CCP has posted a new developer blog which looks at the Apocrypha expansion and their plans to phase out their Classic client and replace it with the new Premium Lite version.

The way things are

One of EVE's unique features (along with being an awesome game on a single server) is that it can run on pretty much any computer built after 1998. The minimum spec for graphics card and CPU has always been very reasonable to say the least, so the barrier for entry into EVE has been relatively low compared to other games. Developing the client in this manner hasn't always been a given. It requires us to downtune our graphics engine quite a bit, for one, as well as maintain the "Classic" client version of EVE along with the Premium one. That means creating two versions of each art asset we want to put into the game. It complicates build and patching processes considerably and, for the most part, it simply doesn't allow us to make EVE look as beautiful as we want. The core issues we deal with are:

• Spending too much time and resources maintaining 2 clients

• Due to a dual pipeline we have less time implementing performance enhancements

Where do we go from here?

Currently, EVE can be played on GeForce 2 or ATi Radeon 7000 series cards. The support of these cards was discontinued in 2002 by their manufacturers, a full year before EVE was first published. The development in graphics and graphics cards since then has been, to put it mildly, phenomenal. What we want to do is simplifying our development as well as exploit these new technologies to their full extent.

Read more here.