The latest EVE Online blog post by CCP Stillman discusses team efforts to keep user data safe and the underlying HTTP protocol used by the API feature. As a result of new and aggressive hacker attempts, the team is changing the protocol from HTTP to HTTPS to ensure that user data remains secure.

If you're anything like me, you religiously check the status of your character training and market orders on your smartphone. It's the greatest invention ever, especially if you can't log into EVE Online or EVE Gate. It's also nice to be able to pull out your smartphone at Fanfest and show off your nice skills and large wallet.

As we've added more information to the API, there's more incentive to try and acquire these keys by nefarious people. Due to the underlying use of HTTP when querying the API, it's possible to sniff the data stream of an API user and acquire their API key if they're using an unsecure Internet connection. This is not a good idea. And we don't want it to be that way. So we went ahead and enabled HTTPS on our API servers, which makes too much sense.

Read more here.

CCP Purple Tentacle has posted a new blog on the official EVE Online site. EVE devs will be releasing Incursion later today and with it's arrival, the old portraits that represented players will be removed from the game. Players will need to create new avatars. But players become attached to portraits and Purple Tentacle has them covered: A new database of all the old character portraits has been created that players can access to revisit old faces!

As most of you already know, on Tuesday we are releasing Incursion, which comes with a brand new avatar creation system. All the old portraits will be removed from the game and you will have to create new portraits for all your characters. I have spent considerable time playing with the new avatar creator and it is absolutely awesome. It is superior to the old one in every aspect, and no matter how many portraits I create with it, I just cannot get bored of it. However, no matter how cool it is, I figured that it would still feel like a loss to see my old face, the one I was tied to for many years, being flushed down the drain just like that. These old faces served their purpose. They represented us for over seven years, and they deserve to survive somewhere. So, back in December I requested a dedicated box and set it up to start crawling through all your seven million characters, rendering their portraits one by one and saving them in a nice and homey database. The box was rendering nonstop throughout Christmas and New Year's Eve and, despite being hit by a major disaster and having to restart the whole process at half time, it managed to finish on time.

Purple Tentacle has step-by-step instructions on how to access the old portrait server so be sure to head here to read up on it.

CCP Alice has penned the latest EVE Online developer blog on the official site to introduce players to the new and improved EVE forum. The forum has been moved into the EVE Gate system and includes several important new features. In fact, CCP Alice likens it to the image below.

The new front page is streamlined to get players where they need to go, whether it's a topic-specific forum or to a chat channel.

Read the full post here.

CCP Games and the EVE Online development team have released a brand new cinematic trailer from the upcoming Incursion expansion. The Sansha legions are out for vengeance and, at least in this video, they have caught everyone unaware. Wreaking havoc is only the beginning.

CCP's lead economist Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson has once again published the latest in the quarterly releases of the QEN (Quarterly Economic Newsletter). If you're into seeing a little bit of the curtain pulled back, it's an interesting read. Go take a look!

In this latest volume of the QEN (Q3 2010) there are some really interesting numbers on war and how conflict in EVE is the catalyst for production.

Read more of what the doctor has to say at the EVE Dev Blog.

CCP Games has announced the Incursion mass test scheduled for Thursday, October 7th. Devs want players to come in and do their worst. Devs not only want players to try out the Incursion dungeons but they want feedback on the end rewards, difficulty, good aspects and what could be improved.

Hey everyone!  It's time to do that age old task of testing your metal against our fire. We will be pushing the Incursion dungeons out this week. Once we do, we will need a few good pilots to do their worst!

The Incursion test will occur on Singularity and will start Thursday October 7 @ 14:00 UTC

Devs will be coming in periodically to assist with organization, observation, and to gather direct feedback.

So, how will the dungeons be set up, you ask? I have your answer!

There will be three systems that will have the dungeons set on their distributions:

• System: (Poitot) Each dungeon is made for 5 - 10 pilots
• System: (F67E-Q) Each dungeon is made for 10 - 20 pilots
• System: (MHC-R3) Each dungeon is made for 20 - 40 pilots

Read the full blog post and the criteria for evaluation here.

When EVE: Incursion launches, the team will be rolling out the new art and models for NPCs and player characters. Players will have the opportunity to recreate their avatars when the update deploys. As devs admit, character art is one of the few parts of the game that has remained as it was on the game's launch in 2003. CCP has created unique models for each bloodline,race and gender, along with new hairstyles and clothes.

Does that mean you are releasing Incarna now?

No, just characters. This is a major overhaul in terms of art and technology, and paves the way for allowing you to explore the corridors of space stations in subsequent expansion. Yes, just to be clear, Incarna, the expansion where you can walk around as an avatar is not coming out this winter, but the first release of it is planned to come out next summer, in 2011. However, in the same way we introduced new planet graphics in Dominion and then Planetary Interaction one expansion later, we are introducing updated avatar graphics now in Incursion.

Redoing the characters of EVE Online is a major task. Not just technically, but also in terms of art and story. We tried to stay true to the spirit and style of each race and bloodline, while improving and refining the style and, in a way, correcting the mistakes of the past. However, we are very much aware that we are changing the face of your avatars. The characters have represented you since you started playing the game, and we realize that many have strong emotional ties with the character or look that they had created. Famous personas from the EVE community will have a brand-new face.

Read more here.

CCP has announced PLEX for Good: Pakistan running from September 15-October 6, 2010. During the event, players have the opportunity to donate PLEX to an official C C P Plex for Good character. The campaign is being organized to assist people in Pakistan, a nation devestated this summer during the monsoon. Over 25 million people have been rendered homeless or were injured during the floods. Money generated will be donated to Pakistan's Red Crescent Society.

I'm still confused, how exactly does this process work?

To cut the story short, you buy a PLEX, and then you make a contract and assign it to the player "CCP PLEX for Good". This player is controlled by CCP, and all PLEXes assigned to this player through contracts will be converted into real money and sent to charities aiding the victims of the disaster in Pakistan.

Read more here, including a handy dandy FAQ.

The EVE developer blog has been updated with new information about the so-called Unhappy Customer Project. The blog goes into a bit of detail about the petition process and even acknowledges that there have been some problems that the team is working to improve. The UCP is designed to streamline the process and turn unhappy customers into happy ones.

Before starting the Unhappy Customers project we were doing regular quality audits as well as using the escalation process and organic peer review to locate and fix mistakes. But we wanted even more overview.

The first challenge we faced was finding a way to proactively spot mistakes in petitions that are neither escalated nor reported to Senior or Lead GMs. As we receive approximately 30 thousand petitions every month, manually going over each one was not an option (not one we‘d want to bill you guys for, that‘s for sure). It didn‘t take much deliberation on our part to realize that the rating system which we‘ve already got in place could be used as a way to spot potentially mishandled petitions by simply looking up the petitions rated poorly by our own customers.

Read the full blog on the EVE site.