January 27, 2014.
EVE Online will remember the largest capital fight in its history for a very long time. Many have wanted this fight for years, and now that it happened it was every bit as epic as was thought. I would dare say its carnage transcends EVE Online itself, as it could very well be the most expensive battle in gaming history.
In true EVE Online fashion, this battle started because of a mistake. System sovereignty for B-R5RB dropped because the maintenance bill was not paid. This sparked CFC/RUS forces to converge and siege the system. N3 coalition members responded as well in an attempt to re-secure the system. The system is the staging home for Pandemic Legion., and they controlled the corp inside Nulli Secunda that held the SOV. According to PL the bill was set to auto-pay, with enough ISK in the wallet to do so, but for some reason it did not and the system dropped. It is unknown if this has been officially petitioned, or is just a cover story. However, the bottom line is a very appropriate “mistakes were made” tag.
Both sides escalated with capital ships, super-carriers, and Titans. TiDi quickly went to the max level and the grind began. Tactically, the CFC/RUS and N3 played it right by limiting the sub-capital numbers in system, and despite the TiDi the server held and was responsive (though slow). Client crashes, never ending warp tunnels, and black screens did occur for many but for those who were loaded things did respond. This was very good server performance considering the node had not been reinforced since the fight was not planned.
The battle raged on all day and all night with both sides focusing on Titans at first, but switching to dreads. The end result was lots of dead titans for both sides, but CFC came out as the clear winners.
I tried to get a BR Doc and an EVE-kill, but as the battle lasted from DT to DT it is all kinds of crazy so I will just post the raw numbers.
Here are the total losses as of now:
N3 lost 59 titans, CFC/RUS lost 16.
N3 lost 11 supercarriers, CFC/RUS lost 5.
The combined dread and carrier losses are 370 and 123, respectively.
Video of the fight:
Northern Coalition. leader Vince Draken called a “come to Jesus meeting” about the fight, which can be heard here:
This battle has caused a massive buzz around New Eden, and you can be sure prices of all minerals and capitals have been going noticeably up.
At the end of the day the cost for this battle across all fronts was in the trillions (close to 7 or higher) which translates to over 11,666 PLEX—roughly $233,000 USD, which is ~349,980 days of game time.
Fights like this are why many of us play this game, and it serves to rekindle the fires of those who crave death, glory, and carnage–massive, massive carnage.
The only thing left to say to all those involved is “GG”.
~jsb
