The Great War

Written by Jim Rossignol on September 9, 2008 at 11:10 am.


At the beginning of 2008 I wrote this feature about an ongoing war within Eve Online for PC Gamer UK – and I want to thank them here for being progressive enough to commission such an unusual virtual chronicle. This conflict had been called “The Great War” of Eve Online, and involved two huge power-blocs: Band Of Brothers and their allies, vesus the RedSwarm Federation and their associated alliances. Things have changed radically since then, with Red Alliance all but disbanding, and Band Of Brothers returning to fight a ferocious campaign against RedSwarm allies. This feature, however, charts a tract of Eve history, between around the middle of 2006 through to early 2008, which remains one of the most startling illustrations of the enormous scale of Eve Online’s PvP ambitions.

There’s a war going on. It’s one of the most bitterly contested conflicts imaginable, fought over many months by an international cast of veteran warriors. An entire galaxy is at stake. You probably even know someone who is caught up in it, fighting for his life and those of his comrades. As many as twenty thousand people have fought in its battles. This war is the Great War of Eve Online; the largest virtual conflict ever waged.


Unlike the twenty minute conflicts that characterise other multiplayer games, this is a deathmatch that has taken place between fleets of hundreds in a continuous process that has lasted years. It is the greatest imaginary conflict yet conducted, and in what follows I’ll be tracing its glories and mapping its horrors. The Great War is the war between the mighty Band Of Brothers and the grand coalition of Red Alliance and GoonSwarm, aka The RedSwarm Federation.

Something Russian

Our tale began three years ago, when the Something Awful forumites began to appear in Eve space under the moniker of “GoonSwarm”. The Goons were rapidly drawn into a major war with the old and then superior Band Of Brothers (henceforth BoB), a conflict which set the mood for much of the animosity that was to follow. The Goons suffered heavily in this initial encounter, and both sides were set to be at odds for the years that followed. When BoB moved on to find other targets, the Something Awful armies regrouped and looked around for a suitable ally for their future exploits. It’s the consequences of this conflict that we are still seeing play out in the battles of Eve to this day. That, and the masterful play by a group of talented Russian players.

In the early part of 2006 BoB had been engaged in a long territorial war against the largest military-industrial bloc in the game, Ascendant Frontier. The thousands of players who made up that bloc were no match for two thousand hardened BoB pilots, and the bulky empire rapidly began to crumble once BoB’s pilots begun their assault. It’s not hard to see why BoB would want to attack the biggest alliance in the game: the riches were there for the taking, and the alliance leader, one Cyvvok, piloted the first (and then only) Titan class ship in the game. It was a giant behemoth that has been valued in real world cash at around £4000. BoB seized the first Titan kill in controversial circumstances, and sealed the fate of Ascendent Frontier.

With the highest-profile kill of all time under their belts, BoB were riding high. With Ascendant Frontier defeated BoB were able to begin setting themselves up as Roman-styled imperialists. With a nod to the classic tactics of history, vassal alliances were installed in the conquered territories. Right across the map smaller alliances sided with BoB, or paid rent to be able to exploit the resources of the BoB station systems. By this time the military masterminds had dominion over eight regions, which was the largest single empire since the opening months of the game. The money poured in and BoB cemented a reputation for being the most effective fighting force in the Eve universe.

While the vassals made money and the industrial corps produced capital ships, the drilled, trained BoB military began to look for another target. This slight delay in identifying and attacking this other target was possibly where BoB’s momentum stalled. Their defeat of Ascendant Frontier had been gloriously profitable, but while they consolidated their conquests RedSwarm was rapidly growing in power and support. BoB, failing to capitalise on the alliance that was already arrayed against the RedSwarm fleets, would end up facing their old enemies on their own.

At this early stage of the war, in the summer of 2006, much of the rest of the game had aligned against the Russians, and Red Alliance had been pushed back to a single station. In August an alliance consisting of perhaps ten thousand pilots fielded a 500-man fleet to take the system. I was part of that fleet, and seeing several hundred people in the same teamspeak channel, as well dozens of capital ships heading out from a single station gave me some perspective on what the Reds have achieved by beating them back. After a weekend of constant fighting at “the Siege of C-J6,” the allies withdrew. The game mechanics, they argued, made their losses too great to continue. Lag and disconnects took too much of a toll on the immense gangs for the battle to come out in their favour.

From that point on the Russians would gain unstoppable military inertia. The coalition designed to drive Red Alliance the game had failed, and the hard-working Russians made sure to capitalise on that fact. After some extensive talks, initiated by Russian commanders, they were joined by their GoonSwarm partners. Both alliances would expand rapidly, while also signing up formidable allies such as the feared southern alliance, Against All Authorities. The alliances – most notably Veritas Immortalis and Lokta Volterra – that had previously been aligned against RedSwarm would begin to fall. By Christmas 2006 RedSwarm had found their stride and valuable station systems were being captured weekly. Station by station the allies faltered and then fell. Perhaps if BoB had intervened at this point and joined the fight then RedSwarm might have been beaten back. But it was not to be. Once great alliances such as were stripped of their territories and forced to retreat.

Eventually the RedSwarm began to encroach on the territories BoB had taken from Ascendant Frontier and BoB high command decided it was time to fully engage. The masters of Eve launched a massive assault on the RedSwarm systems and the war, that is still ongoing [as of early 2008], was underway.

Empire Building

The conflict that was to follow pulled in a dozen other alliances, and would see a vast coalition arrayed against the previously unbeatable BoB empire. Where once it had been Red Alliance that faced a ten-thousand man force, soon it would be Band Of Brothers. The alliance, supremely assured in its talents, had come to be seen as arrogant and worth fighting simply because they were in a position of power. At the height of the war more than half of Eve’s PvP players were allied in the war against Band Of Brothers. Not that the great PvPers were cowed, for a while it looked as if the war could go either way. The northern alliances, led by the powerful “D2” were to open up a war against BoB on a second flank during spring 2007 – a tactic that ultimately proved costly for them, as BoB killed their titan and knocked them back. It wasn’t until the most recent months of the Great War that the northern powers returned and began to take territory from the exhausted Band Of Brothers. RedSwarm pressed on, and stations began to fall. The BoB blue was disappearing from the map.

Tristan Day, one of BoB’s most experienced commanders, observed that there had been something of a political goldrush in all the major players aligning against his alliance. “The most interesting thing has been watching groups of people taking the “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” mantra a bit too far,” he said. “There are people aligned against us that are [allied] to each other that really do not like each other at all. It’s quite amusing.” This is perhaps understandable in the light of the third front of the war: Eve’s forums. The propaganda, arguments, trolling, and general lunacy has seen gamers put about as much effort into BoB-war threads on the forum as they have into the game itself. Eve’s players have become obsessed with the machinations of their PvP elite, and each announcement or battle-cry is seized up by enemies and allies alike.

So let’s take a moment to illustrate why gamers become so enthralled by all this. To best understand the scale of this sweeping war, take a look at the maps across the pages of this feature [Don't have these to put online, sorry! Best I can do is recommend a player-made set of maps here]. The annotations detail who did what, and when, and provide an idea of the flow and ebb of the war over the past year. On the final map, for example, you can see that Band Of Brothers now face a position that as astonishingly like the one faced by Red Alliance eighteen months ago.

It’s been fascinating to watch not only Eve’s history repeating itself, but events in the war shadowing the kinds of events we’ve seen from war in the real world. As I mentioned previously, BoB we quick to install vassals or “renters” in their unused regions. They might have held sovereignty but their attention, and their fleets, were elsewhere. It’s a classic empire-build strategy, that has been in use for centuries. RedSwarm have employed similar tactics, albeit in creating space for allied forces. Help out the Federation and you’ll be rewarded in territory, as well as military support.

Most recently, however, there has been another outbreak of parallel histories: the internal civil war, and alliance with outside powers. This has happened dozens of times during wars across history (from the wars of the Greek States to the French Revolution) where once-allied powers have suddenly turned on their fellows under the shadow of a much larger conflict. Just after Christmas 2007 BoB lost their strongest ally, when the huge consortium of pilots for hire known as Mercenary Coalition declared BoB’s second home region of Period Basis (the other being Delve) to be their own. Tortuga, as the rebel empire was to call itself, tore a hole in what was left of BoB’s central powerbase. The end, it seemed, was at hand. As I write this BoB are being forced back into a single region, having lost most of their territory to the swarm Northern and Goon forces. The fighting, as intense as ever, could see BoB lose it all.

What Endgame?

What is perhaps been most fascinating about the continuing war is the stream war stories – the tales of commitment and tenacity from both sides, over the months. Whoever you talk to, they’ll have a story of how their fleet mounted a 48-hour continuous defence of a single system, or how they set alarm clocks at 4am so they could be up to finish of an enemy installation when the time came about, or how they tricked the enemy into losing some priceless piece of hardware.

Lessons were learned, week after week. BoB commander Tristan Day told me that much of what his alliance learned was focused on how to manage large groups of people and keep morale high, rather than simply mastering the game itself: “Primarily that you to keep participation up, which is critical for space holding and conquest. You need to keep Eve fun. It doesn’t have to be fun in Eve itself, but when you’re all on teamspeak you must make sure people are enjoying themselves.”

It can be tough to feel like you’re having fun when you spend hours waiting for something to happen, or when your assets get blown up because your fleet just had to go to bed.

Day, like many other commanders in the game, is well aware that his team has to strike balance between military efficiency and simply having a good time. “Whilst we run a very militaristic chain of command in BoB we make sure that we remember that Eve is, after all, “just” a game. The best game I’ve ever had the honor of playing, but a game nonetheless. If anything you must learn not to get attached to your virtual assets, you can’t take them out of EvE, after all.”

Nevertheless people do take the game very seriously, and those arguments held on the Eve forums are penned with attitudes ranging from mere playfulness to terrifying, hysterical bitterness. The “BoB thread” became legend on the Eve forums, because they would almost always attract absurd egos, unlikely insults, and frenzied propaganda from both parties. The exchange of words left many people feeling unhappy. The nature of insulting “smack-talk” by players both in and out of the game has left a mark on the game, and on the recollections of the players. But there have been deeper problems too, such as allegations of corruption on the part of CCP itself, the developers of the game. It was these meta-game conflicts, all of which arose from the war, that led the CCP to set up a player Ombudsman and oversight committee – unprecedented in gaming – to make sure that developers could not abuse their power in the future.

In asking Day how he now feels about the war today, there was sense of residual displeasure at the actions of the Goons, and the CCP developer who scandalised his own alliance: “There are two parts to my answer, one which involves the initial war against Goons alone. It’s fuelled by their incredibly distasteful laughing at the real life death of a fellow Eve gamer. Something that I still find quite distasteful, especially as the man’s father plays Eve. The second part, and indeed the main driving force outside of our own in-game belligerence and aggression over the last four years, was the “t20 Dev BPO” scandal.” This, just to explain, was the allegations by Goon that BoB had been helped out by developers, allegations that turned out to be true, at least in part. Day continues: “I think I can safely say that all of us are pretty disgusted that t20, who was and remains a good friend, would do such a thing and, even more so, that a professional company like CCP would even allow him to publicise it. RedSwarm Federation used this as a big factor to draw in probably 80% of the military 0.0 residents against us to push us back to Delve.”

Strategic Mistakes

While BoB’s own previous chest-beating probably had something to do with the Goons being able to rally support against the previous heavyweight champions, it’s fair to say that the scandal did nothing to help BoB’s reputation as tough, meta-gaming alliance that would stop at nothing to achieve their victories. The Goon commander Isaiah Houston is fairly forthright in his opinions about this: “BoB’s sense of arrogance and superiority ended up killing their more worthwhile and useful allies,” says Houston. “At the same time we were able to unite with Northern friends and work for a common goal.”

Houston is well pleased with the way his once-wild horde of Something Awful forumites has handled itself in the war: “There have been some minor strategic mistakes along the way, but nothing absolutely critical. I really feel as though we’ve done an exemplary job throughout this war. You have to understand, at the beginning things were very much not in our favor; BoB was the oldest, richest, and had the most experience at this sort of thing.” Now, of course, Goon hold a vast tract of space and are arriving at the gates of BoB’s home systems.

Nevertheless, despite their current dire straits after a year of war, Day is philosophical about BoB’s position: “At the end of the day the end result is the same: we’re getting a lot of combat without having to do any travel. As much as it annoys me that CCP allowed all of our achievements prior to that date to be rubbished by one persons actions, we’re having more fun now than at any time ever before… so we’re not complaining.” [In fact soon after the piece was written BoB killed a Red Alliance titan and threw their enemies back, restaking their claim on the regions of Delve and Querious and ushering in several months of relative stability.]

So, taking the long view that we started with: was the war simply about Goon getting revenge for those initial, lost conflicts in the early days of Eve? Perhaps, but Houston says the Goon motivation was more about carrying out their general mandate as the gaming world’s most excellent griefers, than simply revenge: “It was about griefing the oldest and most established players in the game, making them eat their own words just happened to be the best way of doing that. We’ve had some scores to settle along the way, it’s true, but really the impetus has just been us staying true to our roots as Goons.”

And would our BoB commander do it all again, given the chance? “In a heartbeat,” says Day. “Only better.”

[Band Of Brothers are currently conducting a new campaign "MAX" which is doing serious damage to the northern powerbloc that had previously aligned itself to RedSwarm. The Goons and their allies have not yet made a significant response.]

Thanks to Roburky for the screenshots.

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Gravatar AFan says:

I think the developers are behind all of this. Damn smart to think of these stuff to keep all you mmoers still paying.

September 9th, 2008 at 11:18 am

Gravatar Jim Rossignol says:

They are behind all of it in the sense that they created a game in which is was (just about) possible.

September 9th, 2008 at 11:22 am

Gravatar Jochen Scheisse says:

Interesting read. How do they find the time?

September 9th, 2008 at 11:24 am

Gravatar AFan says:

No, I think they planned the whole thing. Just give a nudge here and there when the time comes along. And there you have 250,000+ people playing for several years.

September 9th, 2008 at 11:26 am

Gravatar lukasz says:

Afan. I really doubt they planned it. They just gave the tools to achieve that.

eh. Not enough time. I so want to play this game.

September 9th, 2008 at 11:42 am

Gravatar phanteh says:

Good article Jim.

You know, you and your articles over the years are almost solely responsible for my current eve addiction. I put it off for as long as I could and now it’s too late D:

September 9th, 2008 at 11:44 am

Gravatar Mr Pink says:

I’m not an Eve player (don’t have the time), but I really enjoyed this when it appeared in PCG. I’d like to see more pieces describing stories from games, like Tom Francis’ Gal Civ diaries and this, it seems to be a fairly untapped area.

September 9th, 2008 at 11:46 am

Gravatar Mike says:

Wondrous. I think the closing sentiments were great too – people play it for kicks, at the end of the day. And I can’t think of a bigger gaming kick than two years of epic, all-day warfaring.

September 9th, 2008 at 11:55 am

Gravatar teo says:

I love EVE but I also hate it
Playing it takes up an unjustifiable amount of time and the way you’re incentivized to keep subscribing even when you’re not playing pisses me off

September 9th, 2008 at 11:57 am

Gravatar cullnean says:

good read

September 9th, 2008 at 11:58 am

Gravatar Acosta says:

AFan, you obviously don’t understand how Eve works, at all. Developers had no control about it, as Jim says, they just made a game where such thing is possible.

Aside of that. One of my favorite pieces of videogame writing ever, loved the original piece for the writing itself and because I felt it showed true passion for the game. Shows the huge, still untapped, potential of MMO as a playfield for drama, conflict and fascinating human behavior and makes me wonder what type of stories we will live in the MMOS of 10 years ahead.

September 9th, 2008 at 12:01 pm

Gravatar Willem says:

I’d love to play this, but so many things are holding me back. Still, a great read.

Might want to include the maps that are mentioned, though.

September 9th, 2008 at 12:06 pm

Gravatar Jonas says:

I’m with Kieron on this one: Most fascinating MMOG that I will never play :(

I read the article when it was in Gamer, and the excellent maps made it even greater. It’s a really good read.

September 9th, 2008 at 12:07 pm

Gravatar Jim Rossignol says:

I can’t put the Gamer maps online, unfortunately, as only the text belongs to me. A couple of Eve players mapped the conflict, including this one.

September 9th, 2008 at 12:12 pm

Gravatar James G says:

I loved the article, and it gave me a strong fondness for a game I know that I’d personally hate. Eve is what MMOs should be, not a single player game which forces you to put up with mindless fools who will more often be an annoyance than a help. (Or perhaps that’s just my anti-social side speaking)

I’d love to see more MMOs where a player can truly make a difference in the world.

September 9th, 2008 at 12:15 pm

Gravatar Nallen says:

For the conflicts in EVE to reach any higher level higher than those described will require a total technical overhaul. The war mechanics CCP put in place are one of EVE’s greatest strengths and its greatest weakness. On a technical level it really is touch and go when things get that big.

That’s why I like the fact CCP are trying to steer the game on a different and in my eyes more rewarding direction – back to it’s roots you could say – and encouraging smaller scale PvP. As it stands right now you wont take a lot of space in a small gang, but you also wont spend 8 hours camping a gate or 20 minutes waiting for your ship to appear when you enter a conflict system. You will however get to actually fight and PvP is the beating heart of EVE (as a certain fast talking pundit recently completely failed to notice.)

September 9th, 2008 at 12:15 pm

Gravatar AFan says:

If the developers didn’t plan it, then they are certainly enjoying it. And why won’t you when you got millions of $$$ of monthly subscription rolling in for something you didn’t plan will happen (since you all say the developers have nothing to do with it, then its likely they didn’t plan it at all). At the end of the day, normal people will feel guilty for spending so much time on it, and the developers are too busy counting their cash to care.

September 9th, 2008 at 12:16 pm

Gravatar Jonas says:

Jim: Aye I know, just wanted to let people who didn’t read the original article know that it was meant to come with awesome maps. It’s still a fine article.

And man… that is one pretty extensive picture chronicle, innit?

September 9th, 2008 at 12:16 pm

Gravatar James G says:

@AFan

I’m not sure I get your point. You seem to begrudge the developers for making money because people enjoy their game.

September 9th, 2008 at 12:21 pm

Gravatar Acosta says:

@James G, AFan is crearly on the “MMOs are a waste of time and their developers are demons who design devilish tools to make sure people keep enslaved to them” stand. There are lots like him (which is always amusing to see in a videogames discussion).

September 9th, 2008 at 12:29 pm

Gravatar Jim Rossignol says:

It is a major issue though – we get lots of people on here, gamers too, posting about how they’ve seen people’s lives ruined by obsessions with MMOs. They do have negative consequences and – like everything else – need to be enjoyed in moderation. I’m sure that there were plenty of people wrapped up in the Great War who just spent too long playing Eve. Not that they didn’t get a kick out of it – I love spending an entire day hunting enemies in Eve, and will do so at any opportunity – often to the detriment of my domestic life!

September 9th, 2008 at 12:33 pm

Gravatar Blake says:

EVE is a fascinating game, but it quickly became boring to me because of some design flaws. The downtime while participating in fleet ops is in the multiple hour range; it’s entirely possible to be in a war zone for twelve hours straight with absolutely nothing happening. On the other hand, because different alliances come from different time zones (RA, I’m looking at you), they could gain military advantage simply by being online at awkward times and killing player-owned structures while the owner is asleep or at work. You could log on to find that you’d lost a ton of things while most of your alliance was offline.

Mining was also terrible.

September 9th, 2008 at 12:40 pm

Gravatar Jonas says:

Blake: In fact it’s quite likely that RA – like Russia – spans at least 9 time zones all on its own ;)

But yeah that’s interesting. The story about the titan that was destroyed while its owner was offline is just… a bit sad, really – in the original sense of the word, not the synonym for “pathetic” that it’s somehow become.

September 9th, 2008 at 12:46 pm

Gravatar Jim Rossignol says:

Blake, you are right. It’s also a superb (often frustrating) skirmishing game, however. I’ve pretty much retired from alliance stuff and run my corp (recruiting!) as a small band of PvPing skirmishers.

September 9th, 2008 at 12:47 pm

Gravatar Jonas says:

Are you open for newbies, Jim? I think a friend of mine still owes me a trial invite.

September 9th, 2008 at 12:48 pm

Gravatar AFan says:

I have to agree with Jim’s previous comment on the problem of MMOs. He could have written a similar article on heroin 10 years ago and it will look exactly like this. Let’s compare EVE with the mentioned drug.

-You get kicks from it.
-Things happens that is not real (more specifically, virtual war).
-Costly
-Have the potential to destroy lives.

Only difference is one is illegal in most countries, the other not yet. So if Acosta cannot see the problem there, then I’m not the evil one, he is, by pushing more people into an addictive, life destroying contraption.

Its a great article of course, just not with the best intentions. MMO should not be encouraged.

September 9th, 2008 at 12:49 pm

Gravatar cullnean says:

i just arange time with the wife, she knows that she will be ignorned on a wedensday unless its an emergency, also eve alows advancement with out the grind, ecespically in a good corp where ships and the like arnt much of an issue.

also saying just mmo’s are addictive is wrong i know people who play ms filght sim at every concivable oportunity and has spent a fortune on equipment for it, more than i have spent in 5 years of mmo playing.

September 9th, 2008 at 12:50 pm

Gravatar StarkulfR says:

What a cracking article, I never got to see the original, so I’m glad to have the opportunity to see it.

September 9th, 2008 at 12:57 pm

Gravatar Okami says:

@AFan. You’ve obviously never taken Heroin nor do you know people who take it. Yeah, there are all these jokes about Evercrack and World of Warcrack, but there are serious differences between smack and an MMO – physical addiction beeing one of them.

It’s now evident that you’re an avid opponent of MMOs and are on some kind of personal internet crusade against them. Which is perfectly fine with me, since the only thing that I even remotely enjoy about MMOs is reading Mr. Roosignol’s Eve stories.

But you might want to consider, if this is really the right place for you. What you’re doing here is the same as going to the bathroom in a techno club and telling everybody that drugs are bad and that it’s pathetic and dangerous to take them. Sure, you might be right, but you’re neither making yourself very popular, nor are you making any difference at all.

September 9th, 2008 at 1:01 pm

Gravatar AFan says:

I don’t see MMO as my opponent. Its too unworthy. And I’m not the only one who see the problem. Scroll up a bit and you’ll see the author agreeing with what I’ve said.

September 9th, 2008 at 1:04 pm

Gravatar NeoTheo says:

Nice article, enjoyed the read, i have to admit though i am a little dissapointed that bob’s ultimate victory was not chronicled here. (suppose its a matter of opinion)

meaning, after the loss of PB to MC/KIA/Etc, the stand bob took in delve that ultimatly saw them driving the goonies back and then the followup attack on the direct betrayers was a thing of utter awsomesauce ;)

i used to hate BoB, but i grew to become a huge fan boy.

mainly due to the fact that whilst staring down the barrel of defeat they remained good humored on the forums and eventually drove back all the people attacking them.

not only that then they wiped MC off the map and consigned them to eve history.

still nice story Jim, thanks.

September 9th, 2008 at 1:06 pm

Gravatar Cope says:

@Jim Rossignol, this is why I quit EVE. I played from beta through to early 2007 in Stain Alliance (and later just MASS corp.), but it was getting out of control. PVP is especially time consuming, most of your time is spent leading up to a big battle. We’re easily talking 3 or 4 hours before anything at all happens, and after spending 3 hours flying deep into enemy territory to attack an installation, the last thing you want to do is log off. Not only do you miss the action, but tomorrow your ship is stuck 30 jumps inside enemy space, making a lone trip back in anything larger than a cruiser a very possible suicide run.

There was also the marked changed in PVP over the course of release to 2007. The first Great War of EVE was the most fun, Stain Alliance vs Curse Alliance. This was back before all this POS, capital ship nonsense. Just good honest 40 vs 40 cruiser fights, with battleships slowly entering the scene. Every day you could log on, gather a group of 20 pilots and be all but guaranteed a fight within 20 jumps. Now it’s a LOT of waiting, and a LOT of lag. The game simply can’t handle capital fleets and POS’s. 95% of a major PVP operation is spent sitting near a gate, waiting for something to happen. The other 5% is a relatively short battle with lag so bad, you may as well just make a sandwich while you wait for your ship to respond to a command.

It’s a bit like Planetside. EVE is a great game, with great potential, but a few dumb design decisions along the way have dragged the whole thing down. And it’s just way too time consuming for me.

September 9th, 2008 at 1:08 pm

Gravatar NeoTheo says:

@cope, stop getting involved in big wars, lowsec and pirating is awsome fun still, i rarely have large blob fights these days, its just the 0,0 carebears that suffer this rubbish.

September 9th, 2008 at 1:13 pm

Gravatar Bursar says:

I’ve not played for a few years. Does anyone know what happened to the Curse and Xetic alliances?

September 9th, 2008 at 1:16 pm

Gravatar CheneysGun says:

I was in the Lokta Volterra alliance fighting the RedSwarm. I was not in the chain of command, just one of the guys. But if you asked me, BoB wasn’t late to the party. The problem was they threw there forces at RedSwarm within Lokta Volterra or -LV- space. That in turn allowed RedSwarm to concentrate forces and hasten the end of -LV-. They should have opened another front splitting the Reds.

When -LV- fell apart some of the corps pulled together and joined the MC campaign in the North crushing D2. It gave me a chance to rise up in the chain of command only to learn it is full of greed for things that don’t even exist. Not impressed with how good people can be changed in that manor, I headed back to empire. Carebearing since. Maybe someday I will head back into the wilds but for now I am content with my hermit ways.

September 9th, 2008 at 1:22 pm

Gravatar Cope says:

@NeoTheo, there are still PVP things you can do that avoid all this blob war stuff, that’s true. Lets just say the design decisions that make blob warfare a requirement to own any territory in 0.0 has left a bad taste in my mouth. And I just don’t have the time anymore :(

@Bursar, Curse Alliance dissolved after an internal squabble. Can’t remember the names of those involved, but basically there was a power struggle within the leadership that led to the alliance breaking up. Xetic was overrun by (former) Stain Alliance entities. Someone else could probably fill you in on what happened there.

September 9th, 2008 at 1:23 pm

Gravatar RichSC says:

I introduced Sesfan/Isaiah to this game.
He now spends most of his time telling me how he “is very important on the internet”.

September 9th, 2008 at 1:27 pm

Gravatar Bursar says:

My Eve Story… (in which I was never more than the sidekick)

We were in Xetic Alliance at the time and getting our arses handed to us during the Curse war.

I had a friend at work who played in game as Nepereta. He twinked up an Armageddon with T2 Beams and the crystals that boost their range and stability and lock on time so that he could hit frigate size ships at 200km as soon as they came appeared.

He then took an interceptor and spent an entire weekend painstakingly bookmarking multiple jump spots around Curse warpgates. He spent hours doing this. Bookmarks were laid out in an intricate grid pattern… planned on graph paper!

Then he set up in his Geddon 200km from the jumpgates and started to blow up anyone coming through. If anyone tried to close the range he’d jump to another point 200km on the other side of the warpgate and continue. No matter what angle people approached him from he always had a point he could jump to to reallign and keep shooting.

Hi kept this up for 2 weeks and scored plenty of kills. Interceptors, Haulers, Cruisers and Battleships. We’d sometimes help him out by having haulers at safespots and jumping in to loot the cans from the destroyed ships.

Small fleets were trying to get him for a while but could never pin him down. He could take them down as they approached, and if there were too many to kill he could jump to an alternate position and shoot the rest of them. The smack talk in system often got a bit heated.

Eventually he got a bit cocky and stayed in one place for too long and a Curse cloaked ship managed to get near enough to act as a jump point for a fleet to scramble him and take him down.

I was always quite impressed with how many people worked to take him down. He managed to tie up a fair few people who got obsessed with killing him.

On the whole Xetic Alliance wasn’t that great at combat but our little harrassment team was great fun :)

September 9th, 2008 at 1:32 pm

Gravatar Bursar says:

I just used ‘The Curse War’ in a forum post. That’s quite worrying….

More worrying I guess will be how many people know what I was talking about.

Edit: Cheers Cope.

The history of the Eve Alliances is oddly fascinating. It’s like a weird microcosm of world history.

September 9th, 2008 at 1:34 pm

Gravatar CheneysGun says:

@RichSC
My son (17 yrsold) plays the game. The way he tells it, he is THE best killer in EVE. :)

To ward of the “eve is heroin” peeps… Eve is a thinking game, just go to the eve forums and look for a eve math thread for better understanding of this. It isn’t Halo or anything like that….. You need to learn alot in this game. My son spends some good hours on it but just as easily spends hours on his bike. This is a game I want my son to play. He has gone from just trying to shoot things, FPS like to balanceing earning isk with the shooty. He has better focus on the details in and out of game for a 17 year old thanks to Eve. He has not tried to pod me. That is the best part. If he tried, I would seriousy gank his social life. :)

Further more, for $11-$14 a month, seriously cheap entertainment in todays standards.

September 9th, 2008 at 1:48 pm

Gravatar zergl says:

Jim, the CRII map is totally outdated.

Try the verite one:
http://go-dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Verite/influence.png

edit: doesn’t have the shiny powerblocks summary, though.

September 9th, 2008 at 1:59 pm

Gravatar Stella says:

With all EVE has going for it, it would probably be the most popular MMO on the market if it was any fun at all. I would venture to say that it’s probably the #1 MMO amongst people that have never played it, and that’s largely due to stories like this one.

It’s almost cruel to mislead people into thinking that the game plays anything like it sounds like it might. There’s all this mention of humongous fleet batlles that change the tide of history and so forth, but the fact that fleet battles are largely broken because of lag is brushed over. That’s right, one of the main attractions of this game is broken and has been since I played for the first time (about 5 years ago).

Not trying to knock the story. It’s well-written and interesting and you’re obviously passionate about the game. I just thi9nk it’s false advertising to an extent.

September 9th, 2008 at 2:00 pm

Gravatar Willem says:

The thing that’s luring me towards EVE is the politics and the wars. These aren’t just ordinary MMO wars, where you have a set number of factions who are always at war with the other factions. In EVE, the factions, the wars, the intruige, it’s all player-made. You’re not just following the designer’s path. If you’re at war with someone, you have a reason to be at war with that alliance, as opposed to other MMO’s.

Alas, as has been said before, this is a fascinating MMOG that I will never play.

September 9th, 2008 at 2:00 pm

Gravatar Diogo Ribeiro says:

I’m not an EVE player; which is to say, I will never be an MMO player. But these diaries have been incredibly interesting in detailing game – and gamer – stories. Excellent through and through, Mr. Jim-O :)

September 9th, 2008 at 2:08 pm

Gravatar cullnean says:

@stella

so becaues you dont like it no one else will?

and basing an argument about an mmo from 5 year’s ago is streching it a little

September 9th, 2008 at 2:18 pm

Gravatar Stella says:

@cullnean

No I played it off an on up until about six months ago.

And it’s not that I think no one will like the game, obviously they do. It’s just that I see a lot of EVE-worship on gaming forums and websites, and people that have never played it sing it’s praises everywhere. I feel a somewhat irrational urge to tell people it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

Tbh the game ended for me when they added Warp to Zero, making gate camping the be-all-and-end-all of EVE combat. But that’s a different story.

September 9th, 2008 at 2:27 pm

Gravatar cullnean says:

@stella

my apoligies it wasnt quite clear from your post how long you had been playing, also could be worse we could react like warhammer players!

September 9th, 2008 at 2:40 pm

Gravatar Acosta says:

Jim, I’m not denying MMO addiction is an issue. But I think many people want to give MMOs some properties they don’t have to justify their “addiction” and others are simply misinformed to the point of making flippant comparisons with real drugs (as seen here).

It’s a very important issue, but I think it would need some serious academic work from different fields to start answering questions. I am not refusing a psychological effect coming from playing MMO (or any other competitive multiplayer game), but there are social, and even philosophical aspects to take on count: things like being part of a close community, the feeling of achievement, or the hard fact of preferring a virtual world over the real world… maybe this studio could even lead to some nasty conclusions about the lows of our reality and day by day.

It deserves a respectful and deep studio, but I am convinced this are side effects of designs that embraces cooperation, immersion and long term objectives, not something that a game studio would purposely “add” to the game as they were drug laboratories.

September 9th, 2008 at 2:44 pm

Gravatar Half Broken Glass says:

Real cRPGs are about freedom and choices&consequences. There are three I can name. Three real representants of a genre which boasts hundreds of thousands of titles.

Similiarily, if you’d want to look for a real MMORPG, you’d look for possibilities. And there are only two MMORPGs I can name which really give you possibilites. One of them is Eve.

September 9th, 2008 at 2:49 pm

Gravatar Bobsy says:

I was hooked to WoW for a good long while. While I can’t say it ever began to dominate my life, it certainly dominated my gaming time. Quite literally, it was the only game I played. Since detaching myself from it, I’ve been playing more games, and enjoying gaming a lot more.

September 9th, 2008 at 2:51 pm

Gravatar mandrill says:

Jim, you wouldn’t be interested in taking on an in game apprentice would you? I’ll pay isk for the priviledge (of course how much isk I make will be entirely dependant on how good a teacher you are.)

September 9th, 2008 at 3:16 pm

Gravatar MHoward says:

I do love reading stories like this, while at the same time knowing I would hate playing the actual game.

It’s one of those like The Sims, or Total War, or the Pathologic articles posted a while ago, where people’s tales far exceed the enjoyment I could get out of playing. Actually, this seems to be a growing phenomenon where I’m concerned, does this happen for anyone else?

September 9th, 2008 at 3:43 pm

Gravatar rei says:

That was a fascinating article; well done. I took a brief stint in EVE a few years ago, and when I read things like this I kinda wish I’d stuck with it instead of sinking so much time into WoW, which doesn’t really offer such grand experiences.

I recall reading about a murder over an EVE dispute in some magazine (New Scientist maybe) a year or two ago. Is that the death that was referred to in the article? It’s tragic when people lose touch with reality to that extent. Same goes for the SA goons.

September 9th, 2008 at 3:50 pm

Gravatar Bursar says:

@MHoward

Games as spectator sport seems to be growing. I used to enjoy downloading Starcraft replays of the top players, and there is very watchable ingame stuff from various games getting put on youtube and the like all the time.

There’s an article idea in there i’m sure. We’d need a talented writer to do it justice… anyone know anyone like that? ;)

September 9th, 2008 at 3:51 pm

Gravatar Lu-Tze says:

@AFan: Heroin doesn’t teach you Maths, Economics and Management. The reason many people call EVE a “Second Job” is because it bears all the hallmarks of the same skills and activities you do in many office jobs, albeit swapping your cubicle for something with a few more lasers.

Frankly, i’m of the mind that those with addictive personalities are bound to fall into some trap or other, and usually end up somewhere on a line between drug addict and trainspotter. Industrial Revolution has granted us free time, and I can think of far worse ways for people to utilise it than EVE (see everyone’s preoccupation with television for example).

September 9th, 2008 at 4:14 pm

Gravatar Jim Rossignol says:

Saying there’s a problem with MMO addiction is not the same as equating it with heroin, folks! As anyone who has encountered serious drug problem will tell you – it’s quite a different grade of addiction.

Crucially: MMOs are at their best when they’re focused on human interaction. It’s the social thing that makes Eve so rewarding, and the reason why I continue to play.

September 9th, 2008 at 4:16 pm

Gravatar cullnean says:

also nobody has mentioned the “piracy” that is rife in EVE!

sorry couldnt help myself :)

September 9th, 2008 at 4:48 pm

Gravatar spd from Russia says:

eeeh the future is now. ppl spending time waging wars in a virtual space, instead of participating in real-world conflicts. I guess its only good

September 9th, 2008 at 4:51 pm

Gravatar Kelduum says:

@Jonas

Theres a 21 day free trial via Steam, or 14 days if you want one via someone else who plays it (let me know if you want one).

I’d recommend (shameless pimping now) joining someone like us, Eve University for the first couple of months (shameless pimping over), as the tutorials don’t even scratch the surface, and the learning curve is far more like a particularly vertical cliff.

The offer goes for anyone else in Eve of course – there are 1300 or so of us, so always someone around to answer questions.

September 9th, 2008 at 4:55 pm

Gravatar Ging says:

I play eve with the guys I work with, we’ve got our little corp in the arse end of safe-ish space (we’re all still relatively newbish). But it’s entertaining to head out together and completely fail to find any trouble (we’re all aware that as soon as something even remotely scary appears, the majority of us will be running away anyhow).

September 9th, 2008 at 6:12 pm

Gravatar Dreamhacker says:

Great article, I would love to see more of this kind of writing!

September 9th, 2008 at 6:51 pm

Gravatar Rufus T. Firefly says:

YouTube is blocked by work, or I’d post the videos that GoonSwarm made about the conflict.

BoB wanted to wipe Goons off the map, said they had no place in 0.0, and then reaped the whirlwind.

EVE is boring, playing Goonfleet is not.

September 9th, 2008 at 7:14 pm

Gravatar kadayi says:

Fascinating reading (though it seems at times some sentences trail off or are unfinished Jim). I’d really have love to get into Eve, but the whole thing is too much of a time drain these days, and tempting as it is to slip back into another MMO I know from experience other aspects of my life would suffer, and I think the present MMO model only really supports the dedicated.

September 9th, 2008 at 7:54 pm

Gravatar Ergates says:

Nice to the the Great Wildlands area is still a warzone. That’s where I first tasted war, and I’m pretty sure it was still contested when I left Eve (nearly 3 years ago I think!)

September 9th, 2008 at 8:28 pm

Gravatar EyeMessiah says:

I enjoyed the article. Makes me want to play EVE, against my better judgement!

That said, I have grown to distrust “cool things that happened in a game” type stories. After a few hours of actually playing the game in question it often becomes clear that my experience doesn’t match up to the experience that some other person apparently had. I find this particularly to be the case with MMOs.

Describing the top 10 coolest things that happened in a game, using powerful dramatic language is great way to get me enthused about an MMO, but after playing it for while myself I am sure to wish that you had begun your story with “After 20 hours of grind, mind numbing travel, seemingly random instadeath and inventory struggle …”

I don’t mean to complain about this article in particular, just about the incompatibility between me and this type of article more generally.

September 9th, 2008 at 8:53 pm

Gravatar Eschatos says:

@Half Broken Glass

What would the other one be?

September 9th, 2008 at 10:26 pm

Gravatar Ian says:

Being addicted to an MMO is much like being addicted to watching movies or hanging out with friends at a bar. It’s a social, habitual addiction, not a physical one. Quitting an MMO in an attempt to break your “addiction” will not cause physically debilitating symptoms, like quitting heroin or cocaine will. That comparison verges upon the absurd.

I was in Goonfleet and probably would have stuck around for more than a month, but even when you have a ready source of PVP/fleet combat fun it takes far too long to get to the battle, and to recover from your losses. I don’t mean financial losses so much as the inordinate amount of time it takes to pick up a new ship and outfit it if you haven’t got an infrastructure for it in place.

That’s less of a problem with EVE and more of a problem with the manner in which games like it are necessarily constructed.

September 9th, 2008 at 10:36 pm

Gravatar Konky Dong XVII: Things Happen That is Not Real says:

The MMO = Heroine arguement is amusing. I guess I’m a lot closer to death’s doorstep than I thought. I was going to take the latter half of next week off to play some Warhammer Online with my buddies but I think I’ll pass on that now. I don’t want to OD or anything.

September 9th, 2008 at 11:39 pm

Gravatar Aftershock says:

Sigh, if i didnt spend so much time gaming already, and had a steady income, i’d be more than willing to try out Eve.

TF2 already takes up so much of my time, that i need to cut back.

September 10th, 2008 at 12:28 am

Gravatar 5 years sober says:

First off I’d like to say great article, I was in Delve during the war. I didn’t do very much fighting for several reasons, mainly I’ve had enough of slide-show PvP from 3 years of SW:G and I didn’t have the time to dedicate to it that it required.

More importantly, the short sightedness and holier than tho attitude of some of the posters in this thread is, and rightfully should be, downright offensive. For someone to think that drug addiction and video games have anything in common and to somehow draw a parallel between the two is absurd and an offense to my intelligence. Unless you have an underlying medical condition playing video games to much will not kill you. I should know I spent 4 days in intensive care from a drug overdose, I had 2 heart attacks and almost died in front of my father. The night I regained consciousness I watched someone across the hall from me die. To say the experience didn’t change my life would be a disservice to everyone who has helped me win my battle with drug addiction.

5 years sober

September 10th, 2008 at 7:07 am

Gravatar Muzman says:

Cool stuff. Makes Eve really intruiging for me (although it sounds like it’s too much like real life. The high up politicos sit around negotiating while all the fighters have to wait and get bored. Things scale up so much very little needs to actually happen. That’s what it sounds like anyway.)
Where does that amazing espionage caper, where some guys destroyed a huge corporation from the inside, fit into all this?

September 10th, 2008 at 7:27 am

Gravatar Asuri Kinnes says:

I work security for a private hospital here in the states. I’ve seen drug addicts for the last 15 years, and I’ve carried some to the Morgue. Trying to compare video games to drugs is insultingly offensive to people coping with drug addiction.

MMO “addicts” do suffer from stunted social lives, and that’s a shame. However, it does not cause them to steal, assault or rob to support the addiction…

Wonderful article, we have a Corps member who posted it on our forums (Eve University) as a good article for the new players to Eve to read to get an idea of whats happening…

Nice read.

Asuri Kinnes, Eve University, Eve-Online
http://www.eve-ivy.com

September 10th, 2008 at 2:34 pm

Gravatar rocka says:

been in this war for a long time it sounds mutch more fun than it is. :) also cope we miss ya

September 11th, 2008 at 10:59 pm

Gravatar Repsode says:

Having read your articles on EVE both here and on Eurogamer tempted me into the game. I’ve played a good few MMOs and have always seemed to play relentlessly for about 3 months probably verging on obsession but ultimately burned out/ realised what would happen if I continued.

Eve’s been a different experience. While I still have a compulsion to play daily I’ve been playing more methodically than usual. No more than 90 minutes in general thus far. Probably because it gets infuriating by that point. This Love/Hate relationship with it seems to keep my enjoyment healthy so it might be an MMO I’ll stick with.

September 12th, 2008 at 12:49 am

Gravatar Seraphim says:

Great wildlands is still the festering pit of 0.0 sov rejects #1 hangout spot. I use to fly with FDN to protect GW from pirates or the odd alliance that takes up nest here. Fought of CI, infod, -V- and FIX. There were many more but these are those that i can remember off my fingertips.

FDN is more or less the resident of GW, but they have started charging rent for (LOL) npc space to any alliance or corp wanted to looking for a home in GW, which to me is just a way of saying: ” we dont like u, but we wont shoot u unless u pay us”policy.

If u got something against MMOs i suggest u take a sip of your coffee, close this window and take your business elsewhere. This is just an write up about a war in a virtual world. Not a flame forum.

CAOD >>>>>>> this way

September 12th, 2008 at 5:25 am

Gravatar Wisdomlikesilence says:

Ive played eve for 4 years now. The disparity in experience many find between eve as a practical experience and articles like this, comes down to only one important factor: Who you play with.

As a single player game, eve is about as exciting as watching grass grow. However eve is emphatically NOT designed to be a single player game. If it was, why the unsharded server?

Any negative review of eve Ive read has always turned on “mining sucks” or “I was in a starter NPC corp and it sucked”.

Well – of course. These are mind-numbing things to be doing.

But one could similarly complain that LIFE is boring, if you work in a mine, and have no friends.

If you play eve with a corp that has some ‘esprit de corps’ you will find it a very different animal. So go out, make some friends, and get a better job!

That is all.

September 12th, 2008 at 12:38 pm

Gravatar urnotupdated says:

Dude,

You are so late in events. Its September and MAX has been a big failure a few months back already.

Your material is old.

September 12th, 2008 at 5:09 pm

Gravatar cullnean says:

@urnotupdated

ill just quote the first line kk

“At the beginning of 2008 I wrote this feature about an ongoing war within Eve Online for PC Gamer UK”

September 12th, 2008 at 5:13 pm

Gravatar Ephemeral says:

Your article is over 4 months out of date and even then your description of the situation at that time is wrong. You need to pay a bit more attention to the game if you’re going to write about it. Either that, or you can use this as part of your CV for a job at Fox News.

September 12th, 2008 at 9:15 pm

Gravatar Wisdomlikesilence says:

Listen internet kids, the article is good because it takes TIME to write it. ‘Out of date’ is for food and fashion. And RTFOP.

September 12th, 2008 at 9:21 pm

Gravatar Jim Rossignol says:

Ephemeral, did you read the article at all? It mentions it was written at the start of 2008. It makes zero claim to be describing the situation now. It’s a bit like a history book, you know the ones, in that it doesn’t contain things that are happening at the moment.

Its September and MAX has been a big failure a few months back already

.

Eve politics in a nutshell.

September 13th, 2008 at 4:16 pm

Gravatar CryingMinotaur says:

I just read the article with Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack for Gladiator playing in the background, it really helped to enhance the epic feel of the story, especially with the parallels to Roman history and all. Great stuff.

September 13th, 2008 at 11:51 pm

Gravatar mr. getzu says:

Back to something a fan was saying early. It is pretty amusing to read a person defending his belief about something taking so much time away, compairing it with a drug, which by definition is a substance introduced into the body to alter effects of the brain and body. Now, lets look at how many posts were made. If I were to put a name to it, I’d say somone is being mind altered by a simple blog which started with a storyline. The one who comments on all of us, should first comment on his own disabilities to keep a regular life due to the web.

September 14th, 2008 at 4:34 am

Gravatar mr limey says:

to the op.

great story chap, superb. i’ve been playing for over 4 1/2 years now and consider the paltry monthly subscription money very well spent. where else for a few quid can you get such escapism and banter and enjoyment with such a diverse range of people.

eve is mine, and many others’ devout mistress. :-)

September 14th, 2008 at 12:08 pm

Gravatar mr limey says:

@ Wisdomlikesilence

aye mate, you’re right, eve IS designed to be played by people joining up together, forming corporations, alliances etc.

however, that isn’t cast in stone. i’ve played solo for several years now and have just as much fun. owing to very young children, i simply couldn’t devote many hours into the night or morning that i wanted to, so i still play but do my own thing.

there’s plenty others alike me, lol.

September 14th, 2008 at 12:12 pm

Gravatar mr limey says:

@ Jim

mate, the forum trolls have certainly been in here, lol.

just thank them for their comment, it makes them mad :-)

September 14th, 2008 at 12:15 pm

Gravatar Fivetide says:

An excellent article, I’m mining and writing.. after 5 and a half years of playing I still find I learn somthing about the game every time I go to the eve front page. Thanks for your tme and effort.

September 14th, 2008 at 8:24 pm

Gravatar Doooh says:

You forgot everything about the “Federation” part of the RedSwarm Federation…

September 16th, 2008 at 7:54 am

Gravatar C Lord says:

Yeah… Tau Ceti … and also it skipped out the more detailed facts about the Southern Alliances too, including IAC, however, I guess its sometimes easy to overlook the French! ;-) RedSwarm Federation for those reading this who don’t play EvE is made up of RED (Alliance), (Goon) SWARM and (Tau Ceti) FEDERATION.

September 16th, 2008 at 12:16 pm

Gravatar Simon says:

I was lucky enough to start playing EVE at a late stage of the conflict but when I was either brave or intoxicated enough to take a trip into 0.0 space it was intresting to see how it was changing over time. I used to just fly around Period Basis aimlessly in the knowledge that I was safe due to a friendship within the BoB, but when the mercenery coalition took it, I went there and lasted about 20mins before I got blown up by their pilots. Yea it felt crappy but it is just a game, you can lose yourself in it without becoming to addicted to get hung up about online losses.

September 17th, 2008 at 12:48 pm

Gravatar ducky says:

I’m a former player of eve (one of the first player within eve too) – but I closed off my account a couple of months ago – mainly because eve ended up turning into a full time job, rather than a game – and the community is not what it used to be either – it’s now full of what eve players call “wow rejects” (people banned from wow – turning into other mmo, continuing to be stupid) – and in eve they can actually do somethings that litterally bothers people, yet are acceptable within the game (like bumping a ship, so it can not warp out, while npc’s destroy the ship, allowing them to get all the equipement, withou security penalty etc…) – imo, an exploit, but gm’s disagreed – however, several other people agreed and left with me –

Which is one of the real issues with eve – people exploiting are not “punished” as such (example the dev providing bpo’s) – in my books, that was a call for termination – and ban on whoever benefited directly (and knowingly) – instead, they ban the player reporting the issue ( ??? ) –

So yeah, eve’s nowhere near what it used to be – and the amount of players is what is killing it – it was way better when it was STILL a game – and not a second job you have to PAY for -

Another good review is this one: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/208-Eve-Online

September 17th, 2008 at 1:53 pm

Gravatar Toby says:

Just Awesome, I wish I had the time to be a part of it. Of all the MMOs out there EVE is definatly the most appealing to me.
I used to play an old browser based “MMO” called Planetarion, which I found hugely addictive… too addictive. The politics, diplomacy, alliances and War campaigns really did transcend the page of text that showed what was happening.
MMOs are bad they are too fun, and demand too much time. I would play EVE with delight, but my will power is just strong enough to stop me.
I love stuff like this :)

September 18th, 2008 at 3:02 am

Gravatar Bacon says:

“to drive Red Alliance the game”
I accidentally the game?

October 3rd, 2008 at 7:10 pm

Gravatar Conan says:

Amazing stuff… I guess it can only happen in EVE Online.

October 5th, 2008 at 12:19 am

Gravatar Opensource Obscure says:

I’m not an Eve player, but I really enjoyed this piece.

February 5th, 2009 at 2:33 pm

Gravatar Codenemisis says:

RiP BoB
Truly an awsome alliance.

February 6th, 2009 at 12:28 am

Gravatar cwDeici says:

BoB is dead!

All hail Goonswarm!
All hail the Northern Alliance!
All hail the alliance!

February 10th, 2009 at 8:31 am

Gravatar cwDeici says:

All hail Lelouch!

February 10th, 2009 at 8:32 am

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