Tuesday, August 22nd, players of the hit MMORPG title EVE Online can expect quite a bit of server downtime and quite some technical changes as CCP deploys their updated code base, “Dragon” in anticipation of the upcoming Kali expansion. The patch will include numerous enhancements to security and encryption, as well as small improvements and optimizations, one of which includes the multiple-language framework, as localized version of EVE are beginning to be released. The trade off to these enhancements will be the dropping of OS support for Microsoft’s Windows 98 and ME operating systems, as Microsoft itself begins dropping extended support for the same out-dated systems. This basically means that after Tuesday, the minimum OS requirement in order to play EVE Online will be Windows 2000 SP2 (sorry SP1 fans) due to the encryption changes being implemented during the patch. Now where’s that OS X version CCP!?

CCP’s announcement after the jump:

On Tuesday, 22 August, we will deploy our latest code base, “Dragon”, to Tranquility. This codebase includes numerous improvements, optimizations, the multiple language framework, enhanced security and encryption.

As with any major update to older code, there are going to be some growing pains associated with it. Since this is the first big step in preparation for the Path to Kali, there are more growing pains with this update than there have been in the past. In this patch, we are going to be removing some obsolete code.

Due to the changes this update is going to bring to the server and client code, we are going to need more testing effort than before. If you have the opportunity, please take some time to log in to Singularity to assist the QA team with bug hunting. The more community support we have for testing, the fewer bugs the code will have upon deployment.

The “old” agent mission system will be disabled in lieu of the replacement missions in the new system deployed in the last patch. This is the reason some missions have two different types of encounters and this was done in an effort to ease the transition. New missions will be deployed in upcoming patches following the deployment of Dragon.

Microsoft has ended their extended support of Windows 98, Windows 98SE and Windows ME, which means we must follow their lead and cannot continue to support these OSes ourselves. Additionally, our new security and encryption require at least Windows 2000 Service Pack 2 or Windows XP to work.

Patch deployment should take about 9 hours, from 08:00 to 17:00 GMT.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

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