No game made, past or present, can match the sheer scope of what 'Eve Online' delivers.
Unlike other games, there are no multiple servers, the entire game is played on a single shard.....There are hundreds of thousands of players.
There is no cap on how many players can enter any given solar system at any one time.....There are 7500 total solar systems (5000 on the map and 2500 'wormhole' systems...Don't worry about 'wormhole' systems)
99% of 'Eve' is player created content in a 100% 'sandbox' environment (There are NO RULES). This game is geared to player interaction and co-operation. You won't last long playing solo.
'Eve Online' is 11 years old....I have been playing for 7 of those.
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I don't post this because I want you to play 'Eve Online' or to even understand it's concepts, but to recognize the totally incredible scope of an online spaceship battle between players that spanned our entire world.
This battle was also featured by various major news outlets including the BBC and Fox News. (Don't explode Boxy)
If you're a numbers geek or an IT geek you can read the bottom part of the blog that I linked that shows numbers of players vs. server load and all other geeky stuff and chart numbers.
For everyone else....
Around 21 hours of total fighting
· 7,548 unique characters belonging to those two coalitions participated in the overall battle. 6,058 participated directly in the B-R5RB system with 2,670 in system at max
· 717 unique player Corporations
· 55 unique player Alliances
Since there is a real money aspect to this game the estimated losses of this battle between all sides was between $300,000 - $330,000 in real cash.
The Bloodbath of B-R5RB, Gaming’s Most Destructive Battle Everhttp://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/the-bloodbath-of-b-r5rb/In the universe of EVE Online, players from every timezone around the globe have been waging wars on a massive scale for nearly 11 years. Some conflicts have been relatively small grudge matches between rivals from adjoining solar systems with maybe a dozen or so frigates and cruisers facing off in fast-paced combat. Others, like the Great War, are fueled by tens of thousands of players and blossom with all the same propaganda, diplomacy (and espionage), supply-chain logistics and military tactics that might fuel a real-world conflict, taking months to resolve and changing entire industrial patterns across the star map.
In all that time one kind of ship has always been the most coveted target for any fleet, thirsted after for the glory of defeating it as evidenced by this recording of the first one to die in combat.
Titans, the largest ship class in EVE Online, take thousands of man hours to produce, take months to train to fly, and are capable of fitting massive doomsday weapons that obliterate lesser ships with a single volley. To get a good understanding of the size of these Sci Fi monsters, check out this comparison chart (the Amarr Avatar is the brownish “mushroom” looking behemoth with the similarly sized Erebus above it and Ragnarok and Leviathan below it. Other EVE ships are found throughout) or watch this to-scale player-made video comparing several classes of EVE ships.
Each Titan is a prized strategic asset of the Alliance that controls it, and up until now no more than 12 had ever been destroyed in any single battle. That recently changed in the largest, most destructive battle in gaming history.
The Bloodbath of B-R5RB
In the early hours of January 27th, 2014 CONCORD (the NPC “police force”) came to collect the sovereignty bill for a dead-end system in the Immensea region called B-R5RB. One of over 7,500 in game, this particular system – with its 9 planets, 66 moons and 12 asteroid belts – had recently been transferred to a player corporation called H A V O C, a corp used by the alliance Pandemic Legion to handle sovereignty transfers between Alliances (which are collections of Corporations). Unfortunately, when CONCORD tried to extract the ISK (EVE’s currency) that would maintain sovereignty in the system for another month, they found that H A V O C had left their automatic payment unchecked. Without the necessary payment, sovereignty in the system immediately dropped leaving the system up for grabs.
Missed bill payments are certainly not new to the human experience nor are they to EVE Online. Human error has caused many a system to lapse. Sometimes it merely means that another Territorial Control Unit (a flag of sorts) has to be anchored in space to regain control of the system. Sometimes it means that an entire region is lost and an Alliance is disbanded.
This particular system however happened to be the staging system for all Pandemic Legion fleets in one of the largest wars to ever be waged in EVE Online. The Halloween War, having waged for months, had been punctuated by many engagements across the vast EVE universe. This single missed payment sparked off what would become the most expensive battle in EVE Online history. One pilot’s action (or inaction) had repercussions for the entire universe—a butterfly wing causing a massive typhoon of destruction. Coincidentally, this occurred a year to the day of another infamous battle where a single mistake by a single player offered destruction on a galactic scale—the Battle of Asakai.
Sensing this moment of unexpected weakness in a strategically critical location, the opposing Coalition comprised of the CFC Alliance and Russian-heavy coalition forces scrambled to get a foothold in the system. The message went out. Thousands logged in and fleeted up. If the CFC and Russian fleets could capture the station in system, they would trap Pandemic Legion assets inside, including hundreds of capital and sub-capital fleet hulls, rendering them unavailable for the wider conflict.
Meanwhile the forces of Pandemic Legion and N3 (a coalition made up Nulli Secunda, Northern Coalition. and assorted other allies) tried whatever they could to maintain control of the system. Despite anchoring Territorial Control Units all over the system, opposing forces destroyed them before any of them could online to regain control. In an attempt to at least secure the station, Pandemic Legion and N3 deployed what capital and super-capital forces they could muster in their patented “Wrecking Ball” formation just off the station.
Upon seeing that Pandemic Legion and N3 had a smaller capital and super-capital fleet (due to the surprise nature of the fight and it occurring during a Monday work day) CFC and Russian forces decided that it was time to seize the opportunity for a decisive fight. Taking into account lessons learned in the massive “Battle of HED-GP” earlier in the week, which had been a resounding loss for the CFC and Russian Forces at the hands of the “Wrecking Ball,” they chose this time to seize the initiative and deploy the entirety of the Capital Fleet to gain field superiority before PL and N3 could respond. Meanwhile, their sub-capital fleets were deployed to N3 staging systems to delay any reinforcements.
Unlike nearly every other large scale super-capital engagement up till this point, both sides thought they could win. They continued trying to get every single pilot into system with the most powerful warships they could bring to bear. After a few hours, the field was being lit up by doomsdays and the glittering hulls of hundreds of Titans and Supercarriers and thousands of Dreadnaughts and Carriers and smaller ships.
The battle was relatively even for some time with CFC and Russian forces holding moderate lead at first and only have a slight lead in Titan kills. Then came a turning point in the battle. Manfred Sideous, the initial Fleet Commander for PL/N3, handed over command to the CEO of Northern Coalition., Vince Draken. After successfully focusing fire to destroy several CFC/RUS Titans and causing some Russian Titans to jump out of the system with shields and armor depleted, PL/N3 began to overestimate their success and the primary target was switched to the Titan of Sort Dragon, one of fourteen members of the current Council of Stellar Management and the man coordinating all the Russian Forces left on field. His Titan successfully withstood the onslaught more than any so far with the assistance of his entire fleet actively working to repair it and very high damage resistance bonuses. By the time his structure was finally breached, the CFC/RUS forces had killed 5 Titans in return. From this point on, every volley cycle of the CFC/RUS Titan doomsdays put them further and further ahead.
Eventually, after nearly 12 hours of brawling in what had clearly become the longest engagement in online gaming PvP history, the PL/N3 forces sounded the retreat. In the ensuing evacuation several more Titans, Super Carriers, and Capitals were lost, many trapped by warp disruption bubbles that covered the field.
Throughout the fight, related battles also raged across the universe. Fleets tried to prevent reinforcements, kill wounded capitals and super-capitals attempting to flee, or trap the brave few who were trying to enter the fight and tip the scales.
The entire fight was watched live on Twitch.tv courtesy of Nick_Fuzzeh of Pandemic Legion as well as a host of other marathon streamers. In what can only be considered a meta-SciFi moment of more than 12,000 people watching a virtual war unfold live across the internet, his music news ticker, and……spooky dancing skeleton graphic entertained as the fight raged on.
When the dust finally settled and daily server maintenance downtime ended the conflict, all involved were shocked at the devastation. The winning side alone had lost more Titans that in any battle seen before. The losing side had lost more Titans than anyone had previously thought possible.
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