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Massive EVE Online Alliance Disbanded

Posted by Soulskill on Fri Feb 06, 2009 02:52 AM
from the create-your-own-drama dept.
tnt001 writes "In the world of EVE Online, the infamous Band of Brothers alliance has been disbanded. It seems that rival alliance Goonswarm had a spy in the holding corporation, and he stole money as well as capital ships and other assets. The spy then disbanded the alliance. 'One of GoonSwarm's stated motivations from their early days as an alliance was to punish what they viewed as the arrogance of Band of Brothers. If they've held true to that ideal, stealing the alliance out from under BoB effectively means GoonSwarm has accomplished what they set out to do years ago.' As of 11:00 GMT, BoB lost all its sovereignty (its outposts are conquerable now, cyno-jammers are offline, jump bridges are inoperable)."
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  • Oh joy (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 06 2009, @02:55AM (#26749181)

    In other news, I just killed Revolver Ocelot in MGS. It was a really tough fight but I managed to pull it out. Can I get my own Slashdot article too?

    • In other news, I just killed Revolver Ocelot in MGS. It was a really tough fight but I managed to pull it out. Can I get my own Slashdot article too?

      Shove over n00b, I just downed hogger!

    • Re:Oh joy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ^BR (37824) on Friday February 06 2009, @04:42AM (#26749649)

      In other news, I just killed Revolver Ocelot in MGS. It was a really tough fight but I managed to pull it out. Can I get my own Slashdot article too?

      I kinda doubt that it impacted greatly the hobby of 2k+ people, so sorry, no.

      • Re:Oh joy (Score:5, Interesting)

        by dreemernj (859414) on Friday February 06 2009, @09:07AM (#26751047) Homepage Journal
        Those 2000+ people signed up for a game where alliances battle rivals through various methods. This didn't impact their hobby, this IS their hobby. What they signed up to is a game where this sort of thing not only can happen, but happens pretty often. If this is the first time something like this happened with an alliance this large, great, they got the high score in their game.

        The only thing interesting about this whole situation is the "news" coverage it is getting.

        It might seem like some sort of big deal because so many people are involved, but this sort of thing is a core element for the higher level play of the game. Maybe if the game didn't focus on this aspect of the gameplay as one of its main selling points to get new players, this would be interesting. This is just a "water is wet" story.

        The real headline could be about how one alliance managed to use sites like Slashdot to wave the flag that their rival's outposts are now conquerable. Going so far as to get pseudo news sites with large followings to function as a communications tool and a rallying cry for a virtual world battle is actually pretty interesting.
    • Re:Oh joy (Score:5, Interesting)

      by a_nonamiss (743253) on Friday February 06 2009, @09:01AM (#26750999)
      You know, I fully respect your right not to care about this news, because it has no affect on you. Sort of like how I don't really care about who is the mayor of Palm Springs or whether Grandville High School won the big football game last night, but like it or not, EVE Online has an active playerbase all around the world, and they're the types of people who read Slashdot. If you played EVE, which I understand you don't, you'd understand that this news is epic. In the scope of the game, it's akin to the fall of the Soviet Union. (Two polarized superpowers, and one of them falls.)

      To put in perspective how seriously the people involved (not me) take this stuff, the leaders of the disbanded alliance got on flights at 3am to meet in Washington DC (I believe) so they could pick up the pieces and start getting to work on putting together the alliance. Honestly, I'm surprised it took almost 36 hours for an article to get on Slashdot.
      • Re:Oh joy (Score:4, Insightful)

        by hab136 (30884) on Friday February 06 2009, @09:49AM (#26751533) Journal

        To put in perspective how seriously the people involved (not me) take this stuff, the leaders of the disbanded alliance got on flights at 3am to meet in Washington DC (I believe) so they could pick up the pieces and start getting to work on putting together the alliance.

        Why? Have they never heard of webcams and videoconferencing? Or just plain telephones?

        • Re:Oh joy (Score:5, Informative)

          by a_nonamiss (743253) on Friday February 06 2009, @10:27AM (#26752253)
          According to this [worldofwarcraft.com] website (far from scientific) the largest guild in WoW is maybe 3600 members. BoB was twice that. I don't believe one of those guilds has ever been compromised in one day through a single act of metagaming. WoW servers are splintered. EVE has a single server, (instance) and everyone who plays EVE plays in a single universe. EVE may have a fraction of the players as WoW, but EVERYONE in EVE knows BoB.

          I would bet this is the largest fall of an online superpower to date. I think that's newsworthy.
        • Re:Oh joy (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Daengbo (523424) <daengbo.gmail@com> on Friday February 06 2009, @01:08PM (#26755233) Homepage Journal

          Ahem. Second WoW Expansion Launched, Conquered [slashdot.org] We also go the play-by-play when Lich King went live and people were seeing the content. We got notified when Burning Crusade went live.

          This is the Slashdot Games section. The people who play these games care. I don't play them. I don't care. That doesn't mean the news isn't interesting to a lot of nerds.

          • Re:Oh joy (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Maxo-Texas (864189) on Friday February 06 2009, @12:54PM (#26755033)

            Killing the Sleeper was the EQ equivalent.

            a) It was supposed to be impossible by design.

                1) It killed a fully geared toon in 10 seconds.
                2) It had 2 billion hit points
                3) If you did some kind of quest, it woke up, kicked every one's ass in the world and then left the game forever unbeaten.

            b) It was beaten on a PVP server-- every server in the game was getting updates as it progressed.
                1) They had to have security to fend off any griefers who would try to stop it.
                2) They had to prevent anyone from completing the quest
                3) They had a lineup of 30 warriors whose job was to step up, get aggro, die.
                4) They had a support group big enough to raise those warriors, rebuff them, and get them back in rotation within 300 seconds.
                5) It took some ungodly number of *hours* to do this. Every server was getting updates. "7:37pm, Sleeper at 93%" "10:05pm, Sleeper at 52%"
                6) A bug or direct intervention by the Developers prevented them from winning the first attempt-- so they had to do it all, then remotivate everyone and do it again after the Devs got jumped on by all of EQ to give them a fair shot.

            Still that was only about 600 people (with an audience of a few hundred thousand perhaps). The Eve thing sounds bigger.

        • Re:Oh joy (Score:4, Informative)

          by Impy the Impiuos Imp (442658) on Friday February 06 2009, @10:05AM (#26751839) Journal

          An alliance is a guild of guilds.

          In Eve, the stupid missions aren't the game. It's the 90%+ of space that's not controlled by any guards whatsoever. A single guild isn't big enough to control much, so alliances form to hold and control a few stars in an area.

          They set up huge space outposts, with defensive satellites, spaceship warehouses and repair shops, defensive force fields 80km in diameter, oh yeah it's pretty sweet.

          Imagine if WoW or whatever the hell you play (and I used to for 8 months -- had a maxxed out Ranger Cowgirl with Ravager pet who could down anyone except for one other ranger in complete tier whatever purple) except that the PvP areas you laid down your own castles to try to literally own and control the whole zone. You installed automated ballistas and catapults and whatnot. You tried to guard the zone in and one out points.

          Yeah. So go back to doing the lame quests and "raids" and other pointless garbage.

          Massively multiplayer, team-based PvP. That's what the ultimate goal is. And Eve's a lot closer than anyone else.

          Oh, and the bigger ships are persistent and cannot be stored and do not disappear when you log out, and neither do these player space stations ("POS" in Eve lingo, player-owned structures.) So you'd better have some good defense, a big alliance with someone always around to sound the alarm, or be damned good at security-through-obscurity.

          • Re:Oh joy (Score:5, Insightful)

            by bigstrat2003 (1058574) * on Friday February 06 2009, @01:10PM (#26755267)

            Massively multiplayer, team-based PvP. That's what the ultimate goal is.

            For you. I can't think of anything I want less in my online gaming. Of course, that's the problem with some PvP fans... they can't understand that the preference of every MMO player in existence doesn't line up with theirs, and then deride those who prefer other methods by talking about "lame quests and raids and other pointless garbage". God forbid we learn to appreciate the fact that other people like different things.

  • by Bruce Perens (3872) * <[moc.snerep] [ta] [ecurb]> on Friday February 06 2009, @03:02AM (#26749205) Homepage Journal
    Wow, some people must be really heavily into that gamespace. It always amazes me to see articles where nothing in the summary connects to the real world at all.
    • As a former player, I can attest.

      The game really has it's own politics.

    • by tibman (623933) on Friday February 06 2009, @03:42AM (#26749383)

      I'll translate it into a semi-realworld (fictional) scenario to help out...

      "In the world of Business-Politics, the infamous Apple company has been dissolved. It seems that rival Company Microsoft had a [director level] spy in the holding corporation, and he stole money as well as Super-Computers and other assets. The spy then dissolved the company. 'One of Microsoft's stated motivations from their early days as a company was to punish what they viewed as the arrogance of Apple. If they've held true to that ideal, stealing the marketplace out from under Apple effectively means Microsoft has accomplished what they set out to do years ago.' As of 11:00 GMT, Apple lost all its Intellectual Property. (its patents are void now, trademarks are pointless, copyrights are invalid)."

      Now if you can imagine the majority of Apple employees were living in their work cubicals when they found out. The next morning all apple employees were then promptly all shoved out into the street with little more than the clothes on their back. Linux and Microsoft gangs bum rushed into the area to quickly rob every apple employee as possible and quickly convert former-apple assets into new workstations and easy cash.

      It's probably the biggest zerozero political upheaval in EVE's history.

    • by Faldgan (13738) on Friday February 06 2009, @04:32AM (#26749603) Homepage Journal

      I know what you mean. Here I am stationed in Iraq, I've got people going out every day who are possibly going to get really killed. We find explosives, get shot at, you name it. It's all VERY real. But there are enough people who are so totally insulated from this sort of thing that the EVE Online game is vastly more important to them.

      On the other hand, this should spur someone from Darfur to post about the genocide there. Or one of the congo nations where life is so horrible.

      What does it say about us as a species that there is such a range of lifestyles? On one end is the people where EVE Online takeovers might be the most important thing to happen to them all year. At the other end are refugees who get killed by the thousands and would have been starving and diseased anyway.

      Is this disparity good or bad? Is there any limit to how much disparity is good? Would we be better off if everybody had similar worries and we were all about the same level on Maslow's hierarchy of needs?

      • by tibman (623933) on Friday February 06 2009, @04:49AM (#26749681)

        It IS a game and it's enjoyable to participate in. There is probably a happy medium for how serious people should take games. On my last deployment I didn't have access to internet (or phones, or tv) so we played frisbee or came up with stupid pranks.

        I think a lot of vets feel the way you do. They get back and go wtf is wrong with you people, arguing over childish things? Probably why so many vets become unsync'd with the society they grew up in. But it's probably better this way. Try to keep the innocent.. innocent. No need for my family to REALLY know how shitty the world truely is, eh?

      • by Dun Malg (230075) on Friday February 06 2009, @08:41AM (#26750823) Homepage

        I know what you mean. Here I am stationed in Iraq, I've got people going out every day who are possibly going to get really killed. We find explosives, get shot at, you name it. It's all VERY real. But there are enough people who are so totally insulated from this sort of thing that the EVE Online game is vastly more important to them.

        On the other hand, this should spur someone from Darfur to post about the genocide there. Or one of the congo nations where life is so horrible.

        I slogged through two tours in Afghanistan. It was five years ago, and I still don't really like to see news much. After 8 years of Army service deployed four times to such wonderful places (e.g. Bosnia), I feel like I've used up my capacity for dealing with brutal realities. I think it's good that some people have their silly little games to occupy them. Most people can't handle the shit you and I have had to see.

      • by east coast (590680) on Friday February 06 2009, @09:23AM (#26751211)
        Maybe I'm taking you wrong but I'd like to think that the vast majority of EVE players, myself included, would never see real harm come to someone else over our game. BUT... It's still a game. Your post would be just as relevent about 99.98% of all articles on Slashdot, why wait to choose EVE to be the punching bag of what you feel is misguided interest? Why not instead shout down all the fans who paid thousands of dollars to see the latest Superbowl? Or perhaps the millions who paid more attention to what Michelle Obama was wearing during Inaguration Day instead of what the platform of the new administration was?

        What do you think the average EVE player should be doing about the global situation?

        Ultimatly, I'm sure everyone reading this and posting here is well aware that there are bad things going on all over the world. But we are who we are. Everyone produces in their own way and everyone takes something from the system on what some unfortunate souls in the Congo would consider a selfish way. By some people's standards even you are living a better life than they are.

        So what exactly do you want from us? Do you want every thought on our mind to be about how horrible the world can be? Do you want every article on Slashdot to be about what you feel is most important in the world? I honor your work and sacrifice but I think it's out of line when you say stuff like "But there are enough people who are so totally insulated from this sort of thing that the EVE Online game is vastly more important to them."
      • Random Observation (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Greyfox (87712) on Friday February 06 2009, @11:56AM (#26754017) Homepage Journal
        One EvE ISK is worth more than one Zimbabwe dollar.
    • nothing in the summary connects to the real world at all.

      It's always been like that. But this time, neither does TFA.

    • by RobotRunAmok (595286) on Friday February 06 2009, @07:45AM (#26750459)

      Most people I know who play Eve are fascinated by how into Real Life so many others are.

  • *gasp* (Score:5, Funny)

    by NonSequor (230139) on Friday February 06 2009, @03:03AM (#26749211) Journal

    As of 11:00 GMT, BoB lost all its sovereignty (its outposts are conquerable now, cyno-jammers are offline, jump bridges are inoperable)."

    God have mercy on our souls.

    • Re:*gasp* (Score:4, Informative)

      by Yvanhoe (564877) on Friday February 06 2009, @07:25AM (#26750371) Journal
      To explain what it means... Cyno fields are special (and expensive) devices that create a wormhole in any place of the EVE universe. This is usually used to allow an attack force to bypass a heavily guarded point. If you want to create a decently secure place, you have to buy cyno-jammers in order to prevent this sapper work to be possible. BoB claimed a large part of territory and had several cyno-jammers in their presumably strategical positions. Cyno jammers offline means that a single ship avoiding detection could possibly open an access to an arbitrary large army anywhere inside their territory.
      • Re:*gasp* (Score:4, Informative)

        by tnk1 (899206) on Friday February 06 2009, @12:40PM (#26754813)

        More importantly, cyno fields are the only way to move capital ships, since they don't fit through jump gates. If your cyno jammers are down, your enemies can jump in their Dreadnoughts, Carriers and Titans to put a hurting on your player-owned stations and other assets. They can also jump ships in to say, disrupt a large, but not so well defended mining operation that you used to run in very safe space. If the Goons planned this properly, this could devastate the economy of the former BoB corps.

        In other words, if you have enemies with a large number of capital and other jump capable ships, losing your jammers means that you are very close to having your family jewels squeezed very hard. If I was the executor or one of the directors who spend the time to manage such a huge alliance, I would be feeling distinctly unwell right now.

  • It wasn't a 'spy'... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 06 2009, @03:19AM (#26749277)

    GoonSwarm basically had this PR coup handed to them on a silver platter, they had done nothing themselves to make this happen.

    What is known to have happened is that a player with full director access to the BoB holding corporation, Tinfoil, defected and asked GoonSwarm if they wanted full director access. They obviously replied in the positive, and eventually realized they now had access to the proverbial nuke button on their sworn enemies.

    Speculation is rampant in the EvE community, though hard facts are hard to come by. Suggestions include that either this is a case of a hacked account, as the owner was supposedly on some form of military duty when this happened a few days ago. Another, less vocal, minority considers this to be a possible case of someone 'cracking' psychologically, possibly due to the player's military background.

    Also, some people feel this event may be due to broken game mechanics, as it seem odd you can just nuke a large alliance into bedrock with a few mouse clicks and 2 minutes of work. Usually it takes either a director vote, or at least a 24 hour grace period, to perform drastic changes to corp policies and organization.

    Summary: Not a spy, not GoonSwarm's work. Just a single unhappy defector undoing 4 years of work by some 3000 players in a few seconds.

    Disclaimer: I play EvE Online, but am not a member of any of the major alliances in the game.

    • As someone who plays more traditional and structured MMO's, I find the idea that so much work can be reduced to ruins by one putz to be horrifying, especially given that games are supposed to be a way to escape the real-world.

      I investigated further, like someone who just saw a massive train wreck, by reading the forums.

      Goons seemed to have been given admin access to and archived the BoB forums as well, and have been posting juicier tidbits.

      Having administered a "guild gone stale" in WoW, I can recognize the tone and content of the post. My conclusion is band of brothers had outgrown its purpose and was now as adrift and stale as GM.

      The euthenasia of this massive organization will breathe new life into the game, but it may also drive a large number of these people who were screwed out of the game, making a huge dent in the userbase.

      • by fitten (521191) on Friday February 06 2009, @08:33AM (#26750759)

        The euthenasia of this massive organization will breathe new life into the game, but it may also drive a large number of these people who were screwed out of the game, making a huge dent in the userbase.

        You get a gold star! ;) Seriously... you 'get' it. Yes... BoB controlled a very large, very rich, area of the game universe. This activity has made a huge 'hole' in space... the richest part of space. Before, all of claimable space had been claimed and had become fairly stable. This 'hole' has opened up a very rich region for land grabbing and the like... and with that, there will be squabbles, fights, and all sorts of new fun!

        There will probably be a few who quit over this, true, but I doubt many will... life in EVE is like that... BoB has a bunch of very dedicated and extremely skilled players in it... I'm betting they will regroup and try to take back their space... which will stir up all kinds of drama in itself.

        EVE lives for drama. The game *IS* made by the players. 99% of the game content is made by the players... who is fighting who? what regions are 'hot'? who just screwed over someone else? The leader of BoB said, and it was true, that BoB has been providing the game with content since they formed and first took space. Missions and all the PVE stuff is just the ISK printing press to fund the "real" part of the game by supplying money to players to buy stuff. The production (crafting) part of EVE is massive and an integral part of the game. If you're flying a ship, it was made by a player (and you're always flying a ship). If you fit tech2 equipment onto your ship, it was made by a player. And yeah, you have to have miners to get minerals, people to tend moon stations to harvest 'rare' minerals, and someone to take all those things and manufacture stuff.

        There's really no other game with the complexity and depth of EVE.

    • by mewsenews (251487) on Friday February 06 2009, @08:51AM (#26750897) Homepage

      GoonSwarm basically had this PR coup handed to them on a silver platter, they had done nothing themselves to make this happen.

      When Kim Philby [wikipedia.org] defected, do you think the media at the time focused on how little effort the Soviets expended to get him on their side?

      A coup is a coup.

    • by Bieeanda (961632) on Friday February 06 2009, @10:01AM (#26751755)
      It wasn't a spy, it was a defector. Goonsquad's recruitment comes 100% from within the Something Awful forums, with registration-date requirements and other security measures to weed out all but the most dedicated moles. They do however run recruitment scams from time to time: set up a sub-corporation, get people to give them time, in-game money and materials in return for recruiting them with the promise of full Goonswarm membership at a later date, and proceed to bilk them until they're no longer useful. Or at least, that's how it's supposed to go behind the scenes.

      This guy joined up as a spy, and decided to stay around because the Swarm was actually nice to him. People were friendly and helpful, unlike BoB where he barely got a 'hello' upon recruitment. He got tired of BoB's 'Serious Business' attitude and under-appreciation, and put the screws to them.

  • by zergl (841491) on Friday February 06 2009, @03:19AM (#26749287)

    This whole incident has nothing to do with Goonswarm infiltrating BoB with spies.

    The person responsible was "just" a disgruntled BNC director that wanted to go out with a huge bang and GoonsFleet (The Mittani, to be precise) just gave him advice on how to maximize the damage he'd inflict on his way out.

  • by Card (30431) on Friday February 06 2009, @03:43AM (#26749391) Homepage

    This story is rather incomprehensible to the rest of us. Could an EVE player explain some terms like sovereignty, ISK reserves, cyno-jammers and capfleet towers, please? Good thing that territorial control [massively.com] was explained...

    The article also says

    Once assured a place within GoonSwarm, Agamar proceeded to disband the Band of Brothers alliance using his director level access.

    ...but what powers does the director level access give you, exactly?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      In a word, sudo

    • by shannara256 (262093) on Friday February 06 2009, @04:17AM (#26749527) Homepage

      This story is rather incomprehensible to the rest of us. Could an EVE player explain some terms like sovereignty, ISK reserves, cyno-jammers and capfleet towers, please? Good thing that territorial control was explained...

      The article also says

      Once assured a place within GoonSwarm, Agamar proceeded to disband the Band of Brothers alliance using his director level access.

      ...but what powers does the director level access give you, exactly?

      Sovereignty is a game mechanic which allows several other things to work. It's built by holding a solar system or constellation for a certain period of time, up to a month. Losing it means all of the things which rely on it to stop working (see below).

      ISK is the currency in EVE (read gold). ISK reserves, therefore, would be money set aside for later - in this case I believe it was set aside for upkeep fees.

      A cyno-jammer prevents cynosural fields from forming in the system. A cynosural field allows capital ships to move between systems, as capital ships are too large to use the stargates normal, smaller ships use. It's an important defensive structure - one of the main purposes of capital ships are to attack Player Operated Stations (POSs), which are used (among other things) to claim sovereignty.

      "Capfleet tower" is a little ambiguous, but given the context I believe they're referring to the assembly arrays required to build capital ships. Due to their size, they can't be manufactured in the same places other ships are built - they require a special module, anchored at a POS (the hub of which is called a tower). The capital ship assembly array also requires sovereignty to work. Losing sovereignty means that all the capital ships that were being constructed have been put on hold. If sovereignty can be rebuilt, then those manufacturing jobs would resume, but that will be difficult because the systems are so hotly contested right now - it's likely that the assembly arrays will be attacked and destroyed.

      A corporation director has very nearly all the abilities of a CEO - basically a guild leader with full access. Normally that means that one can expel other corporation members, directly manipulate the wallet (where all the corporation's money is kept), and so on. In this case, because the defector had director access in the executor corp (sort of the leader corporation of the alliance), he also had access to all the alliance management options - including kicking member corporations out of the alliance, and then closing the alliance.

      I hope that helps clear things up.

        • by jjohnson (62583) on Friday February 06 2009, @12:03PM (#26754163) Homepage

          On the contrary, the fact that coups like this *are* possible is exactly what attracts that level of meta-gamer who bothers to spend years of their life building a corp/alliance. If things like this weren't possible, large old alliances like BoB would be fixtures in the game, immovable and unconquerable.

          As it was, BoB nearly was invincible due to the network of alliance level infrastructure they built up. The ongoing war between goonfleet and BoB had taken on the character of WWI: static lines that don't move much. That's boring. It's like you and your PvP opponent have both got your tier 8 gear and are no longer capable of killing each other, so you don't bother to fight anymore.

          No infrastructure was destroyed; but by disbanding the alliance, they lost sovereignty; by losing sovereignty, they lost infrastructure features that require sovereignty. BoB's core territory in Delve is now conquerable. That doesn't mean conquered--see the post above from a BoB member who's excited about the impending action. What'll happen now is that BoB's core support will have to man the Delve systems continuously and defend them long enough for sovereignty to reassert (about three month). It'll be a long battle where they'll actually have to fight, rather than sit behind their cyno-jammers.

          This isn't a glitch. This is exactly why those serious players play Eve, because stuff like this happens.

          If you want a real-world analogy, don't think of gov't, think of Enron, where a few key executives were able to build a house of cards that almost overnight put 55,000 people out of work when it all collapsed. It's large-scale, player-driven reversals like this that make Eve interesting for those people.

          Not to me, though :) After running some lvl 4 missions in my new Raven, I got bored, and didn't want to get into the politics of it.

  • Band of Brothers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by t00le (136364) on Friday February 06 2009, @10:51AM (#26752759)

    I am a member of Band of Brothers and the only thing this has caused is a renewed interest on the part of the Alliance.

    For them to remove us they will need to remove all of our moon mining and sovereignty towers. We have hundreds of capital ships and around 2k people waiting for the morons to come running into the chainsaw.

    All of this is a pain, but sovereignty is already ticking to regain control. They have a little over two months to destroy us, before we get sovereignty three to re-acitvate our jammers, bridges and whatnot.

    Considering we have war supplies and motivation, they will not be successful and their chest beating is simply propaganda.

    In the last 24 hours almost all of BoB and their allies have fallen back to Delve to get ready for the fight. Before we mobilized they were tooting their horns about taking stations and anchoring pos's, but when push came to shove they didn't wish to engage.

    This is not newsworthy, but a "Blue Falcon" act by a friend of BoB.

    • by varcher (156670) on Friday February 06 2009, @03:21AM (#26749293)

      It's a bit more than that. With sovereignty, you lose a large chunk of your internal economy and logistics. A lot of that will not have to be re-acquired, it will have to be rebuilt, from the ground up.
       
      The reason BoB was able to hold on its central Delve systems was that sovereign systems are easy to defend. You have cynos, you have jumpbridges, you have reserves of capitals and super-capitals ready to reinforce. And it helped that Delve was a very rich sector, making it a perfect logistics base.
       
      Those advantages are gone. They have to be rebuilt - and most ennemy corps will not stand idle while BoB regroup. Look at the influence map: BoB has started to reassert sovereignty in pieces, but there's already huge chunks of territory carved. Getting them back... is going to take months. Or a year. Or two.

      • by Rakshasa Taisab (244699) on Friday February 06 2009, @03:59AM (#26749461) Homepage

        The whole region is already seeing everyone and their mothers moving in to loot and pillage. More than just a strategic loss, they now have to deal with a large number of enemies and random neutrals coming to play in their space.

        Also, the Band of Brothers name was claimed by the Goons, so they can't reform under it.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 06 2009, @04:17AM (#26749529)

      Well it matters more than "some city's sports team won vs. another city's sports team". That makes news on non-tech news sites. So hey, why not?

      • by Opportunist (166417) on Friday February 06 2009, @07:09AM (#26750285)

        My first reaction was, too, "that's news? How's that relevant? Did something change in the tech world because of it?"

        Then I realized that the "real" news are filled with sports reports and celeb weddings, and I realized that this is basically the nerd equivalent thereof.

        • by Ash-Fox (726320) on Friday February 06 2009, @09:20AM (#26751177) Homepage

          Then I realized that the "real" news are filled with sports reports and celeb weddings, and I realized that this is basically the nerd equivalent thereof.

          Some of the "real" news is pretty hilarious though:

          "The group of vigilante men came to report that while they were on patrol they saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car. They pursued them. However one of them escaped while the other turned into a goat," Kwara state police spokesman Tunde Mohammed told Reuters by telephone.

          "We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody. We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat," he said.

          Source: Reuters

    • Re:One reason... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rokknroll (677118) on Friday February 06 2009, @04:19AM (#26749539)
      I think the /. i grew up with is dead. This is a huge political upheaval in a Virtual World. The old /. would lap up the meta-game consequences. The old /. would wax lyrical about the shifting social paradigms that would make this a headline. The old /. would figure out how to get the premium client running on a toaster. The new /. is like a youtube comments page, nothing but vitriol and hate, smart-arse comments by half-wits. I cite the Boron article yesterday, about 4 million "jokes" using variations on "Boring". I mean...COME ON! People had to then ask for clarification, in the old days people would have searched 1st, asked later. Not now, now its all hate and entitlement culture. Worst of all, no one even knows what the HURD is anymore. Goodbye /.
      • Re:One reason... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by meringuoid (568297) on Friday February 06 2009, @08:04AM (#26750575)
        I think the /. i grew up with is dead. This is a huge political upheaval in a Virtual World. The old /. would lap up the meta-game consequences. The old /. would wax lyrical about the shifting social paradigms that would make this a headline.

        Yes, but that was in 1998. Virtual worlds were new; anything more sophisticated than a MUD was pure Snow Crash stuff. Events like this were news because it was a virgin territory. Nobody knew what kind of culture would emerge, what kind of unwritten rules and social norms would become established in the new cyberspace communities.

        Was Mr Bungle a rapist? Seems quite quaint now, doesn't it? It was a big deal at the time. Yet what he did was small beer compared to what anonymous trolls from ebaumsworld do every day. We know now what people will do in a virtual world given unlimited freedom to create as they see fit. They'll scrawl goatse on every available surface, and code up swarms of flying penises to molest furries. They'll swarm in a hundred Samuel L Jackson lookalikes and block off the exits from the swimming pool. It's just griefing, move on.

        Events in-game like this one aren't interesting any more. Been there, done that, bored now. What gets /.'s interest nowadays is the interface between the game world and reality. The economics of gold farming, for instance. Or, player A buys a +5 Sword of Smiting with real money from player B. Player C kills player A in-game and takes the sword. Is player C a real-world thief? Having gained an item worth real-world money, is he liable for tax on it? That's where the unknown is now, where we don't really know the rules, so that's what's interesting.

        As for the HURD - again, it's been too long, and we've mostly lost interest. We have a kernel of our own, thanks.

    • by some guy I know (229718) on Friday February 06 2009, @04:33AM (#26749605) Homepage

      I play games for fun, not to be screwed over by other players, and people wonder why EVE doesn't interest me enough

      Wow, people wonder that?
      That's amazing.
      I can just picture them gathered around the water cooler, chatting.
      One of them says, "You know, I wonder why EVE doesn't interest Larry enough.".
      Another one replies, "Yes, I was discussing this with my inflatable girlfriend last night, and both of us were wondering why EVE doesn't interest Larry enough.".
      And then a third person says, "Maybe it's because he plays games for fun, not to be screwed over by other players."

      Yes, I can imagine people wondering why EVE doesn't interest you enough.
      People who have even less of a life than people who take EVE seriously enough to submit lame articles about it to Slashdot.
      Or Slashdot editors who post them.
      Or people who anonymously comment about them.
      Or respond to anonymous comments about them.

    • by ^BR (37824) on Friday February 06 2009, @05:28AM (#26749853)

      BoB got betrayed by one of its most trusted members, it's not unlike a RL CFO running with some company funds.

      Individual players lost nothing, but will have a hard time rebuilding under the pressure they'll be under. Everyone is very excited, the big war (about 2 years now) has been a stalemate with both sides deeply entrenched, now there's some hope of a conclusion at last.

      And at the very least, lots of boat violence(*).

      * EVE meme made famous after a Chinese ISK farmer whose spaceship got caught by players said "Please do not violence my boat"

    • Whose fault? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by argent (18001) <peter@slashdot.2 ... m ['006' in gap]> on Friday February 06 2009, @07:22AM (#26750347) Homepage Journal

      I'm wondering whose fault it was that one member of the alliance had that much power.

      If there are mechanisms in-game for shared responsibility for assets and BoB didn't take advantage of them, that's BoB's problem.

      If the game forced them to structure their alliance so one person COULD take them down, that's EVE's fault.