EVE Online senior producer steps down, cements EVE's new direction

EVE Online hit quite the patch of turbulence over the past year, but CCP's finally attempting to put things back on track. Better still, the recent "Crucible" expansion was just the tip of the space iceberg. In order to further EVE's newfound back-to-the-basics approach, senior producer Arnar "CCP Zulu" Gylfason is giving the deck over to Jon "CCP Unifex" Lander - formerly head of CCP's Carbon tech team. Speaking on EVE's official website , Lander outlined what's next for the MMO that's inspired equal amounts of long-form love poetry and spittle-soaked hate ranting.

"The task ahead of us in 2012 is not to be taken lightly," he wrote. "We are changing EVE's internal project structure to bring it in line with a product that has nearly 200 people working on it and making sure that everyone is concentrating on delivering a game which has real value for our players. As well as changing the project organization, we will also be spending time on improving our internal tools, pipelines and processes to improve our efficiency and effectiveness for the future."

"Finally, we will be concentrating on those features we already have in the game after 8 years of development. Yes, we will be iterating (it's not a dirty word) on those features which need some polish, balance, fixes and general love. The releases throughout 2012 will be an extension of the type of release we had with Crucible with the addition of a theme to help us scope and tie the work into a really compelling and coherent package. The first theme is going to be War and everyone is getting very excited about it."