Big Eve Online battle breaks player record, but fizzles out

If we were to believe the announcements, Eve Online had a massive space battle coming up that was expected to blow up a million dollars worth of virtual spaceships. In the end, it only produced a record number of players.

That record of the largest number of players in a single galaxy was announced by game designer CCP Fozzie from Icelandic Eve Online developer CCP Games. He later added that there were more than six thousand players, or at least accounts, in the 9-4RP2 system. It all had to do with a so-called Keepstar Citadel, the largest variant of these space bases in the mmorpg. These are easier to defend than to attack.

According to an analysis by an Eve player on Reddit, this was one of the reasons the fight fell short of expectations. The criticism focuses mainly on the mechanics behind the game, while other criticisms focus on the fact that the server struggled with player numbers, slowing down time in-game via the concept of time dilation. In addition, many players would have suffered from connectivity issues.

The battle took place between major coalitions in the game such as Goonswarm, Northern Coalition, and Pandemic Horde. A battle report, which should reflect the outcome of the battle, indicates that a total of about 560 billion isk, which is Eve’s in-game currency, was lost. A quick notepad calculation shows that this is around 7000 euros. That’s nowhere near the $1 million in damage announced by a fleet commander in the gaming subreddit. However, he also indicated that very little would probably happen.

An earlier big fight in 2014, which crushed about €370,000 worth of isk, resulted in a large increase in Eve Online players. For those interested, the current fight can be viewed via Twitch.

View of the battle in 9-4RP2, image via Twitter.