On November 7th, CCP Games put out a call to highsec players for a live event, there were vague hints of treasures to be gained.
At the same time, CCP Games also put out the call to pirates and nullsec residents to defend their territory against the approaching highsec incursion:
If you’re devious and wicked enough to fight against the forces of good in New Eden, go to systems FD-MLJ or Utopia at 18:50 onward and join the fleets there!
Highsec players are generally averse to combat and conflict. As a CCP Games sanctioned live event, many assumed that they would be safe from harm, even when nullsec was announced as their destination.
Very few highsec players stood a chance, their ships and pods destroyed, their wrecks looted and salvaged for materials.
Highsec systems are the lawful areas of EVE Online — unlawful conflict is protected by the CONCORD police force, though that protection is fallible. Nullsec systems, on the other hand, are the lawless areas of EVE Online — an anything goes territory, where no protections exist to limit player conflict.
Hundreds of highsec players descended upon the live event destination in the nullsec region of Syndicate. They were immediately trapped in gate and interdiction bubble camps, and then set upon by the “devious and wicked.” Very few highsec players stood a chance, their ships and pods destroyed, their wrecks looted and salvaged for materials.
It was lambs to the slaughter. As soon as the event was over, the bleating of the lambs began on the forums. Highsec players were outraged:
Caisersoze wrote: “thanks CCP for being even bigger f****** by making something most of the players couldnt even enjoy next time at least do a lowsec one or clear the f****** bubbles agian thanks CCP for being a bunch of s*** idea f*** that shouldnt run live events.”
Horatio Nately wrote: “this event was complete **** although I shouldn’t be surprised since ccp hasn’t been able to run competent events since they let go all of their live event staff.”
Those are just a couple of the many similar comments from people that had their ships and pods destroyed during the live event.
CCP Games hosted a player gathering during the event, watching their hand in the carnage unfold via a live stream.
CCP Games released some new load balancing code on the day of the live event. After CCP Explorer’s tweet announcing the new code, rumour surfaced that the live event was staged simply to test the new code:
We activated a new cluster load balancer on TQ today resulting in better CPU/memory spread.
CCP Explorer quickly put that rumour to rest as coincidence:
The CLB’s deployment had been delayed by a week and a half and eventually “collided” with the live event.
Was the event successful?
Judging by the tweets and forum posts from nullsec players, it was a rousing success, as they walked away with hundreds of kills, and billions of ISK in looted modules and salvage.
Tweets and forum posts from highsec players tell a different story, many expecting a safe event and ending up with expensive ship losses.
If there’s one thing you learn about EVE Online, very quickly, it is that nothing is ever safe. CCP Games will not step in to disrupt the sandbox. One player’s bad time is another player’s good time.
