Continuing the expansion of one of the longest running MMOs around, CCP today announced November 11 as the launch date for the final deployment in the two-part staged release of EVE Online: Quantum Rise, the ninth free expansion to the game.

This expansion offers performance-enhancing improvements, in-game subscription services, assembly array modules, UI changes, more efficient bomb production, upgrades to graphics, new music tracks and more.

It will be available completely free to subscribers. Interested non-subscribers can check out the free trial to see if they like it or not.

The studio behind EVE Online, CCP Games is expanding into North America, according to an announcement. Their new office is located in Stone Mountain, GA and will serve as the company’s North American headquarters.

As expected, the new studio will work on maintaining and upgrading the world of EVE Online. However, it will also focus on developing new titles. The company hopes of providing more than 100 design and development positions within the next year.

The rare breed of Mac and Linux gamers can finally add one new title to their list: EVE Online. According to a recent announcement, CCP Games have partnered with TransGaming to port the popular MMORPG to the aforementioned platforms later this year.

As part of the partnership, TransGaming will share quality assurance as well as technical support responsibilities; it will also lead partnership and OEM opportunities for the Linux version of the game.

EVE Online is already available on Linux through Cedega, a software that allows Windows games to run on Linux completely transparently. It was the popularity of this solution that led these parties to further integrate the game with the open-source operating system.

This Open Letter to CCP brings to the spotlight a bunch of complaints to the developers of Eve Online. The letter covers allgeations of developer misconduct, among other things, which this forum post on the game’s official forum discusses and states how efforts to bring this to light have been seemingly quashed till now.

In their bid to take over the world become the largest independent virtual world developer, CCP and White Wolf have merged. The former runs EVE Online, a very popular MMORPG, and is the largest European virtual world company; it will be creating a multiplayer game based on White Wolf’s popular World of Darkness setting.

The merger will see both companies bring their respective skills to the table, with White Wolf focusing on the creation of EVE Online strategy guides, collectible card games, role-playing games, novels and miniatures. The combined company will, however, continue to operate under their respective names.

EVE Online is set to see a new expansion - codenamed Kali - that will introduce an innovative Advanced Reactive Content System, in which the political landscape and physical borders of nation-states within the game can be altered dynamically through the collective outcome of player actions.

Kali will also have factional warfare, in which players will have the option to align themselves with an NPC faction. The expansion will also see the opening of new regions in the game’s universe, the addition of significant exploration content, next-gen player R&D that includes reverse engineering capabilities, additional ship upgrades and player professions, the introduction of combat boosters, and the addition of new warships.

The Path to Kali will begin in Q2 2006 with the first release, ending sometime next year with the factional warfare implementation.

The game’s developer CCP also announced that a new version of the current graphics engine for the game is being developed to take advantage of DirectX 9 features for superior imagery.

They also announced the parallel development of an entirely new graphics engine called “EVE Vsita”. Dubbed “Trinity II”, the new graphics engine will feature support for DirectX 10 and will offer far greater detail and other advanced technical and visual imagery support.