Red vs Blue in its current incarnation has been around since 2009. Over that period of time 1000’s of players have come and gone with millions of ships destroyed in their wake, but in all that time never has their goal changed, the goal to have as much fun in eve as possible.
For those of you who don’t know about Red vs Blue the idea is that you join one of the corporations (Red Federation or Blue Republic), you undock in whatever ship you have handy and you go about killing the other side either solo or with teammates. Over the years rules have been implemented to maximize the fun and minimize the drama. These include basic courtesy rules such as “no shooting each other in Jita” to rules to make the pvp more fun such as “no ECM” and other rules to allow players to still train up their alt’s skills efficiently while still being able to have fun such as “no podding”.
Red vs Blue base out of high sec right next to Jita, this allows their members to purchase ships and modules for low cost allowing them to jump back into the fight quickly and with the benefit of not breaking their wallets. Each side has a staging system a few jumps away from each other allowing their members to find the enemy quickly and so there is rarely a dull moment for either side. Apart from offering their members the opportunity for non-stop high sec pvp from anything from solo to 30+ battles, Red vs Blue also offer their members other activities to maintain their interest. For anyone who enjoys large fleet battles every weekend Red Federation and Blue Republic merge together to form a “Purple Ganked fleet”, you do not even have to be a member to join the Ganked fleet you simply have to have the desire to have fun and not care about any losses you might receive.
Red vs Blue also offer their members the chance to participate in mass FFA events in Poinen, these occur to celebrate certain milestones such as birthdays or a new tier of kills achieved. Recently Red vs Blue celebrated their 4th birthday and with it they decided to hold the largest FFA event in the history of eve online. 100,000 frigates were fitted in preparation for this event, costing around 50billion isk and countless hours of work. The way the event works is that in Poinen each side has a POS fitted with dozens of ship maintenance arrays. As the night progresses High Command from each side will open the ship maintenance arrays and eject ships to allow pilots to get back into the fight. While some fits are fairly standard others are less them optimally setup (such as the auto cannon punisher or the triple web kestrel.) As the players board their frigates they warp to a certain planet in system. When they arrive at the planet they target whoever is closest and give it their best to destroy them before they are wiped out. At the end of the chaos prizes are handed out in many different categories such as: Most kills, Most deaths, Most Awox kills, Last ship killed, Least deaths, etc, these prizes range from faction fitted Pirate battleships to Plex’s to Stealth bombers.
The Poinen mass FFA 4th birthday event started after downtime on Saturday 26th of October, over the course of that weekend 20,000 ships were destroyed (most likely to be more but events of this scale tend to mess with the kill boards in a negative way) with over a 1000 players taking part spanning every time zone in the largest FFA in eve online’s history, and it’s still going on. The event will not end until all 100,000 ships are destroyed, no matter how long that may take. Over a year of planning went into this event which means that the leadership of Red vs Blue is already planning its 5th birthday celebration which no doubt will be even more spectacular with even more explosions and even more laughs.
So whether your looking for Solo pvp, small gang pvp or even large fleet pvp I would strongly advise you to make a alt and move him into Red Federation or Blue Republic and if you already have a alt in RvB describe the best memory you have of RvB in the comments down below. Mine was when I was roaming through Josameto one day in my trusty Merlin when I came across a Punisher at a gate. I engaged him and just when I thought I was winning 5 Red’s jumped through the gate and took me out, I came back with a sniping Cormorant a few minutes later, i managed to take out the Punisher pilot and many tears of laughter were shed by both of us in the conversation that ensued.
The following short film was created by a RvB member showcasing some of what has happened this weekend
