Being new to EVE Online (EO), I assumed that war and PVP were synonymous. You attack another player or target a group of players, and you’re at “war” with them. As the final days of my trail would teach me, that is not the case. Not having had time to research the intricacies of what is or isn’t a “war declaration” in EO. I can only relate what transpired with the corporation that I was a member of and what they said was going on...
I was living rather high after my narrow escape during the last “all hands” call for PVP reinforcements. Corporation chat remained lively and entertaining. I was executing a training plan to get into the Vexor as requested by our combat leaders. I did a lot of mission running, something that most of the other new players didn’t seem to be interested in doing much of, even though it was netting me some phat loots by salvaging all the rat ships. In a nutshell, life was pretty damn good.
And as you must have already guessed, it wasn’t going to stay that damned good. I didn’t know anything about the other corporations in our alliance or their people. I didn’t bother to engage in the alliance chat channel. There were always around 40+ people in our corp. chat, in addition to 30+ in our noob lounge. That was more than enough people for me to attempt to be social with while gaming. I occasionally saw derogatory chat about some of the member corps but whatever, I ignored most of those conversations and skipped emails discussing the same.
One evening a spam email thread began with a warning that we were immediately leaving our current alliance because we’re not happy with them and they’ve gotten themselves mixed up in a War Declaration. Hmm, didn’t know what that meant exactly other than, they were advising people to be careful in 0.0 sectors. “Oh well,” I thought to myself. “That clearly has nothing to do with me since I’m still in .9.” I went back to my business of being social for 30 minutes then letting everyone and everything go on ignore. Next day I see that we have in fact dropped from the alliance and things seem to be business as usual – for a little while.
The next day there are multiple emails about someone having declared war on our corporation. Yada, yada, lots of emails with questions and explanations but it appears to be fallout of our former alliance association. From what we were told there would be a countdown to the commencement of the declaration. After which time, you can attack or be attacked, by the opposing corporation at will. Our leadership doesn’t think it will come to that – this is all a mistake and it will get cleared up. But just in case, be on your guard. For me personally, this has less than no impact. I’m doing missions in Deadspace the vast majority of my time (private instances) and when I’m not, I’m in a hanger yuking it up in chat.
Some time passes and we're told that a diplomatic solution won't be reached. But not to worry really. Nothing much is going to happen. After all, you can just not log on your main during the war dec if you don't want to be involved. However, if we were going to be around, we were encouraged to migrate to the corporate HQ if we hadn't done so already. I don’t say anything out loud but in the back of my mind I’m thinking, “Why the hell would I move out into a .5 sector as a noob?” And more importantly, “Why are you all moving to the same region if we’re actually going to war?” I’ve never been in the military but that just seemed like putting too many eggs in a single basket. Ever the rebel and unsocial butterfly, I don’t move anything anywhere. Me, I go about my business. By this time I’ve completely tricked out a second Tristan and leave that parked at HQ to respond to PVP operations. I don’t see the need to have all my PVE assets 13 jumps away from my mission hub.
I don’t know anything about the corporation that dec’d us but I guess there was some concern when they started capping folks in big ships before the declaration had actually started. We may have 270 people listed in the corporation roster but there weren’t more than 70 or so people online at any given time, and more than half of those had been playing for less than a month. From what I saw, they weren’t even interested at all in PVP. The big group operation most nights was mining. So while the leadership talked a PVP game, the people they’d enlisted weren’t doing anything but mining ore. *Shrug*
I suppose death in a big ship in dark spaces can cause people to get a might bit anxious. After being ganked on the way to our HQ with a large payload of items on board, one of the officers decided to payout 1 billion ISK to a mercenary to help deal with the hostile corporation. The person that had accepted the agreement would hang around the corporation and beat up on the bad guys while we hid, I guess was the idea. ::Hurl:: Well Mr. Murphy had something to say about that little bargain. The day the actual declaration started this person was no where to be found and has supposedly sold the account to another player. Suuuuuuuuuure.
Primetime the first night of the declaration arrives and as people begin logging on for the evening they are being blown up as they encounter this hostile corporation. At first, many people are confused. You know how it can be on EO. You might not log in for days, perhaps even weeks. What the bloody hell! War declaration what’s that? Why do they want to fight us? Where are those dudes you paid? I don’t have any turrets on my ships I only have mining lasers fitted! Once again they start urging people to dock at the HQ. Again I think to myself, why the hell are you doing that? A couple hours later, the HQ is completely surrounded and most everyone is trapped inside the Sisters of Eve station. Ships are being popped as they dock. Ships are being popped as they undock. Z-O-M-G we’re at war everyone hurry up and come help defend.
To myself I think, “Silly Wabbits,” but I dock my mission Tristan and jump in my shuttle to head out to the HQ. Obviously, all the nearby gates are being camped at this point so most people attempting to make it to the station die on the way. Having been jumped at the gate myself, my shuttle is coming in hot – all shields gone, armor almost all gone and on fire. I didn’t really care as long as I wasn’t pod killed since my combat ship was waiting for me in the wings. After docking safely, I look at the HQ lobby and I see a ton of our people. I make a joke in chat and wave. I also see players flagged as red meaning we were sleeping with the enemy. So now we’re all comfy and cozy together like sitting ducks waiting to be turned into pate. Fleet invites go out and the decision is made to undock together as a group, warp out then back to engage. Lots of other combat oriented instructions are given but I’ll save you the mundane.
We undock – lose some ships as we do, warp out – lose more ships, warp back, lose a few more ships and then commence ta fighting. The sky is a wash with ships of every shape and size. My mouth is gaped open. It was literally like being in a scene from The Empire Strikes back – a massive space incursion.
We’re doing pretty well for a noob bunch. We’re targeting the assigned ships and blow several of their expensive toys out of the skies. I guess I’m just a blip on the screen so my ship isn’t taking any damage at all. My drone is out and I’m just unloading missiles and pew-pewing at will. THEN the lag hits. Complete and utter frame rate freeze. I can’t tell what I’m doing. People start screaming in vent. I mean WTF – you can’t have a real time combat game with risks as high as they are for some folks, and have immobilizing lag.
Just as the lag starts to abate I see a bright light in my peripheral vision and then BLAM! I’m consumed in a blinding yellow and orange light. I lag into slow motion. I swear to god it's like being a movie. When my screen updates again, the sea of ships that had been surrounding me, has changed into a sea of pods, mine among them. I was stunned for several seconds until I realized that we’d been taken out by a bomb of some sort. Vent is silent. Like me, everyone is in shock. I start to see pods exploding. Mother of New Eden, they're pod killing people. I react faster than some and quickly dock. Game over. Just about every one of our ships was nuked out of the sky. The ones not taken out by the blast were summarily mowed down shortly after. THE WHOLE FLEET IS GONE.
Silence turns to semi hysteria as people realize that for whatever dumb-ass reason, they don’t have updated clones! Others hadn’t insured their ships. The CEO didn’t have an updated clone?!? How can an officer, fully knowledgeable about the approaching war declaration, not have an updated clone? There were a few meltdowns. No one actually cried, but I could hear in their voices that they wanted to cry. I kid you not. More than a couple of people said they were quitting the game. The CEO talked about how war decs sucked and could break new or smaller corps. He decided to log before he thought about quitting. All of the other officers followed suit and vanished from the scene of the crime…or should I say, vanished from the scene of massacre?
Those of us still online are now trapped HQ is our undies. Well at least my undies are clean undies. ::Sigh:: More members are still logging in for the first time and dying in nearby sectors. The same series of questions go 'round and 'round... "We're at war?" "Who are these people?" "What did we do?" "How'd we do?" And the worst question of them all, "Does that mean no mining ops tonight?"
I decide to wait it out for a bit. It's late and fatigue is making me very silly. My jokes about needing a window and popcorn are getting laughs. Its 2AM. I figure what the hell, they can’t stay here all damn night camping us. As soon as the coast is clear, I'll fly my wreck of a shuttle back to the safety of Crux, my current home and mission hub...
[To be continued…]
The story is just too long for a single post. So you'll have to tune in one last time to see how it all ends. :-)
Good read and I'm often surprised there are actually corporations/alliances like these. It's just not all that hard to avoid being shot down. My corporation has been full-time at war with several other corporations, I joined it quickly after my trial and never had any serious problems with it. Just keep an eye on Local and have everyone report enemy positions and you can do pretty much everything you want to, like missioning/mining, if you're really into that.
Especially in Empire space where there's always a station to dock, it's quite easy to avoid heavy losses if you're a bit organized. But I guess it's different in a corporation with 50% of the people being total newbies, without even competent leadership to lead the newbies in a good direction. Undocking and warping in and out, before fighting? Hah.
Anyway, good read. Don't give up on Eve. :p
Posted by: Nuyan | January 19, 2008 at 06:13 AM
The urge to nitpick details is strong... (deadspace is not private instance etc...) but I will resist!
Real comment after part 2 ;)
Posted by: TheoTech | January 19, 2008 at 10:51 AM
@Theo...it's not? Well it seems to be a private space that no one other then me can enter. In fact, I asked if that was the case in corp chat and was told that it is a private area.
@Nuyan...No, I haven't given up on EO. :-)
Posted by: Saylah | January 19, 2008 at 11:31 AM
Hmm not sure what they hit your fleet with sounds like it could have been a Bomb from a stealth bomber would most likely kill any staionary or slow moving frigs and do pretty major dmg to cruisers.
Kinda reminds me of the story of when one of the major alliances had a fleet of 195+ ppl waiting on the gate when someone noticed a bright light/electrical looking field.
Legend has it the words "Hey guys look at that funky light" were the last thing typed in local before an intense burst of bright light reduced the whole fleet to 195 wrecks and a couple of puzzled ppl in pods.
Turns out unknown to them the ppl they were fighting had a Titan class ship and had just used it's doomsday device to nuke them.
Apparently the titan pilot got so many killmails it crashed his computer and took him 3hrs to get back in game :)
Posted by: Azumi Kurosawa | January 19, 2008 at 06:21 PM
Well it was interesting to say the least and a lesson in the intensity of EO warfare. :-)
I will be looking into EVE University as my next home.
Posted by: Saylah | January 19, 2008 at 07:38 PM