on considerable changes to research. You will all be able to utilize your accumulated Research Points in the changes, so don't worry that they'll be lost. It's in the design phase now, so there is not much we can tell about it for certain, but our current focus is on Reverse Engineering and more involved research, which comes with Exploration and expansions to Mini-professions.

However it's accomplished, the goal is to enable you to get limited rewards - Limited-Run Blueprint Copies - instead of waiting for some jackpot. It's your work and dedication which gets you results, not the draw of the lottery. I'm not saying that the lottery will vanish, though - some form of lottery will probably still be in play.

We're also working on some other crazy ideas which we might put into this overhaul. I recommend you head over to this Features and Ideas thread and check out the suggestions. Needless to say, we really want to boost this aspect of EVE - it's just a question of how we'll do it.

Our server crew flew to London today!

In other news, our server update crew just walked out of the building, flying to London and starting installation of the new Tranquility hardware. Our "Go-Live" date depends on installation and the outcome of the following tests and how much trial time will be needed for the new hardware to run as Singularity. Our original estimates were mid-February and as things stand today we might just be able to go live with the new cluster ... around the 21st of February.

That's less than two weeks from now, but as stated, we have some serious testing to do first and the outcome of that will dictate when we go live. Join us in wishing them good luck, to break a leg, goodspeed, use mental powers to keep Mr. Murphy away, throw salt over your shoulder, throw salt in your face or someone else's face - simply anything which you feel is appropriate to make this go well.

It's time for sour ram's testicles again

Yes, it's that time of the year here in Iceland, called "Thorri". This evening, we're having our celebration here at CCP, toasting in "Brennivín" for the server upgrades to go well and for Blood to be good. We'll sacrifice some of our interns to Thor by forcing them to eat rotten shark and some balls to ensure this. Call us heathens, but for EVE, anything goes :)

Signing off

All's been quiet on the CCP front for some time. Red Moon Rising was quite a strain and we've been working hard on fixing bugs, making the hardware upgrades go through as fast as possible and addressing the compromised accounts.

Our ability to communicate on the compromised account issue was severely limited at best and it hurt us to be in the position of not being able to give more information. We are the "open" types, here, but we have very serious security procedures put in motion when something like this happens, so our ability to communicate suffered as a result.

Our designers have also been deep down in major release design and implementation trenches and our GMs have been swamped. It's turning around now and the winds are blowing in our favour again (might be TomB's flatulence, but then again, any wind is good wind in times of ... uhm).

In any case, wind or windless, you will be seeing more designs and ideas popping up in blogs and on the forums. We'll also be in a position to be more talkative after we have addressed the lag on Tranquility and are able to focus on fixing and evolving EVE. Not fighting fires, but preventing them.

It's going to be a hectic few weeks. Blood will be released on either side of the hardware upgrades, and the ride will be bumpy; it's just a question of how bumpy and for how long, so bear with us. We're trying to improve the situation, but it will take some Blood, sweat and tears.

Happy Thorri!

Typical Thorri Dish, with half a sheeps head, smoked lamb, potatoes etc.