As part of continued work to accompany previously announced changes to EVE Online’s network infrastructure, DirectX 9 support is ending in January. The move to a 64-bit client is part of the changes intended to set the game up for many more years into the future. As a result, January 11th will be the last day for DirectX 9 support.
The intention to retire support for DirectX 9 was actually made in 2016, but the work to be ready to actually make the change and move forward is now here. Support will officially end for Windows based clients. The newly released Mac client uses Apple's Metal technology, so this shedding of older tech is just for the PC players that have old systems. .
For those who are capable of running DirectX 11 on their systems, this is the recommended path forward from the CCP team. In fact, if you are capable of running DirectX 11, on November 30th, existing players with systems above the new minimum specs will be moved automatically over to the DirectX 11 client. If you have trouble and you're on an older system, you will have a temporary window to use DirectX 9 if you need to until the end date. DirectX 11 has been supported for over a decade, so most people should be unaffected by this change, but CCP knows that they have a community full of people who've been around for a long time so we can consider this a grace period of sorts.
When it comes to EVE Online, change is consistent, even if it can take time to go from implementation to community reveals, and further into implementation. But CCP works to keep things evolving while still making sure most players in the community can still keep venturing in New Eden.
For the complete rundown on the end of DX9 support, see this EVE Online post.
