‘EVE Online’s New Record-Setting Million Dollar Battle Finally Breaks The Servers

EVE Online isn’t just one of the world’s most persistent MMOs, managing to hang on no matter what is thrown at it, it’s also a game that consistently sets world records. As previously reported by the Inquisitr, the last record was set December 2016, when over 5,000 players gathered to destroy another Keepstar valued at $15,000 and owned by the Circle Of Two (CO2) alliance (now mostly defunct.) At its peak, developer CCP was able to confirm 5,337 simultaneous combatants.

According to Twinfinite, the latest fight – between The Imperium (mostly Goonswarm and Northern Coalition) and Pandemic Horde – broke 5,500 players setting another world record as more and more players streamed into sector 9-4R to watch what had the potential to turn into a million US dollar bloodbath.

But it was not to be, as players finally found the limits of EVE‘s servers, with many players losing their connection, and others suffering severe lag.

The Imperium alone fielded 57 Titans in the battle – but they didn’t participate. Whether they were intended to, or backed out after lag proved too much (according to CCP’s own Falcon, nobody could relaunch fighters once they were destroyed, rendering many capital ships useless,) they stayed out of it. Ships were lost on both sides – 831 for The Imperium, 534 for Pandemic, but they amounted to a paltry $4,000 or so lost, a far cry from the biggest losses in EVE Online history, such as The Bloodbath Of B-R5RB, a $300,000 battle so significant, it has its own Wikipedia page. Not to mention what was potentially on the table, including Killah Bee’s 300 billion ISK faction Titan, a ship worth some $2,300 on its own.

As Imperium writer Bill McDonough points out over at their own Imperium News Network, the strategy at play contributed to the lag as well. Not only has the game become more technically complicated since the battle which destroyed CO2’s Keepstar, but both sides were using a fighter-heavy strategy, drastically increasing the strain on the servers. This mostly had to do with new game mechanics allowing each side to establish a “safe zone” keeping their Supercapital ships defended.

In the long run, the battle between The Imperium and Pandemic Horde was a bit of a non-starter. Pandemic got to keep their citadel, The Imperium got to show off their big shiny fleet, and everyone went home feeling vaguely let down, but leaving another notch in CCP’s bedpost.

Hopefully, for the rest of us, they’ll all find another opportunity to blow each other up in the near future.