On May 21, 2013, our web servers came under unusually heavy load which resulted in connection issues for all associated services that rely on the web servers, such as the EVE Launcher and the client repair tool. Our engineers have been investigating the issue with top priority and when this was written the investigation remains underway and will continue until the problem has been identified and services have been fully restored.

On May 21 we also deployed EVE Online: Retribution 1.2.4 and the new EVE Launcher. These deployments are not believed to have caused the underlying problem but are believed to have affected its manifestation. Updating the Launcher or the client requires connecting to our currently overloaded web servers and as a result, EVE Online players may not be able to either properly update your EVE Online client, the EVE Launcher, or connect properly to the Tranquility server to play EVE Online.

For anyone experiencing any of the above issues we would like to point out to this thread for further explanations and potential workarounds.

We sincerely apologize for any inconveniences caused by these unexpected server issues.

Update on 20:47 UTC, May 21
The web server issues are fixed and the EVE Laucher should be able to properly update and connect to Tranquility again.