Last weekend, EVE Online suffered extensive downtime after a “malicious attack” on the game's servers. To apologise for the time players have lost because of the downtime, CCP announced yesterday that it would give every single paying EVE player 50,000 skill points to allocate as they wish. This bonus comes only a few days after CCP handed out a previous lump of skill points to players due to technical issues, so those who haven't played in the past couple of weeks will find themselves with a healthy sum of points to spend the next time they log on.
For those who don't know what to do with the unexpected points, CCP has some suggestions. The EVE Online Wiki features a page that clearly explains how to use those skill points, as well as a thorough guide that covers the different kinds of skills that are available under various categories: Electronics, Social, Trade, etc. CCP also recommends players who want to use their skill points on ships read the recent blog post that explains how skill requirements have changed for the sake of balancing.
CCP also provides a link to a blog post that explains what caused the recent downtime, which was a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service attack) against the Tranquility cluster, i.e. the servers that deal with EVE Online and DUST 514. Given the existence of the “PLEX for Snitches” programme, which rewards those who report useful security-related information, hopefully similar attacks will in future be preventable.
Were you affected by the downtime? Is 50,000 points worthy compensation?
