BoB, the historical alliance in Eve Online was just taken down by a spy. The entire alliance was destroyed.
Can you flesh this out for some of us? I don’t play this or know much about it, but it sounds like it might be an interesting story.
This is huge. We are talking an alliance that has been the main force in EVE for over 5 years taken down in a matter of hours. We are talking an alliance that has a freakin’ BBQ every year in real life for its members. Thousands of players are now displaced from their homes. Uncountable amounts of in-game currency have been lost from all the destruction. Entire regions of player-controllable space are now up for conquering by the other large alliances.
One guy’s turncoat actions has affected every single player of the game. That to me is amazing, the game system allows this much player control over the game environment.
A good interview with the guy who pulled it off: http://everadio.gamingradio.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=83&Itemid=2
Click the link near the bottom for the interview by Mittani, the guy who pulled it off. He explains his accomplishment well better than I could type it. For anyone who likes political intrigue and spy game type stuff, you will love this.
Edit: Whack-a-Mole says it best in the other thread:
Basically the Roman Empire fell, the barbarian hordes are plundering and killing each other over the remains. Billions and billions of isk in losses are occurring every hour. People are dying. There is a refugee crisis. It’s insane.
My first link is directly to the interview with the guy who brought the Alliance down.
Not my game, but all you need to know.
http://www.massively.com/2009/02/05/further-developments-in-eves-grand-theft-alliance-drama/
As someone who knows nothing more about the game than I’ve learned in the past 10 minutes, that was both supremely dickheaded and unbelievably slick.
The thing to understand about this is Eve is all about infrastructure. The infrastructure capacity is immense, and incredibly complex. We’re talking factories, ore specific refineries, space stations. Player owned stations are modular and it takes a lot of work to set them up. Sovereignty is a reflection of infrastructure. My alliance is a small alliance and we had at one point before we got kicked out by a big alliance claimed a small backwater, resource poor constellation. They had an entire region, think, dozens of constellations. That means hundreds of player run stations. So it’s like a country just folded.
Amusingly enough, the vast majority of EVE players ourselves think that it was awesome. A quick litmus test for EVE pretty much goes “Is ‘griefing’ a bad word in your mind? If so, find an other MMO.”
Without downplaying the magnitude of this, it’s simply not correct to say that “thousands of players have been displaced from their homes.” The corporations that made up BoB are largely intact. Black Nova Corp did lose a couple dozen capital ships and a significant chunk of cash, but relatively few of BoB’s truly valuable assets were touched and if they don’t emerge from this with most of their territory it will be because they were getting to be internally disfunctional anyways.
Some truly valuable assets will be lost, of course. With the loss of sovereignty rendering certain defenses inoperable, it’s quite likely that BoB will lose some capital shipyards with titans in build, get locked out of some stations with lots of stuff still inside, lose dysprosium mining operations, etc. Those won’t happen solely because of the disbanding, however. Those will happen because there are numerous large and powerful factions that really dislike BoB and will leap at the opportunity to kick them while their defenses are down.
That sums up how everyone in my corp feels about it.
This works in the favor of small alliances because all the big ones will be hammering each other.
Gorsnak I’m hearing about mass exoduses and roaming capital fleets. Jump Freighters moving as much out as they can. POS’s with less functionality.
It wasn’t Mittens that brought down BoB. It was the traitor. Mittens is just taking credit.
Well, I was flying around Delve in a cov ops last night. The Goons were shooting a capital shipyard in J-L. NOL was more or less empty except for other tourists like me. About 60 BoB were next door in FD-, where they appeared to be primarily engaged in securing assets rather than forming up to defend their POS’s.
There will indeed be a lot of jump freighter activity, just to keep up with regular POS logistics operations - though I’d imagine they’ll use titans to jump portal regular freighters as well, probably a more efficient use of fuel. All their POS fuel requirements just jumped because of the sov loss, and the POS jumpbridges won’t function till sov 3 is regained in about a month (assuming it isn’t lost permanently in the meantime).
Thing is, there is a lot of POS infrastructure in Delve that would have to be destroyed if BoB is going to actually lose it. Most POS defenses will still operate, minus the cyno jammers. Shields, guns, etc still work. So it’s still a lot of shooting required to destroy it, and BoB’s capital fleet still exists (minus a couple dozen dreads that were stolen). All that’s happened so far is that a bunch of towers have been reinforced. It’s a long way to go from there to actually losing the space.
Fair enough. Bottom line, BoB was taken down.
Not really all that long. Putting POS’s in reinforced is the step right before you blow them out of the sky. And BoB won’t be able to keep them all repped up and defended. Even a small strikegroup of Armageddons can take out an undefended POS’ shields without wasting ammo.
It will be interesting to see what gets destroyed, though.
I heard that it’s the corps known as BoB ‘pets’ that are fleeing.
On SHC “Kenny”* are reporting that the POS put into reinforced yesterday in J-L have been repped without opposition. Putting a POS into reinforced is largely meaningless unless you are set up to bring it when the thing comes out.
*Kenzoku? WTF is it with those guys and Japanese?
Oh, to be sure there are probably POS’s that go into reinforced which aren’t brought down. But some of those BoB doesn’t protect can and will still be eliminated. It at least puts BoB on the defensive, forcing them to be in certain locations to rep POS’s back up if they want to guarantee that they’re kept.
And we haven’t even seen the first full weekend of combat.
Apparently BoB (or whoever they are now) regained Sov-1 in a single day. The clever buggers, probably thinking of more normal avenues to losing sovereignty, had a backup corp place POS in all their systems. So, as soon as they lost the alliance the game looked for anyone else with POS to gain sovereignty. Normally takes a week but then those other POS have been there a long time.
That helps a lot. Still a huge blow from where they were but it does give them at least some advantage. They get the 25% fuel reduction, access to their outposts back and capital ship arrays back. I am not sure now if the Moms/Titans in the oven got destroyed when Sov. was lost. I think they just stopped but are still there. With Sov back I think they can start them up again. Not sure though.
I think BoB will be harder to knock over than people suspect. Goons need to really organize rather than run in like hooligans wanting to smash the place up a bit. If Goons and the rest cannot kick BoB after this then I think BoB is essentially invulnerable. It will take them months to fully recover even so (assuming they survive).
Does a POS in reinforced still count towards Sovereignty or does it need to be wiped completely?