eve-tv posts

We're giving all of you capsuleers a friendly reminder that you have seven days remaining to sign up for the next Alliance Tournament in EVE Online. Jump in and test your mettle against some of EVE's best PvPers for the chance to win the tournament and take home the glory while your opponents get wrecked live on EVE TV. As usual, 64 alliances will be entered into this month long tournament, but only one group will walk away.

Please note, however, that the system is no longer first-come, first-served. 16 of last years winners are autoqualified, while the remaining 48 will be decided by random selection. There are also a few rules changes, so we recommend all interested parties check our post on these changes, even if you're already familiar with the tournament rules.

Interested alliance leaders in EVE can sign their alliance up for entry into the contest via EVE Insider. (Link requires an active EVE Online account.)

The sci-fi themed game of EVE Online is one dominated by the players themselves, many of whom join together to form alliances. Those alliances vie for control of the New Eden galaxy, sparking continual warfare and political upheaval among the thousands of pilots flying in EVE at any given time. That's really the beauty of the game: the developers provide the setting, but it's the players who make it what it is. Alliance struggles are one of the defining features of the game, but not all scores are settled through massive fleet engagements. Some alliances opt to engage one another in an arena -- viewed by thousands of EVE's pilots -- the Alliance PvP Tournament.

Alliance Tournament VI kicked off last weekend, continues this weekend with qualifying rounds, and will culminate in final rounds in February, which will be streamed as live video. As the Tournament is so significant to the players, each year CCP Games invites PvP experts from among the playerbase to be the tournament's commentators. Among those veteran combat pilots in EVE Online, Crovan certainly stands out. He, along with a small team of other PvP experts, was selected to provide live commentary on the matches. This should come as no problem for him, given the PvP experience gained from his time with now-legendary Mercenary Coalition and being a familiar voice to many of us with The Drone Bay podcast.

Since The Drone Bay is the official podcast of the tournament, Crovan is recognizable to many listeners as the voice of the EVE Online Alliance Tournament VI. The fact that he's been a past Alliance Tournament competitor also gives him some additional perspective on the event. It's been a while since we spoke with Crovan -- we were fortunate enough to have him with us at Massively in the past through his excellent Rogue Signal column. We caught up with Crovan this week, however, and he told us everything we wanted to know about the Alliance Tournament.

EVE Online players have been noting the conspicuous absence of the Alliance PvP Tournament, which was brought up at a dev panel at EVE Fanfest 2008. The news imparted at that time did not bode well for the future of the alliance tournaments, given the expense and level of involvement on the part of the CCP Games staff to run it. But EVE developer CCP Mindstar has given word that the alliance tournament is on for 2009, and listed the relevant dates as they presently stand:

Tournament Signups -- Dec 19th - Jan 9th
Qualifying Round 1 -- Jan 24th, Jan 25th
Qualifying Round 2 -- Jan 31st, Feb 1st
Finals -- Feb 7th, Feb 8th

The tournament rules will remain largely the same as in previous years, but some changes are to be expected. The EVE Alliance PvP Tournament VI will take place over six days -- specifically, over three weekends so weekday conflicts won't be an issue.

EVE Fanfest 2008 is in full swing in Reykjavik, but fans of the game who can't make that trek to Iceland this year have let out a collective grumble that EVE TV isn't streaming live content, as they have in prior years. Rather, the EVE TV team is recording the events and interviewing players, with the aim to make the video footage available to everyone after Fanfest. But for those who really want to connect with what's happening in Reykjavik now, CCP Fallout announced another way for players to listen in:

"For those pilots who are unable to warp to Fanfest this year, we are please to announce that we will broacast t0rfifrans's and Oveur's keynote addresses live in-game. Those of you who would like to listen in should join the 'Live Dev Blog' in-game channel on Saturday, 8 November at 13:00 GMT."

We've also gotten word that CCP Games CEO Hilmar V. Pétursson, (aka CCP Hellmar) will be delivering a keynote at 15:00 GMT on November 8th, which will also be broadcast live. As with all of the Live Dev Blogs, players need only activate audio via the right click menu to listen in on the keynote presentations.

CCP Games announced that EVE TV is going to returning for EVE Online Fanfest 2008, and will still operate under the principle of being "something made by EVE players, for EVE players."

That's the word from one of newest members of the Marketing team at CCP Games, CCP Charlie, who introduces himself by announcing the scheduled content from Fanfest that they'll be recording and making available to everyone. He says, "Every video will be made available for download within a week or two after the Fanfest," and lists the specific content we can expect to view:

CCP Games announced that it's time for EVE Online's next Council of Stellar Management election process to begin. Here's the message from the Council Election page: "The second democratic elections in EVE will start the 7th of November. Here you can enter your application to run as a candidate for the election. You will run under your real name with an EVE identity for others to relate to. You will have to be ready to appear in public or in mediums. Your account has to be older than 30 days. You are required to put effort into your position. Yet serving the EVE population is well worth it. Get all the necessary information here. Throw your hat in the ring and make history."

Interested candidates will need to have their information submitted to CCP no later than October 17th (extended from their previous announcement that stated October 10th). The application, which requires a candidate to scan and submit an image of their passport, states: It is important to notice that your real life name, country, character name, campaign webpage and campaign message will be made public and available for everyone to see. Players elected to the Council of Stellar Management may also be required to appear on EVE-TV (should it make a comeback) and E-ON magazine, in addition to being willing and able to make the trip to Iceland.