Cosmic designer Peter Olotka announced a series happenings to kick off the 2006 Cosmic Encounter Online season. The Cosmic design team has launched phase one of a new Cosmic Lobby design, sent prizes out to the top four 2005 Cosmic Encounter Online Players, announced the start of the "Winter Crunch" Cosmic Online League, launched the new Cosmic Store with over 1500 products, created the new cosblog, begun work on the 33rd alien The WILL, power of choice, and sent hundreds of dollars out to Cosmic members under the "recruit new players" bonus program.

New Lobby

The new streamlined lobby consolidates all Cosmic ancillary information with links to store, tutorial, rules, email, aliens, profile, guests, community, cosblog and eMailien.

2005 Winners

The 2005 Cosmic Online Winner was "Mystique", with 356,350 m-rics. She was the second woman gamer to win the yearly top spot. Runners up were TheDukester, AYBABTU and SL. Players took home coveted autographed glossy prints of their top aliens.

Winter Crunch League

The Friday/Saturday Winter Crunch League run by the CE Online members will start on Friday, February 3rd and end on Saturday, March 25. It is a solo wins only competition, with prizes for the top 4 finishers. Members can play a maximum of six games per weekend and can qualify with seven games. The Winter Crunch League can be joined by coming to the Cosmic Lobby on Fridays or Saturdays in the evening (est).

New Cosmic Online Store

The new Cosmic Online Store sports four sections: Merchandise, Auction, Boardgame and Gift. Each alien has a line of 47 products packing over 1500 new products in the merchandise section. The store also links to the ongoing Cosmic memorabilia auction, a gift section for gifting CE Online to friends, and a link to purchase the Cosmic Encounter Avalon Hill board game.

The Will

The 33rd alien is under development. The Will, has the power of choice. It disregards destiny and does as it pleases. The Will ramps up the number of alien game sets by adding 4,960 combos serving up a new total of 40,920 unique games.

Player Bonus Pay

Olotka said that the reinstitution of cosblog as an efficient means of communicating with Cosmic Encounter Online players will serve to make Cosmic Online gaming even more accessible. Future Pastimes, which publishes Cosmic Encounter Online, endeavors to build relationships with its players. For example under the Cosmic Bonus program for referring new members, hundreds of dollars were paid out to Cosmic Encounter Online Members, thousands of hours of extra time was granted to members and hundreds of dollars were saved with Bonus discounts.

Cosmic Encounter Online is the multiplayer game where players have their brains augmented by aliens. The game currently has 32 aliens and 35, 960 different 4 player aliens sets.