2016 was a big year for the controversial but enormous MMORPGEVE Online. For starters, 2016 wasthe year thatEVE Onlinewent free to play. But, perhaps just as important to long-term players, that was the year World War Bee came to an end. Now, four years later, it seems a new conflict of similar scale may emerge.
For anyone unfamiliar,EVE Onlineis something of an anomaly in the video game community. The game has an extremely dedicated playerbase, and the game’s history is a series of wars, conquests, and schemes. Unlike other titles, where huge changes can often be attributed to dev decisions, most ofEVE Online’s major moments came from its players. The consequence of these actions seem to be making themselves felt now, asEVE Onlineprepares to become a battlefield again.
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The last greatEVEOnlinewar was known by different parties as World War Bee, the Casino War, and the Northern War. To say the Northern War was complicated is a mammoth understatement. Suffice it to say, the largest and most powerful alliance of players inEVEhistory, Goonswarm’s Imperium, was challenged by a coalition of corporations. These corps either had previous grievances against the Imperium, or were sellswords, and all were paid by a trio of inexhaustibly wealthy players. In a game where playershave bid massive amounts of currency on ships, the amount of wealth thrown around was truly staggering. Now, four years later, one player rallied some of the biggest elements of the last war to wage another war against the Imperium.
The conflict has been rolling in earnest for some two months, and is being called World War Bee 2. The player who has rallied alliances against the Imperium is Villy, a former higher-up in the Imperium itself. Villy is a Force Commander, a coordinator for multiple players and accounts inEVE’s massive battles. It speaks to how hated his foe is and how respected he and his alliance (TEST) are that even Pandemic, an alliance TEST had pushed out of a region earlier, has joined with him. Even themassive DDoS attack againstEVEearlier this year is unlikely to match the scale of the battles in World War Bee 2 before it’s over.
To put it in perspective, unlike the previous war, which was fought for opportunity and money, this is a war fought for fighting’s sake. Although the military stakes ofEVEare serious in the game, it’s populated by players who genuinely love the battles. This is a game where2,000 players gathered to fight as celebration for a terminally ill player’s birthday. This war is about vengeance for Villy being fired, and other grievances. But it’s also about fun.
