New Eden's calendar is packed this week. Alliance Tournament XXII is running its final Swiss-format qualifying rounds ahead of a genuinely historic finals weekend, Fenris Creations has published the third dev blog in its HUD modernization series, and the Council of Stellar Management is about to open its doors to a new batch of candidates. Here's everything capsuleers need to know.
Alliance Tournament XXII heads into its last qualifying weekend
EVE Online's flagship esports event is on its third and final preliminary weekend, with matches running on the Thunderdome test server at 13:30 UTC on both Saturday and Sunday. The first four days of competition (August 29–30 and September 5–6) are already archived on YouTube, and this weekend's rounds decide who makes the cut for the finals.
This year's tournament looks noticeably different from previous ones, and the changes matter beyond the bracket:
Swiss-style preliminaries replace straight double-elimination. Teams are matched against opponents with similar records across seven rounds, so one bad game in round one no longer ends an alliance's run. As the organizers put it, "one defeat does not immediately define an alliance's entire tournament."
Only 16 teams reach the finals, down from the larger fields of past broadcasts, and there are no free passes — even Alliance Tournament XXI's top four have to fight through preliminaries like everyone else.
Best-of-three main event matches and a best-of-five Grand Final raise the stakes considerably compared to the single-game knockouts of previous years.
"Avalanche Bans" let each team strike three or four enemy ship types before a match, forcing comps to adapt on the fly.
The biggest change, though, has nothing to do with format. For the first time in the tournament's history, the finals will be held in front of a live audience — October 31 and November 1, in Nottingham, UK, running on the actual Tranquility game server rather than the isolated tournament shard. It's a genuine first for an event that has existed as an online-only spectacle since its very first iteration, and it's the clearest sign yet of how seriously Fenris Creations is investing in EVE as a spectator sport.
Entry costs 4,000 PLEX per team, though last year's top four qualify without paying again (registration is still required). Broadcasts run on the official Fenris Creations Twitch channel, with match predictions, Twitch Drops, and expert analysis alongside the games; VODs get organized by day and team on YouTube afterward. If you want a scouting report before diving in, community-run Howling Wind maintains detailed pilot and roster statistics for every team in the field.
Watch the official trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkt64_QpC1k
HUD, Sweat & Tears: the new interface splits the forums
On September 11, Fenris Creations published the third entry in its HUD modernization dev blog series, and this time it came with concrete mockups instead of just concepts. The team is careful to frame all of it as work in progress — "early thoughts, some are concepts, others are aspirations, none of it is set in stone" — but the direction is now clear enough for players to have real opinions about it.
The headline ideas:
Drone control folded into the main HUD. Right now, flying drones means babysitting a separate window. The new design wants drone status and commands to feel like a native part of flying your ship rather than a second interface bolted on the side.
Richer damage feedback. Beyond the current shield/armor/hull bars, the new system aims to show where damage is coming from, what type it is, and which threats actually need your attention — closer to the directional damage indicators players already ask for.
Fully customizable, shareable layouts. Players will choose which HUD elements they use, where they sit on screen, and how much detail they show — down to corporations distributing a recommended layout to new recruits.
Multiple saved profiles, so a pilot can swap between an exploration setup, a fleet-combat setup, and a "just flying to a station" setup without rebuilding the UI each time.
Progressive complexity that scales with skill training, gradually exposing more precision and control as a character develops rather than front-loading new players with everything at once.
Spatial information moved into the 3D view itself — ranges, movement cues, and threat awareness overlaid on space rather than buried in overview windows.
Reaction on the official HUD Feedback Thread has been running hot — 73 replies and over 800 views within days — and the tone is more critical than celebratory. Recurring complaints include:
The redesigned capacitor display leans too hard on visual effects, making it genuinely harder to read at a glance than the current bars.
Several players argue the new layout eats more screen space to display the same information the old HUD already showed more compactly.
Basic actions — adjusting speed, working modules, placing boosters — reportedly take more clicks or more precision than before, with a real risk of misclicking a booster into use by accident.
No way to hide the minimap or other fixed elements at launch, which several posters called shortsighted given how configurable the rest of the pitch is supposed to be.
A vocal group is bracing for a repeat of the Photon UI rollout, where an "optional for now" interface eventually became mandatory — and some are already saying they'll stick with the legacy HUD for as long as it remains available.
There is some goodwill in the thread too — a few players single out the new radar-style awareness feature as a genuine improvement — but right now the skeptics have the louder voice. Fenris Creations has not announced a timeline for rolling any of this out live, and given the "nothing is set in stone" framing, there's clearly still room for the design to shift before it does.
Quick hits
CSM 21 is coming. Applications to run for EVE's player-elected Council of Stellar Management open September 17 at 11:00 UTC and close October 2. Candidates need an account older than 60 days, must be 18 or older, and have to clear an ID check plus post a campaign thread on the forums. Candidates are announced October 6, campaigning runs through October 21, and voting takes place October 22–November 3. Full details here.
The donation-exploit wallet leak has been patched. Fenris Creations confirmed on September 8 that a modified-client exploit let an attacker send roughly one million zero-ISK donations over six hours on September 4 to harvest wallet balance snapshots from characters and corporations. No passwords, emails, or PLEX balances were exposed, and the hole was closed with the September 8 downtime. Players can check their wallet journals for suspicious donation entries if they want to confirm whether they were affected. Read the security update.
GM Week returns September 28. A full week of GM-run shenanigans across New Eden — patrols, scavenger hunts, an "Orbital Stash" event, and streamed Q&As on the official Fenris Creations Twitch channel. More on GM Week.
What to watch this week
Alliance Tournament XXII's final Swiss rounds wrap up this weekend, which means the 16-team finals field should be set shortly after — worth watching for which alliances actually punch their ticket to Nottingham. On the interface side, expect the HUD feedback thread to keep growing; with the pushback this loud this early, it wouldn't be surprising to see Fenris Creations respond directly in a follow-up post before the series moves to more finished mockups.