Apologies for the (formerly*) shamelessly misleading clickbait title, but the pun was so terrible it was too good not to use.
(*GameSkinny’s morally upstanding editors have ruined my trolling fun in order to provide you, the reader, with a clearer but less funny title.)
However, the actual story does involve the fall on many titans on the PC platform. But it was in EVE Online.
Throughout the next few days, you won’t be able to look at a mainstream video game news site without some mention of the largest battle EVE Online‘s sci-fi sandbox universe has ever seen. Again.
To give this some context, titans in EVE are phenomenally large (20km) and powerful ships which require the time and investment of entire organisations of players just to build a single one. The cost of a single titan, based on the value of in-game currency (ISK) to PLEX game time codes, is estimated to be upwards of $5,000, significantly more if the equipment fitted is exceedingly rare.
Most players are content to fly the various sub-capital ships available – from frigate to battleship, with progression into capitals and super-capitals being a specialist career for the advanced player. Titan pilots are the apex of a very long period of super-capital skill training (EVE’s character progression is defined by skills rather than levels).
In past conflicts, news of just a handful of these behemoths or even a single one being destroyed has caused significant buzz.
The numbers still coming in as EVE‘s daily downtime forces the end of hostilities are in excess of 70 titans destroyed.
Absolutely unprecedented.
Edit: CCP have officially confirmed the total number of dead titans to be 75:
Still digesting numbers from the B-R5RB Bloodbath. Here’s one database query you might like to have sooner: 59-16 #eveonline #tweetfleet
— EVE Online (@EveOnline) January 28, 2014
How the Mighty Fell
It is fitting that, on the first anniversary of the Battle of Asakai (the last big EVE battle to triggered by a cock-up), it was human error that precipitated this mass titan cull.
For most of the last 24 hours, the vast ten-thousand-plus player coalitions of EVE‘s unpoliced ‘null-sec[urity]’ regions have thrown everything at their disposal into a desperate fight for a critical system of space (although carefully moderating their numbers in a single system to avoid overloading the server).
It’s a critical location because the B-R5RB star system is a vital staging point for one of the most powerful and influential alliances, Pandemic Legion. Inexplicably, someone within Pandemic Legion’s inner circle failed to pay the right bills, which meant that this important location suddenly became exposed and available for others to attempt a sovereignty claim, an opportunity that their enemies were not going to let pass.
Enter the Clusterfuck Coalition (led by the infamous Goonswarm Federation) who, knowing how important the system was to Pandemic Legion, threw everything they had into the field. Most importantly, they didn’t hold back on committing their super-capitals, including the monstrous titans.
As the battle raged, the cost to both sides was massive, but it was Pandemic Legion and N3 who suffered the heaviest losses, with 50+ titans and undoubtedly a significant number of supporting super-capitals destroyed as the CFC showed no mercy.
Pandemic Legion and their allies in N3 could not afford to capitulate and put everything they could into the defense, including their own notorious titan fleet.
As the battle raged, the cost to both sides was massive, but it was Pandemic Legion and N3 who suffered the heaviest losses, with 50+ titans and undoubtedly a significant number of supporting super-capitals destroyed as the CFC showed no mercy.
The Morning After
The Battle of B-R5RB will undoubtedly go down as one of the most significant player-created events in EVE‘s history.
However, just how significant will it really be?
After a grueling all-night session of watching the gameplay out at 10% of the normal speed (‘Time Dilation’ is a mechanism to combat the ‘soul-crushing lag’ caused by these large-scale events), what do participants get for their efforts beyond the bragging rights of being there?
There have been growing problems with super-capital proliferation for years and the loss of a significant percentage of them overnight could actually cause a big economic and political shake-up in the bewildering world of internet spaceship empires.
As a ten-year veteran of EVE Online who has participated in and failed to enjoy the ‘epic fleet fight’ experience in the past, my reaction to news of yet another ‘record-breaking battle’ tends to be little more than a disinterested shrug. But, this time even I found myself glued to the reports as they came in, hoping for some kind of player-led game-changer.
Sadly, minds greater than mine assure me that, despite the seemingly crippling losses suffered, it’s just a drop in the ocean for the ridiculously rich sovereignty-holding organizations.
This seems like a shame, especially for the neutral. The much-vaunted player sandbox is meant to shift and change, with player actions having a butterfly effect (see video below).
If organizations are really so entrenched that even an event of this magnitude changes nothing, there’s more than a touch of static theme park creeping into the dynamic emergent content EVE Online is famous for.
But at least things are burning.
Image Source: Imgur
Published: Jan 28, 2014 02:41 am