Posted by Kromey at 6:51pm Mar 29 '09So apparently I'm about a month and a half behind the game, but I just learned today that BoB fell.
To explain why this is so significant, I need to first give an overview of some of EVE Online's game mechanics:
First off, players may form and join corporations, which are equivalent to guilds in WoW and others. Corporations may further join alliances, which are effectively guilds of corporations. All players belong to a corporation (the equivalent to being "guildless" is to belong to one of the many NPC corporations), but player corps do not necessarily belong to any alliance.
There are thousands of solar systems in EVE, collectively referred to as "the cluster". At the heart of the cluster is "Empire space", a large region of space divided among the 4 racial empires. Encircling Empire space is "null-sec" or "lawless" space. This is considered by many to be where the "real game" is played - out here, there are no rules, it's just no-holds-barred PvP. Also, alliances may claim systems through a mechanic known as "sovereignty"; once you own a system, your alliance's name goes on the in-game map and you gain certain perks, which improve the longer you own it.
What you end up with is the largest player alliances fielding huge fleets of warships to take over the various systems and claim them as their own. These battles can contain hundreds of players on either side and the bigger, higher-stakes battles have been known to rage (off-and-on, of course) for days.
Over time, two big names have emerged as the cluster's superpowers (among the player alliances, at least): Band of Brothers (BoB) and Goonswarm.
On February 4th, 2009, Band of Brothers fell victim to what appears to be a turncoat in their upper echelons, who was able to fully and completely disband the alliance, causing all systems owned by BoB to suddenly lose sovereignty and be up for grabs by anyone.
To put the significance of this event into proper scale, envision the world during the Cold War era, except with more clashes between the US and Russia. Then imagine that one or the other of these superpowers (I won't try to draw comparisons between either alliance and either country) was betrayed by the sitting president and the entire political structure of the nation disassembled in a single day. The military capabilities still exist, but the cohesive leadership is gone, and the borders suddenly lose meaning in the absence of an acknowledged political entity.
Can you imagine what effect that would have? The sudden land-grab not only by the standing enemy but by all the neighbors trying to seize their own piece of the suddenly-available pie - this is what has just happened in EVE. It would be as if WoW's Horde suddenly ceased to exist as a cohesive entity, the individual races suddenly being left to fend for themselves while the Alliance was left without a significant opposition.
This is why I love this game. While I, personally, may not have an impact on world events, players can and do change the very shape of the world in EVE. For something of this scale to happen in any other MMO would require the devs to script a massive world event, whereas this has the potential of happening any day in EVE and, as we've just seen with the fall of BoB, it can and does happen without any involvement from the game's creators.
To explain why this is so significant, I need to first give an overview of some of EVE Online's game mechanics:
First off, players may form and join corporations, which are equivalent to guilds in WoW and others. Corporations may further join alliances, which are effectively guilds of corporations. All players belong to a corporation (the equivalent to being "guildless" is to belong to one of the many NPC corporations), but player corps do not necessarily belong to any alliance.
There are thousands of solar systems in EVE, collectively referred to as "the cluster". At the heart of the cluster is "Empire space", a large region of space divided among the 4 racial empires. Encircling Empire space is "null-sec" or "lawless" space. This is considered by many to be where the "real game" is played - out here, there are no rules, it's just no-holds-barred PvP. Also, alliances may claim systems through a mechanic known as "sovereignty"; once you own a system, your alliance's name goes on the in-game map and you gain certain perks, which improve the longer you own it.
What you end up with is the largest player alliances fielding huge fleets of warships to take over the various systems and claim them as their own. These battles can contain hundreds of players on either side and the bigger, higher-stakes battles have been known to rage (off-and-on, of course) for days.
Over time, two big names have emerged as the cluster's superpowers (among the player alliances, at least): Band of Brothers (BoB) and Goonswarm.
On February 4th, 2009, Band of Brothers fell victim to what appears to be a turncoat in their upper echelons, who was able to fully and completely disband the alliance, causing all systems owned by BoB to suddenly lose sovereignty and be up for grabs by anyone.
To put the significance of this event into proper scale, envision the world during the Cold War era, except with more clashes between the US and Russia. Then imagine that one or the other of these superpowers (I won't try to draw comparisons between either alliance and either country) was betrayed by the sitting president and the entire political structure of the nation disassembled in a single day. The military capabilities still exist, but the cohesive leadership is gone, and the borders suddenly lose meaning in the absence of an acknowledged political entity.
Can you imagine what effect that would have? The sudden land-grab not only by the standing enemy but by all the neighbors trying to seize their own piece of the suddenly-available pie - this is what has just happened in EVE. It would be as if WoW's Horde suddenly ceased to exist as a cohesive entity, the individual races suddenly being left to fend for themselves while the Alliance was left without a significant opposition.
This is why I love this game. While I, personally, may not have an impact on world events, players can and do change the very shape of the world in EVE. For something of this scale to happen in any other MMO would require the devs to script a massive world event, whereas this has the potential of happening any day in EVE and, as we've just seen with the fall of BoB, it can and does happen without any involvement from the game's creators.