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Epic Online Space Battle

New submitter nusscom writes "On July 28th, as has been reported by BBC, a record number of EVE Online players participated in a record-breaking online battle between two alliances. This battle, which was essentially a turf-war was comprised of over 4,000 online players at one time. The load was so large that Crowd Control Productions (CCP) slowed down the game time to 10% of normal to accommodate the massive amount of activity." This is the largest battle to ever occur on EVE Online.

10 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This story sounds familiar by AdamWill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Its the same boring shit about how eve's terrible servers can't handle all the buffered state updates and slows to a crawl"

    Or to see the half-full glass, it's a story about how EVE is the only MMO game that really even attempts to let stuff happen on this kind of scale; it's the only major single-server MMO, i.e., the only one that doesn't just cheat by only having as many people on any given 'instance' of the game as their server code can handle.

  2. Re:Who cares by Andy+Prough · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You do. Only a complete lack of response would show otherwise.

    And then you hid your screen name, afraid that others will find out that you actually care.

    Which means that you not only care - you care whether others perceive that you care. And you try to obscure it by pretending not to care.

    Amazing that you have time to think of anything else, actually.

  3. Re:Who cares by perpenso · · Score: 5, Funny

    The aliens who are monitoring the video game and looking for those with aptitude. ;-)

  4. The battles was just bang at the end by NeoKarn · · Score: 5, Informative

    I was there (TM) It's not just the battle. It's the buildup. For 4 days we worked the system. Disrupting the enemy, destroying infrastructure. In the background spies worked there magic and Logistics move the materials of war into position. The phyc-ops and propagandist people boosted moral an got people to log in and participate. The battle is just one of the fun bits. 4000 pilots where just in the system. Without a doubt over 6000 pilots were involved on the day and closer to 10,000 for the buildup. EvE is serious spaceship business and this whole war is business. In EvE we are not ashamed to admit. We went to war for the Space monies.

  5. Re:This story sounds familiar by MacGyver2210 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I don't think you understand. Each 'solar system' in EVE runs on a single core - the system is not multi-processor friendly within a single solar system.

    They moved the 6DVT(where the fight happened) system to the same blade server as Jita(the huge trade hub which regularly hosts around 1000-1500 people, most inside a station) but on a separate core.

    400% of normal traffic to a single processor. That's impressive. Also, it's running python, so there's that as well.

    --
    If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
  6. Re:Old men having fun. by slick7 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Men will be kids

    As long as it's for the sake of national security. Remember, in online chat rooms, chicks are chicks, guys are chicks and kids are cops.

    --
    The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
  7. Re:These big battles are a rarity by dpidcoe · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Wait, what is the purpose then, really?

    To do what you want and have fun. I know this is a foreign concept to veterans of other MMOs who have been brainwashed into thinking that fun == reaching endgame, but as soon as you break out of that way of thinking, a huge amount of possibilities open up.

    When I started playing eve, I subscribed at the same time as 3 other friends. We formed a corp, picked a .5 system bordered by several lowsec systems, and based out of there. After about a week of playing, we announced to anyone we saw in system that we were pirates and started demanding protection money from the local miners. No one paid up, so we read up on canflipping mechanics and started stealing their ore. Then we figured out how to suicide gank and racked up quite a few expensive mining barges that way. Eventually one of us pissed off the wrong person and a rather powerful mission running corp filled with veterans who had been around for years declared war on us. We read up on wardec mechanics, and won that through by exploiting the fact that an industrial is no match for three people in competently fit pvp ships, no matter what the player ages are. That got us into the business of wardecs, and we ended up merging with another corp at about the three month mark in our eve careers. From there we spent a good three years terrorizing people in highsec for isk, with some side interests of ninja salvaging and scamming.

    The end result of all of my time playing is that I legitimately ruined the lives of several people (drama queens make great targets, several corps we went after had members who are now no longer RL friends), have two scams named after my scamming character, and made some awesome online friends. And when I flew through our old home system recently after after having been unsubbed for two years, the miners apparently still remembered me. Within minutes of entering the system they all docked up and immediately began cussing me out in local chat, so apparently I made a lasting impression on them.

  8. Re:This story sounds familiar by iczerjones · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's actually pretty slick how they throw in some uniform time dilation to ensure fair and timely performance across all n number of pilots in a fight while the resources are dynamically allocated to reinforce the fleet battle nodes. Definitely an improvement from the prior lopsided disconnects and variable frame times. Rather than the network or cluster deciding the battle, the players do. Since they are the *only* game in town that provides this sort of scenario, I find it rather intriguing to hear about the ceiling being pushed further and further. There are many more questionably appropriate and even dull topics that are seen daily here. Internet spaceships and clever realtime server management don't seem so unwarranted.

  9. Re:Snore fest by Dominare · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In EVE you're the captain, not the helmsman. If you're looking to wiggle your joystick, I'd recommend the Freespace series.

  10. Re:These big battles are a rarity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So what you're saying is that EVE is a great way to be an asshole?