After a recent round of downtime, in which players were already compenstated partially with free skill points, CCP decided to go one step further and reward active (not trial) accounts with a brand new ship. On the EVE Dev Blog, CCP Zinfandel outlined the story arc and the details of retrieiving the ship for the players. It seems that an NPC business in the game is providing the new ship, the Primae, to all capsuleers free of charge. The Primae is specially designed to aid in the new planetary interaction content that was recently launched.
One interesting thing to note is that, besides only active accounts in EVE Online having access to the new ship, the free gift, if not redeemed by July 13th, 2010, will expire. So if you have an active account on EVE Online, be sure to log in and claim your ship before it’s gone.