Downtime
When is the daily server downtime, how does it affect my gameplay and why is it necessary?
As a result of CCP's attempt to create one large server for everyone to play on, the Eve Online server requires a certain amount of periodic maintenance. As a result, there is an official daily downtime from 11:00 to 12:00 GMT every day (though it may at times be shorter). Training continues during downtime. Agent missions do as well, so before accepting one, ensure you leave room for an hour-long break at noon GMT.
Please note that agent mission complexes marked as completed, wrecks, containers and other perishables in space despawn and disappear from space during downtime. Mission complexes despawned do not respawn after the downtime is over. Make sure you have claimed all necessary items for your agent mission before downtime hits.
It is also worth noting that NPC ships which have been destroyed within agent mission complexes which have not been marked as complete when the daily downtime hits will respawn during downtimes as long as the seven day duration the player received for finishing the mission has not expired, so care needs to be taken when warping back to unfinished mission complexes after each server downtime.
Extended downtimes are used in order to either hotfix the server, fix other software or hardware issues that may have presented itself after previous downtimes or to deploy patches or updates for the game.