EVE Online had one of its famous large-scale battles yesterday. Except for this time, it cost over $100,000 in digital damages. The Imperium Faction of the game’s world attacked, in a Star Wars-esque manner, the Northern Coalition.
The battle began with the Imperium Faction attacking the Northern coalition’s death star like Keepstar. Then the allies of the victim of this attack joined in, starting a massive online space battle. As of writing, the battle has cost real monetary value lost of around $80,000 and $120,000 in damages. The reason why it cost so much was because of the Titan class of ship in the game. These massive ships cost roughly $4000 each (when converted from EVE Online ‘s currency to USD) and in this one battle, around 56 of them have been destroyed (27 for the Imperium and 29 for the Northern Coalition).
This is quite frankly both fascinating, hilarious and horrific. The fact that not only have these groups of players poured thousands of dollars and hours into building these behemoths but the fact that they are so willing to sacrifice them for an online feud. This isn’t the most expensive EVE Online battle, however. The most expensive so far has been the “Bloodbath of B-R5RB” which spanned over 21 hours and cost a total of $330,000 as 75 titans were destroyed in this one battle. This does show a large amount of dedication from fans since they are willing to spend all this, but at the same time, it’s so horrifying to think that a whole two year’s worth of someone’s wages was gone in such a short amount of time. One thing I can certainly say is that EVE Online continues to be absolutely fascinating sociologically from an outsider’s perspective.
But what do you think? Was this a massive waste of time and money? Or do you think it was all worth it? Sound off in the comments below!
