CCP Dopamine announced an extended downtime for May 8 in his latest forum post. The extension is expected to last up to four hours. Dopamine stated that this was necessary for “implementing some upgrades to further harden the cluster against attack” following the latest wave of DDoS assaults.
Late last month EVE came under another barrage of DDoS attacks that have been ranging in strength and duration. These attacks have wreaked havoc across the cluster, affecting defense of critical timers and losses of ships due to disconnects, amongst myriad other issues. In some cases, players have been entirely shut out across all their accounts while CCP tried to mitigate the attacks.
Status updates on downtime will be issued via CCP’s “EVE_Status Twitter” feed. While the aim is to have the servers up as soon as possible, CCP asked players to remain patient as the changes are put into place. In addition, Dopamine urged players to make any necessary preparations in-game for the extended downtime.
While this update is critically needed, backlash is already expected as any battle-plans falling within the four-hour period will most likely have to be delayed or cancelled altogether, resulting in any defense timers in this period being saved. Updates surrounding the DDoS can be found on the main forum thread.
