If you have any snowballs left from CCP's winter event in EVE Online, you might want to start launching them. The event ends on Jan. 6, but CCP has a much more fun way of putting it :

We have been working closely with weather specialists regarding this matter. They have been ceaselessly running weather prediction simulations since the mysterious arrival of these snowballs. According to their models, temperatures will rise .0001 K on 6 January 2009. This slight temperature change will result in the complete melting of all snowballs in New Eden, regardless of their location.

The CCP team always goes above and beyond to make sure their events and announcements remain within in the theme of the world they've created. Oh, and if you're worried that universal warming is the cause of all this, scientists are assuring us it's just seasonal temprature variations. Regardless, I think Al Gore should make a stop in New Eden.

We previously reported in mid-November that CCP had posted some videos from Fanfest on the EVE Online site. Well, the rest of the videos are now up for your enjoyment, bringing the grand total to 17.

You can view all the videos on the official EVE Online Web site here, or you can head over to their YouTube page, which also contains other videos, such as game trailers.

The latest dev blog from CCP Dr.EyjoG contains an incredibly interesting analysis of the Orca's entry into the market. According to the blog, the biggest surprise for the team was the huge amount of blueprints sold for the capital-sized industrial command ship.

In the first 13 days of its release, 2,935 Orca blueprints were sold. In comparison, the next highest amount of blueprints sold in that time frame was for the freighter class, which sold only 260 in its first 13 days.

Due to the massive supply of Orcas that will probably come out of these blueprint sales, the team hypothesizes that the price of the ship will fall sharply in the coming weeks due to major competition between producers. In response, many Orca producers may turn to "the production of other capital ships that require similar components but may offer larger profit margins in the long run."

Check out the full blog post here or below.

CCP is warning players about a phishing e-mail circulating that claims to be from EVE Customer Support.

This email claims that we had a database issue and lost some customer information and it asks you to login to make sure your information is still there. They conveniently provide their very own login link. This is of course not true; we have not lost any account information.

We'd also like to add that our knowledge when it comes to English grammar and spelling is far better than what is in the phishing email.

EVE Online will receive a new patch entitled Empyrean Age 1.1.1 on Tuesday, Sept. 30. The critical changes will include a new autopilot feature that will allow you to avoid set systems and regions, a system cap on the number of players allowed in a given solar system, and an auto-move feature during login to move to a neighboring system if your current one is full.

The full patch notes can be found here or below the jump.

Also, CCP Games warned users today that an advertisement for a skill training macro sent by Gold Harvest Macro Solutions contains a Trojan. Do not downloaded this software, and scan your system if you did.

I've never met Penny Arcade creators Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, but I can easily surmise that they're great guys. Not only do they create hilarious webcomics every week, but they also founded Child's Play , a charity that organizes toy drives to children's hospitals throughout the world.

CCP Games , the developers of EVE Online , is supporting this great cause by offering one player and their guest the opportunity to win a tour of CCP Headquarters in Reykjavik, Iceland. Bidding for the silent auction starts at $1,000 and ends on Oct. 22.