I have some good news and some bad news. Which do you want first, random reader on the internet?

Let’s go with the bad news:

Team Best Friends Forever and Pink Zombie Kittens have been disbanded. In memory of their service to the internet, a small statue was erected in Reykjavik today, following a lengthy parade which also had cake. It’s been a fun ride and we hope you all enjoy the features the teams got to make.

Now it's time for the good news...

A year ago we published this devblog, where we made all sorts of promises about a brand new, customizable neocom. Well, better late than never, right? To begin with, I would like to apologize for the latency and assure you that the blog was in fact not a poorly timed April fool’s joke. We did decide to push the Neocom project a bit back, as we felt it hadn’t received all the love it needed, and then, well, last year happened, so the project kind of got lost in all the turbulence.

Greetings fellow EVE enthusiasts, we are Team Special Circumstances and the topic of today will be the EVE Online Launcher.

What? Launcher?

The EVE Online Launcher is a new little program that makes sure your EVE client is up to date and is always ready for flying into space. You might think that the Launcher is just supposed to launch EVE Online, but that's just one piece of the puzzle. Its primary function (not counting launching the game) is to update EVE Online on your computer whenever we put out a release, patch or fix. It’s the first step in a big overhaul of our updating and patching process which enables us to get smaller updates out to you faster. The Launcher also gives you something to read over while your client is being updated by showing you the latest news and dev blogs. CCP Topknot wrote a blog about the Launcher explaining this point some time ago and you can read it here. 
 

Lead game designer CCP Soundwave talks about the content of EVE Online Crucible 1.1

Hi!

Here‘s a few more little things from Team BFF to make your life easier. We didn‘t have much time for doing this so we mostly just harvested good ideas from the forums and prioritized by how much work it would be to implement them (and things that I personally find annoying when playing EVE - heh).

The focus on enhancements and updates to existing gameplay continues with Crucible 1.1, arriving at a client near you on January 24^th, 2011. Some highlights include:

• Customizable Neocom
• Tech 2 Module tweaks
• Blaster ammo balancing
• Enhanced chat and fleet features
• Simplified module naming conventions
• New shield modules and adjustments to capital ship module requirements

*** NOTE: Player Owned Structures (POS) will stop using legacy fuel and will operate solely on the new fuel blocks starting January 24^th, 2012. Be sure to adjust your fuel supplies accordingly prior to the update. ***

Visit the feature page for an overview of the features and fixes headed your way in Update 1.1.

As some of you might know we've been working on something called Corp Locations (formerly called corp bookmarks). The concept is quite simple really. Once Crucible is released, you will be able to share your bookmarks with your corp so anyone in the corp can see them and use them. Well, you're not exactly sharing them, what you are really doing is copying them and giving them to the corp. There is a little bit more to it than that though.

Hi!
I‘m going to tell you about a few of the UI improvements team BFF have been working on for Crucible.

Corporation Wallet Tooltip
For pilots who manage corporation wallets it can be handy to see the corporation wallet balance when you hover on the wallet button in the Neocom, instead of your personal wallet balance. We added a setting for those pilots, in the settings tab in the wallet, so they can choose to see the selected corporation wallet division‘s balance when they hover over the wallet button.

Click to enlarge

Hi all, this is CCP Anthelios along with CCP Soulblighter, CCP Booster, and CCP Space Cadet. We are all programmers working in the Atlanta office on the World of Darkness project. During recent planning we discovered that we had a unique opportunity. We had about 3 weeks of downtime before starting up our next project and were asked if we would like to help out with Crucible, the Winter 2011 EVE expansion. We (all being EVE players) accepted and were formed into Team Papercuts with one goal: Get as many cool features as possible into EVE in only 3 weeks. We decided to each work independently on as many small features as possible rather than trying to tackle something huge. The following is the account of our headfirst plunge into EVE…

Hi! CCP Punkturis of BFF here with another feature coming in the Winter Expansion!