We understand that players love blogs. Keeping you informed of what is in development for EVE is very important to us and we want to bring you more. More Dev Blogs, more news, more forum interaction and now a series of new video blogs. In this first video, CCP Basement Ben, the Art manager for EVE Online, talks to us about the new nebulae and an improved model for the Raven coming this winter. Enough words, go watch the video.

Looking for an extra something to get you started in EVE Online? You are in luck! For a limited time all new paid accounts (including those converted from trial, invited through buddy program, created through special offers, etc.) will receive a free Cerebral Accelerator implant, available through the redeeming system.

Cerebral accelerators are military-grade implants that significantly increase a new pilot’s skill development. They allow new capsuleers to more rapidly absorb information of all kinds, and as a bonus also enhance spatial processing abilities that are critical for weapons handling. The only drawback to this implant is that capsuleer training renders it ineffective after a while; as such, it will cease to function for pilots who have been registered for more than 35 days.

In addition to that, for a limited time you’ll receive a bonus rare EVE ship when you invite a friend through the Buddy Program and they upgrade to a paying account.

e have reached the final level of sharing on www.eveisreal.net. 2,000 Aurum have been distributed to the characters with the highest SP on all active accounts.

If you’ve not yet checked out the EVE is Real site, we encourage you to do so. You can see thousands of images and videos uploaded by your fellow EVE Online players, and then spread the word by sharing.

Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CEO of CCP, held an interview with Eurogamer yesterday in which he talks about the resizing of CCP as well as the future of EVE Online, Dust 514 and World of Darkness. The full interview can be seen at this link.

Following the announcement by CCP Manifest on Wednesday, October 19 concerning the goals of CCP and the downsizing of staff, it became clear to many players that the EVE Community team was one of those affected. The loss of our colleagues, friends and mentors has saddened us greatly and we wish them all the very best for the future.

So what is happening with the Community team now? Will players see less communication from CCP on the development of EVE?

Absolutely not. The Community team has merged with Customer Support to create the Customer Relations wing of CCP. Hilmar, the CEO of CCP, recently stated in an interview with Eurogamer, ‘ By centralizing customer support and community we have more people doing community work than we did before. Being co-located with the developers allows the information within the community groups to have a much more direct effect on the development process.’ The Community team are now located in our Reykjavik office and will be working closely with every development team to ensure that players are kept up to date with what is coming to EVE.

Over the next couple of weeks we will bring you a series of short video blogs which will focus on work in progress and what is in development for EVE Online. We will be increasing our communication with players on the EVE forums, EVE Twitter and EVE Facebook pages, and making sure that the increased communication momentum you’ve witnessed is maintained. We will be working closely with all departments to bring you Dev Blogs, expansion notes and up to date news. We are going to open Russian and German forum sections to help support our localized clients. We will maintain close relationships with our Fansites and be available to talk to them as usual. Several weeks ago we also started planning for the return of a volunteer moderator program. This plan is still in the design stage and we hope to bring you a blog on it in the coming weeks. The new volunteer moderator team will have a different role than before and will not be in a position to ban other players accounts or see any alts. We understand that this is something players are concerned about so we will be providing you with a very in depth blog explaining their role over the coming weeks.

CCP Guard, CCP Shadow, CCP Spitfire, CCP Phantom and myself are here and committed to providing you with the best level of service. We will maintain a high profile in all sections of the forums and will monitor for issues that are effecting your game play and report them to the correct department. We will gather feedback on issues which players are passionate about and send them to the teams responsible.

We would like to thank you in advance for your support while we work through these difficult times.