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Voting for EVE Online's highly-anticipated Council of Stellar Management has begun. This long-in-the-works experiment in player participation will be running through the 19th of the month. From the huge number of initial applications the field has been reduced down to a group of 64 candidates.

The EVE site's voting page offers the candidate's in-game portrait and a link to their personal site, so you can get a sense of what their position is like. The developers and designers at CCP are obviously very hopeful about this experiment in player/publisher relationships, and we'll keep you abreast of details as they become available.

Anyone willing to share who they're voting for, and why?

Do you enjoy online gaming? Well, who doesn't, really? Do you like the idea of being surrounded by like-minded folks who're playing World of Warcraft, EVE Online, Pirates of the Burning Sea, and Age of Conan in as obsessive a fashion as you? Think you have the Bawls to play for three days solid? Want to hook up with friends -- and trash-talk a few enemies along the way -- in order to share the MMO love? If so, get ready to visit Portland, Oregon, because PDXMMO v. 1.0 is finally here. You'll need to create a PDXLAN forum account in order to register for PDXMMO, but you'd better hurry: seating is limited to 80, and 20 seats are already claimed.

From 6 p.m. Friday, 18 July, through 3 p.m. Monday, 21 July, the Portland Airport Holiday Inn Ballroom is being converted into an MMO-only space. For USD $60.00 -- or, if you prefer, just about the price of a tank of gas -- you'll get:

• Internet connectivity via Comcast Cable (... by way of PDXLAN staffer Notoes)
• 3 Days of Non-stop MMOs
• Admission to PDXLAN Schedued Contests
• Admission to the PDXLAN Raffle (2 Tickets)
• 1/3 of a 8 foot round table for you and your computer
• 600W for your tower and space for your 24" or less LCD / 21" or less CRT
• Admission to the World of Warcraft 1 person Free For All Tournament

So get your vacation requests in at work, stock up on the caffeine tabs and beef jerkey, and get ready to party. PDX is ready for you. Here's the question, though: are you ready for PDXMMO?

A pilot deep within the lawless lands of EVE Online's 0.0 space is never truly alone. In EVE, there is always some alliance, some corporation, or some like-minded capsuleer watching and waiting to strike. Within this realm flew an alliance that was a powerful force for nearly four years. Their trademark ace of skulls, four of which represent the leading corporations of the alliance, struck fear into the hearts of anyone on the wrong end of their blasters. They were hired guns, killers, and they were good at it. They were the Mercenary Coalition. For them, the war is now over, the contract killing has ended, and the alliance is no more.

That's right, the alliance has unloaded their ammunition, shut down their offices, and is calling it quits. From a press release on the EVE forums, Seleene, alliance leader of Mercenary Coalition, made the grim announcement and thanked members for their service. She said, "Everyone who has ever worn the MC tag participated in something truly unique. I can do nothing but salute you and give my heartfelt thanks." The reasons for disbanding are numerous, but a particular focus is placed on their betrayal of Band of Brothers. For some of us, one less mercenary alliance is a great thing. For others, this is sad day for the history books to record. The alliance, which has seen the better part of three years as a force within EVE, has docked for the final time.

[Thanks Nyphur!]

Something that's always bothered me about EVE Online's skill system is how often it's misunderstood by new and potential players. A few common myths and misconceptions surrounding the skill system are responsible for putting a lot of potential players off signing up. In this final part of the guide, I debunk two classic myths about the EVE skill system and go on to show you how to get the most out of your skill training time.

Myths debunked #1 - New players can't compete with old ones:
A common thought among new new EVE players and people thinking of signing up is that new players can't compete with old ones. In a world where open PvP reigns supreme, it does sound reasonable to assume that a new player in his lowly frigate has no chance of competing against a three year old veteran player in his tech 2 fitted battleship. This common mistake is usually caused by people misunderstanding how EVE's PvP works. In other MMOs, a lot of emphasis is put on the individual player's gear and abilities. You wouldn't invite a level 20 character along on your level 70 raid in World of Warcraft because they'd be useless. This doesn't really translate into EVE at all.

Read on to see this myth get busted along with another common misunderstanding people have with EVE's skill system.

In case you were lost in space, mining some rare mineral, today marks five years since a world of adventure, darkness, war, and spectacular beauty dove headfirst into the hands of gamers around the world. CCP created a game where rails were an unfamiliar term and players were encouraged to find new ways of conquering the galaxy or the market that supported it all. Wars were waged, empires rose and fell, and evolution continued to shape the world on all fronts. EVE Online has reached five years and what an amazing journey the game has taken.

EVE has grown to include over 250,000 players from around the world, all happily mining, pirating, or planning world domination. The game has come a long way since that first glorious day. We have seen numerous expansions, a graphics overhaul, wars, scams, and scandals. Countless pods have been destroyed and even more asteroid belts have been strip mined to dust. The future looks just as exciting with ambulation and the Empyrean Age, which will finally place the four empires in an all out war, looming through the next stargate. On this 5th anniversary of the creation of this world, we bring you back to take a look at the moments that made EVE a unique and exciting world in which to live.

Most MMOs, among them the popular favorites World of Warcraft and Everquest, employ a level-based character progression system where your player accumulates levels during play. Killing enemies and completing quests reward the player with experience points toward their next level. As the player's level increases, they gain access to better skills and equipment. Alternative systems of accumulating points in various skills have been used successfully in games like Ultima Online and Runescape. These systems still share the familiar idea of your character progressing in their abilities by practicing.

The result is that players who put in more effort reap more reward as their time and effort spent playing their character directly translates into increased power. These tried and tested systems are what players have come to expect from MMOs today. CCP's EVE Online uses a different training system that doesn't reward players with increased abilities for playing the game. Given the MMO genre's tendency toward level-based character progression, it's not surprising that EVE's unique skill system seems foreign and inaccessible to a lot of MMO gamers. In part 1 of this article, I demystify the seemingly complex EVE skill system.

Read on for a condensed breakdown of the system for the typical MMO gamer.

Text communication is perhaps the easiest to grasp for a new player. The key difference between text chat in EVE and text chat in many other games is the sheer volume of available channels. By default, every player is in the channel for their local chat, their corporation, and their alliance (if applicable). In addition, there is an uncountable number of channels out there that you could be chatting in.

Over at EVE Online's pavilion at New York Comic Con, one man would add to the hopes and dreams of thousands. Matt Woodward took a few moments of his time to talk to TenTonHammer on a subject close to the heart of many capsuleers. The subject? EVE of course, but most importantly, the expansion Empyrean Age. Take a few moments to put aside those evil schemes, dock, grab a Quafe, and tune in because the interview is packed with exciting hints at what is to come.

Matt explains in the interview that Empyrean Age will have fighting, glory, new missions and reputation, and plenty of fleet battles. One of the points made by Matt is that "the big fight that is coming" will allow everyone to be involved in one way or another. Rewards will be given, the front will shift, and the design is being hashed out to bring empire, lowsec, and 0.0 players together to duke it out. The expansion is going to pack one hell of a punch and is long overdue in the minds of many EVE pilots. When the expansion finally does arrive, players will rejoice as new ways to destroy one another are introduced. To us, that smells like victory.

Should MMOs give us a more 'epic' feel to our experiences? In the past, when I've explained the time I spend in-game to friends and relatives, one of the common complaints or opinions that I hear a lot is that it never sounds very exciting.

While I know that I've been saving a future Warchief from slavery, or putting to rest the spirit of a lost fiancée, some people are always going to see it as me just killing some more anonymous monsters that will be back in five minutes' time.

"This is boring!" they cry, "How long does it take you to kill a boar!?" I have to explain to them, again and again, the genre staples – incremental gear upgrades, starting from pathetic, finally getting up to ridiculous pieces of gear that make other players weep with envy. When they turn round and say, "Okay, show me the cool gear then, go buy some and use it instead." I have to explain, once more, that that kind of gear is only rewarded after you've spent weeks, months even, in the game, working your way up to them. It's about this time that disgust and terminal boredom sets in, and they drift away to their own pursuits, convinced that I'm slightly mad.

In the header blurb to this column, I state that "Running Boot Camp or Parallels is not an option here." I stand by that still. I don't think that dual-booting or loading XP within a virtual desktop is the solution any of us want. Dual booting takes up valuable hard drive space that I could use to store large media files of consenting adults. Running Parallels throws another layer of processor overhead when I run XP within Parallels within OS X. Not to mention Parallels' DirectX support is poor. Note: I haven't tried VMWare's Fusion, which is the competitor to Parallels.

A week or so ago, our own Mike Schramm wrote up a little piece on TUAW about CrossOver Games. CrossOver Games lets you run some Windows games within an emulator. It's not a pure virtual environment like Parallels, so you don't have the overhead of running two OSs. When I read Mike's piece, my first thought was, "huh." My second thought was, "Huh, I wonder if there's a middle ground here somewhere." At the risk out sounding like I'm eating my own words, CrossOver might be enough of a compromise that doesn't involve buying a copy of Windows to game on a Mac.

When flying through space in EVE Online, without a care in the world, things can often go wrong rather quickly. For example, when jumping through a stargate on the way home from a successful trading expedition, the game decides to freeze. The stargate then disappears, the UI becomes completely useless, and the only thing on the screen are twinkling stars. What happened here? A massive battle between alliances just took place and the node decided to choke. This means lag, waiting, re-logging, and the never ending cycle of keyboard smashing. Oh what a wonderful world it would be if this did not happen.

Well, with the next Trinity patch, a new networking layer that may ease the suffering of cosmic travelers is being tested. EVE and CCP are requesting some extra players, about 200 or so, to help test the networking layer on singularity. You only need to log in between 1830 GMT and 2100 GMT on the 29th of April to participate in the test. Sound easy? Well it is just that simple. CCP will have a channel devoted to test results and updates throughout the testing period. Hopefully, if successful, we can all avoid the lag when corporations decide to crush one another or when you make that evil trip into Jita. In order to make sure your ship does not implode when you try to log in, be sure to check out the singularity installation and FAQ page to be ready to test and make the universe a better place.

On February 20th 2008, EVE Online's economist Dr Eyjo published his fourth quarter economic newsletter for 2007. The newsletter discussed issues ranging from deflation to what ships players use and methods for estimating the total production of Eve. Among the pages of the economic newsletter was a small section commenting on the purchases of shuttles relative to tritanium prices and the ensuing discussion seemed to focus on this. In his more recent devblog, Dr Eyjo informed pilots that following a recent patch, the infinite NPC supply of shuttles was being removed from the market in order to alleviate what he calls "an artificial price cap of 3.6 ISK per unit".

It's no secret that shuttles and tritanium prices are linked. The effect that the supply of shuttles on the market has had on tritanium prices is a well-known and well-documented phenomenon that was even included in the second economist dev-blog back in September of 2007. If prices of tritanium ever increase above 3.6 per unit due to the laws of supply and demand in action, it becomes profitable to buy shuttles at 9000 ISK per unit and refine them into tritanium for sale or industry. The fact that there are people with perfect refine skills willing to do this for profit means that the price of tritanium can never rise any more than fractionally above 3.6 per unit before the shuttle-refiners push it back down.

Read on for a breakdown of the controversy and to find out how this change has affected the EVE markets.

EVE Online is a PvP driven game. It is not merely PvP oriented, nor does it only contain strong PvP overtones. The game, its politics, and its economy, are all controlled by the ever-present PvP that takes place. No matter your path in EVE, you are participating in PvP, be it through market competition with another trader, competition for ore rights with another miner, or the time-honored tradition of turning your opponent into space dust. Staying out of the PvP environment requires a conscious effort. Even the most casual PvE enthusiast is contributing to PvP by selling loot or minerals, and may well become the target of some non-consensual combat.

Suffice to say, even though this guide will have some things that will apply only to those looking for a fight, there is something for everyone, since you will get killed, someday. Ignoring these bits of advice is a surefire way to make that inevitable ship loss that much more painful. Also, bear in mind that each and every one of the things I am going to cover here is something that I myself have done in the past. This is not just a guide for noobs, but also a cheat sheet for those of us who get so busy preparing the bigger picture battle, that we forget things that end up making us look like total noobs in the end.

With the launch of EVE's expansion Empyrean Age sometime in the future, the entire universe, players and NPCs, will be duking it out in the name of their empire in an epic struggle for galactic domination. The war is not going to be easy and players may participate alone, running missions for their empire of choice, or they may bring their entire corporation into the fray. You thought piracy was a problem, imagine finding yourself in the middle of an Amarr fleet bent on your merciless destruction! Kick in the afterburners and train up those tanking skills, there is going to be a torrent of destruction hellbent on finding your ship.

So what about you carebears? All is not lost for the industrialist at heart! In addition to an EVE proximity alert to keep you safe, all of the fighting will provide plenty of scrap metal. The empires and players need resources for the larger conflict and the usual struggles between corporations. Someone needs to make sure everyone in EVE is supplied with guns and ammunition. This means plenty of trading and market watching for players eager to make a few isk as gun runners. Stock up on Quafe and void ammo while you are browsing the market, you are going to need it!