EVE Online is currently in the midst of a record-breaking war. So record-breaking, in fact, that it broke two records in a single day. Those records came when over 8,000 players fought for control of a region called Fury at FWST-8, in an intense 14-hour long battle - the records broken were for Biggest PvP Multiplayer Battle, and Most Concurrent Players in a PvP Multiplayer Battle, with 6,557 EVE players there at the peak.
Few people know this war better than Peter Farrell. Farrell is a former EVE player who initially fought in the galactic trenches, then joined EVE developers CCP as a community dev, overseeing the conflict and communicating with the player base while the battle raged on. There's /a lot/ to unpack with a war of this scale, but the obvious starting point would be the beginning. However, with how methodical a game like EVE Online is, it seems like the war started well before the fighting did. "The actual start of the fighting happened about a year ago, that's when the war officially kicked off," Farrell says. "But there were some machinations before that, with groups posturing and speculating. These groups had been preparing for war. They weren't necessarily planning it. They didn't know what form or shape it would take. But they knew it was coming. So they were building up their war coffers, building these huge endgame ships called Titans and supercarriers, and pumping them out at an alarming rate. At the time, it was peace. But the other groups saw this, and said 'we're going to do this too'. So technically speaking, the war started last year. But the roots go a little bit deeper."
With tensions rising and armies preparing, relationships between different factions became something of a powder keg, where the slightest thing could set it off. Just like any conflict in history though, exactly who started the war is a matter of debate. "So it kind of depends on who you ask," Farrell says. One group, known as Imperium, are the biggest faction in the game, with the biggest structures, most land, and - prior to the war, at least - the most money. They had diplomatic ties with another group, Legacy, who like Imperium are based in the south. In the north, there are a bunch of groups known colloquially under the collective Pan Fam. Pan Fam and Imperium do not get along. "That puts legacy in this really odd situation, because they don't want to be enemies with [Imperium], and they don't want to be enemies with [Pan Fam]," Farrell says. "So they're trying to play nice on all fronts. But what ends up happening is an FC, a Fleet Commander, leads [Legacy] into battle, ends up sort of breaking an agreement or very weak truce between Legacy and the Imperium. That kind of raises a little bit of an alarm for some people. So Pan Famam says, 'Hey, you know what, I think it's time we put any past differences aside, and we have to work together to kill these guys in the Imperium'. And so that pretty much kicks it off. This really inconsequential diplomatic agreement was broken, and they just used that as what they needed to to send everyone to war."
If that's how everything began, what led to the record-breaking skirmish a few months back? Once again, EVE players are divided. "Nothing huge was planned, no one thought anything big would happen,” Farrell says. “The people that had been invading put their big armies down, their big supercarriers and Titans down, and they didn't expect to meet any opposition. In the previous three or four weeks, the Imperium hadn't really opposed their big Titan super capital fleets.”
The day of the record-breaking battle was different, however. EVE is an extremely tactical game, and both sides of the war are willing to retreat and concede ground when the alternative is obliteration. Both sides protect their most valued assets fiercely, and know the other side does the same, and so most fights are minor, when smaller clusters are evenly matched. On this occasion, Pan Fam sent a more powerful invading force than would be expected, while the Imperium also had a much stronger defence around a seemingly trivial structure. For once, the sides were evenly matched, and prepared to risk it all.
“You get probably one time a year where all the situations are just right for a fight like this to happen,” Farrell says. EVE has very clear rules on battles, rules that typically would stop a fight like this from occurring. Essentially, if you are in your own territory, or on a structure that belongs to your alliance, you cannot take damage. This is why EVE’s battles are so tactical; you can’t just ransack wherever you feel like. However, there is one caveat to this ‘no damage’ rule - once you fire back, all bets are off. On this day, the Imperium fired back.
“It just was an organic thing,” Farrell says. “Every time one guy died from the Imperium side, another guy from [Pan Fam] died. The news reporters of EVE Online and the podcasters [EVE Online has war correspondents, as any war does] all rushed into the system and looked what's going on. No one knew this was gonna happen. Both of these sides, who just a few weeks before had issued war bonds because they were running out of money, were now exchanging one for one the most costly ships that the game offers. And the weird thing about EVE is the players, especially those involved in these wars at the highest levels, are very cerebral. They've mapped out exactly the path that they think is most ideal, and they don't make inefficient moves. So the guys in [Pan Fam] saw this, and they said, ‘These guys in the pyramids [the Imperium’s defensive base] are fools. We're trading one for one. This is perfect for us, because we have a bigger coffer. The guys in the Imperium said the exact same thing. They said, ‘Oh, these guys have fallen right into our traps, because we're trading one for one but our coffers are bigger’. So you have this weird Bizarro world where these players make practically only informed decisions, but they're all operating on a knowledge base that they can't really grasp, right?”
In essence, both sides knew the fight was nothing more than a waste of money - but they didn’t care, because they were convinced that their side had the most money, and the longer the battle went on, the harder the rest of the war would become for the other side. The battle eventually stopped when EVE’s servers closed down for daily maintenance, but with time in the aftermath to reflect, the victor hasn’t become any clearer. “At this point, it's so entrenched in their minds that you can pull any pilot from that fight from either side and ask them if they won, and they will swear up and down that they did,” Farrell says. “Even if you can give them the benefit of hindsight, you can say, ‘Would you do this again?’, every single person would go, ‘Yep, that was the exact right move to make’. The dust is still in the air from it. It's so wild. In my time with EVE, it has never happened. Usually when you're in these big fights, it's because someone makes a mistake. And you're very aware that you're losing, if you're on the losing side. I've been in all of the big ones, all the ones that hit world records. And sometimes I was on the winning side. And we were very aware that we were winning. And sometimes I was on the losing side. And we're very aware that we were on the losing side in those in the middle of those fights, and especially in the days after. But I'd never seen a fight like this where both sides were so adamant that they were the winners. And it's not like it's not like they're being brainwashed - based on the information that they have, they really do firmly believe they won. History will be a very interesting judge of that. And I think it will be for another year or so before the dust finally settles and people are finally able to pick it apart and say, ‘Yeah, maybe this wasn't that good for us’.”