Largest-Yet EVE Online Battle Destroys $200,000 Worth of Starships

Space MMO EVE Online has been providing stories of corporate espionage and massive space battles for years. A battle began yesterday that's the biggest one in the game's 10-year history. The main battle itself involved over 2,200 players in a single star system (screenshot, animated picture). The groups on each side of the fight tried to restrict the numbers somewhat in order to maintain server stability, so the battle ended up sprawling across multiple other systems as well. Now, EVE allows players to buy a month of subscription time as an in-game item, which players can then use or trade. This allows a direct conversion from in-game currency to real money, and provides a benchmark for estimating the real-world value of in-game losses. Over 70 of the game's biggest and most expensive ships, the Titans, were destroyed. Individual Titans can be worth upwards of 200 billion ISK, which is worth around $5,000. Losses for the Titans alone for this massive battle are estimated at $200,000 - $300,000. Hundreds upon hundreds of other ships were destroyed as well. How did the battle start? Somebody didn't pay rent and lost control of their system.

Comments

Re:Wow

[gr4nf]

While it's obvious that no actual money was lost (just transferred into EVE Online corporate pockets), I can't help but wonder whether or not wealth, in the economic sense, was destroyed. There was time put in to the construction of these ships and mining of the requisite minerals and such (real human capital). Of course, it's not a very concrete representation of that work since it is under the control of the sysadmins, but as long as they're consistent with the laws of their little universe, how different is it from the real destruction of real, valuable things?

Re:Wow

[CanHasDIY]

Someone call the NFL and tell them they are soon to be history, when this is the sort of thing people get excited about, you know a bunch of sweaty, overpaid mugs ain't got a chance.

I have to admit, I'd much rather spend 10 minutes watching an epic, simulated space battle, than waste 6 hours watching a bunch of juiced, over-paid prima donnas chase a weird-looking ball around.