How EVE Online Dealt With a 3,000-Player Battle 398
Space MMORPG EVE Online is best known for its amazing stories, and on Sunday it added a new epic tale. The leader of a huge coalition, preparing for a moderately sized assault, mis-clicked and accidentally warped himself into enemy territory without his support fleet, endangering his massive ship worth an estimated $3,500. Realizing the danger, he called upon every ally he could, and the enemy fleet rallied in turn, leading to an incredible 3,000-player battle. What's also impressive is that the EVE servers stayed up for the whole fight, when most MMOs struggle with even a few hundred players at the same time. The Penny Arcade report spoke with CCP Games for some information on how they managed that:
"It’s hard to wrap your head around, but they sometimes move the in-game space itself. 'We move other solar systems on the node away from the fight. This disconnects anyone in those systems temporarily, but spares them from the ongoing symptoms of being on an overloaded server,' Veritas explained. 'It helps the fight system a little bit as well, especially if a reinforcement fleet is traveling through those other systems. This was done for the fight over the weekend, but is rare.' ... They do have a built-in mechanism for dealing with massive battles, however: They slow down time itself. ... Once server load reaches a certain point, the game automatically slows down time by certain increments to deal with the strain. Time was running at 10% speed during this 3,000-person battle, which is the maximum amount of time dilation possible."
3000 players you say? (Score:3, Funny)
How many were divorced the next day?
Re:3000 players you say? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, that was my thought too.
How many came out of the computer room sweating on their run to the fridge, uncommunicative, distracted, and wild eyed. Then crawled into bed late to a cold shoulder and a turned back.
Then having to go to work/school the next day and not be able to explain it to anyone because, nobody would understand, and all the raised eyebrows, and looking askance, and rolling of eyes between workmates.
Private little daydreams must be problematic when shared with 3000 other basement dwellers.
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EVE takes so much time and the people involved there are part of the group that takes it "seriously" (not really, but they do care about the game), so chances are their significant other understands it -- or at least tolerates it.
Re:3000 players you say? (Score:5, Funny)
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Slow? Yes. Boring? Not hardly. Watching the supercap you spent months acquiring getting torn apart piece by piece is, I would wager, anything but boring. Not pleasant. But not boring. And, looking on the other side, realizing that you've delivering a serious blow to Goonfleet, one of the most powerful--and hated--coalitions in Eve, had to have been much more pleasant. And also not boring.
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You see, this is the ultimate problem with MMORPGs. Like any game you work hard at it, and you are immersed - it's a little suspension of reality for you. Drawing on all manner of skills you can progress a long way, only to end up achieving something worth absolutely nothing to anyone except the people who play the game.
I suppose it is a little like playing sport, except the richness of human interaction there is irreplaceable and fitness has huge physiological benefits.
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except the richness of human interaction there is irreplaceable
The only problem is that sports are, to me, incredibly boring. I couldn't care less about any "richness of human interaction" when all you're doing is throwing/hitting balls around on a field.
Re:3000 players you say? (Score:4, Insightful)
My little excursion out for the evening as a Tamer turned into an epic battle for both my and my irreplaceable pets - a Nightmare (fire breathing horse) and my Dragon. This was before pet summoning etc....you could spend hours finding the perfect beastie to tame, then spend hours more honing their skills. By hours, I mean weeks, months, etc. Once they died, they died.
And mine did. After about a two hour struggle (went down a bad tunnel into a spawn of Balrons then got flanked by another set) both pets went down. I ported out...confused, sad, befuddled as to what happened, distraught...those little pixels were under my watchful eye for two frigging years, and now they were gone. Gone!
A way to say even though I have never logged into Eve, I know what that feeling is like. Emotional? Yep. Boring, nope.
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It's an improvement on the old situation because events were timed in real time even with bad server lag, so if you have a 30-second cooldown on some ability or other, but a 5 minute lag, you only get to use it one tenth as many times as you're supposed to, which breaks the game design and is really infuriating to play. Now they slow the cooldowns down along with the lag in responding to commands so you can still keep doing stuff as much as the designers intended you to be able to. Kind of like the differ
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In Texas it's 90 days unless adultery is involved, then there has to be a trial.
Relativity (Score:5, Funny)
So relativity is just the universe's way of saying the local server is currently way too crowded with rest mass?
Re:Relativity (Score:5, Informative)
So relativity is just the universe's way of saying the local server is currently way too crowded with rest mass?
Not exactly. The servers might have stayed up but the health of the cluster was poor. I was logged in at the time, and was getting live reports from people on grid for the battle. There were a lot of disconnects across the entire eve universe; And this amplified the losses to the individual players. Many petitions were filed for damages due to getting "DC'd" and being unable to reconnect.
The cluster architecture for Eve is actually quite amazing, and the underlying logic exceptionally sophisticated. But the main failure point, which has been mitigated but not eliminated with the time dilation feature, has always been the database. Every action in the game generates dozens of database updates. When you have 3,000 people frobbing the gun buttons and the heal me buttons, things get ugly fast. Time dilation is a way of creating a queuing system so that the actions are accepted to the server, and then serially updated into the master database. The server tries to compress and reduce the amount of updates to this, doing a lot of calculations and updates, but ultimately, this link is of finite size.
The other bottleneck is that because of the caching and buffering mentioned above between each server and the central database, is that a server can't swap its resources to another server. If that server is managing, say, 40 (in game) systems, and one of them goes all nuclear, the other 39 also suffer from lag and such because those other 39 can't be offloaded to another server -- that state information stays on the server because of the buffering and caching issues mentioned earlier. It's a syncronization nightmare -- there's no way to cleanly break the flow of data and redirect it, and if any of those database updates get lost, it can mean real money lost to the players.
And real money was lost in Eve, not just because of player actions, but also cluster architecture. Those big ships don't just disappear when their pilot disconnects: They stay on the field, taking hits. And without a pilot, a lot of defensive actions (like warping away) aren't available anymore. I know at least 1 of those titans was lost because of a disconnected pilot. You can blame the ISP for that, but it was happening across the board, to all Eve players.
This behavior of the eve servers is well-known to regular players. Some alliances (large groups of players) even intentionally try to provoke such server failures, knowing it'll lead to losses like what's described in the article. Far from this being a success story... it's an example only of avoiding a worst-case scenario. The servers saying up means exactly dick if the servers aren't processing the requests in a timely fashion. Ask anyone on Wall St., why there's so many data centers ringed around it; Latency. It costs a fortune to host servers there, but those extra milliseconds matter.
As it turns out, MMOs have similar architectural features to our largest financial institutions. This one, more than most.
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The other bottleneck is that because of the caching and buffering mentioned above between each server and the central database, is that a server can't swap its resources to another server. If that server is managing, say, 40 (in game) systems, and one of them goes all nuclear, the other 39 also suffer from lag and such because those other 39 can't be offloaded to another server -- that state information stays on the server because of the buffering and caching issues mentioned earlier. It's a syncronization nightmare -- there's no way to cleanly break the flow of data and redirect it, and if any of those database updates get lost, it can mean real money lost to the players.
Doesn't the quote from CCP in the summary directly contradict this paragraph of what you said? As it their quote says, they can move systems physically away in order to move them to different servers. The result is that the players in those 39 other systems get disconnected temporarily, but then they are moved to other servers where they are able to play more easily, thus leaving a bigger chunk of the computational pie on the first server for the one system that's going nuclear.
Granted, I don't play the gam
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The problem is, to move the players, they have to be disconnected first. Once moved they can reconnect. Unfortunately, an easy way to get out of fights would be just to pull your Ethernet cable, so when a disconnect happens they just log YOU out and not your ship. So, if you get disconnected you're still getting hammered by your opponents. BUT... if they drop the entire solar system (i.e. Zone) you are in, then your opponents get dropped at the same time. So the system is basically filled with ghost ships u
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That is actually what happens when you disconnect and reconnect, you get blasted away to a "safe spot" (and then disappear). When you reconnect, you return to the safe-spot and your shit starts an auto-warp back to where you where before. Which in this case might be the middle of an absurd 3000 man punch-up.
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Yeah, EVE was one of the first large test cases for SSD backed database servers I read about and the numbers they talked about amazed me because it far exceeded all the business processes for my S&P 500 company.
Re:Relativity (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a EVE server dev and this analysis is not quite right. The DB is indeed a central point of failure, but it's rarely a performance bottleneck nowadays. The part about migrating resources is half-wrong, as yes, we can't (yet) move solarsystems around machines without disconnecting the players in it, but unless there's a fight going on in a to be moved system, we still do it to free cpu for the system where a fight is indeed going on. See more here http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=74227 [eveonline.com] .
$3600 ship (Score:5, Informative)
According to the Eve message boards, it was a Leviathan-class Titan. $3600 may be a bit on the high side, but it was worth thousands, definitely.
Incidentlally, estimated losses for the entire battle (which included *three* titans lost before it was all over, all on the side the guy who misjumped) is over 700 billion ISK. That's about *$25,000*, kiddies.
Re:$3600 ship (Score:5, Funny)
which included *three* titans lost before it was all over, all on the side the guy who misjumped
Let me guess, he jumped into the battle screaming "LEEROY JENKINS!!!"
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From the accounts I read, his battlecry was more likely "OhGodWhatDidIJustDo? HEEEEELP!"
Accidentally appearing in the middle of enemy controlled territory means he most likely was immediately pinned by several well-equipped tackles--helped by the fact that a Titan is one of the least agile ships in the game. They would have had plenty of time to get him properly wrapped up. By the time he realized he wasn't going where he thought he was going, it was too late.
Re:$3600 ship (Score:5, Informative)
Technically he didn't jump to enemy controlled territory but to an area that isn't strictly controlled by players. From what I read the idea was to drop some big guns on top of a handful of enemies in a "neutral" system, a couple of enemies that were pleasantly surprised when instead of a sizable fleet they got a juicy target.
Then everybody called in reinforcements plus the locals also wanted to join the party.
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which included *three* titans lost before it was all over, all on the side the guy who misjumped
Let me guess, he jumped into the battle screaming "LEEROY JENKINS!!!"
At least he had chicken
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You're saying a guy had $25,000 locked up in virtual stuff and lost it in this battle?
Not one guy, that number is the total for everyone.
Re:$3600 ship (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like total losses across the board, not just for one guy.
One of the big selling points for EVE Online is that they fully allow real currency (yes, actual dollars) to purchase in-game goods and services. The general thought process being : in normal video games (specifically MMOs like WoW) people without jobs are at a distinct advantage because they can spend all day killing boars, leveling up, mining ore, etc. EVE balances that by letting employed individuals use the fruits of their daily activities in game. You spent all day farming in-game, I spent all day farming in the real world.
That being said, I'm not intimately familiar with the economy of EVE... but from the article, a single ship is worth upwards of $3,500. A lot of the smaller ships are worth a few hundred bucks at least. Multiply that across 3,000 people involved and, well ... that's a lot of real money blown on virtual space ships.
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And.. I dunno man, if you have a job & a family, should you really care if you're level 20, or level 50? WOW / other MMOs let those types of people buy characters, I'd imagine it's ships in EVE, but for every character bought they had to built up to that level, is that the same? I just have a difficult time seeing somebody spending 3.5k on a ship, short of being stinking rich and bat shit crazy.
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Almost certainly not. But he probably could've sold it for enough ISK to buy enough PLEX to enable him to play the game for the next dozen years for free.
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Very unlikely. The way this is calculated is to take the monthly fee (about 15$) and the amount of in-game currency that you would have to pay to play the game for free (last time I checked that was around 600 million but it's a player-driven market) and then apply basic math.
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AIUI eve does not allow open real money trading (some people do it anyway but there is a risk of bans if caught) but you can buy (it seems you can now buy them directly, afaict you used to have to buy a game time code and then convert it) what is known as a "pilot license extension" (plex for short) which can be sold within the game (and then used by someone else to extend their subscription or to buy a few other premium services). This allows someone to calculate a monetary price for each item by
(value of
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PLEX is the bridge between dollar and ISK - can be purchased with or sold for both.
Once the real money goes into the game, there is no -official- way to get it back. But the market where you can sell PLEX to other players for dollars is thriving and quite successful. You CAN earn real money on EVE.
Imagine this:
Guy A, overworked businessman with lots of income, little time.
Guy B, a basement-dwelling no-life nerd.
Guy C, a casual with some cash and some time.
Guy A wants to play the game; buys 3 PLEX $15/piece
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Yet people buy BMWs and Lexuses every day. Yes, those are "real", but I think they're a big waste of money too.
(Don't get me wrong, I think spending tons of (or in my case ANY) real cash on virtual goods is a waste, but as in my examples above, I think people waste tons of money on 'real' things too.)
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Luke: "TEN THOUSAND??? We could almost buy our own ship for that!"
Ben: It's all right, Luke. I have a cousin who can get us a ship for $3,500.
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Well yes and no. Money allows you to buy game time which in turn you can sell to other people for in-game currency. While in reality the difference is not too relevant, you can't directly buy in-game currency, you can however pay for someone else's monthly subscription in exchange for in-game money.
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Unless they changed it, real money only allows you to buy vanity items and sell game time to other players. So you can buy in-game money, not items directly.
You have to take something else into account when converting ship costs into real money - putting real money into the game won't 'create' new ships, just enable you to buy them from the players that manufacture them (with possible intermediaries that buy your plex for ISK).
Re:$3600 ship (Score:4, Informative)
I'm a bit new to this kind of thing so humor me please. You're saying a guy had $25,000 locked up in virtual stuff and lost it in this battle?
Let me clear up a few misconceptions here:
1) It wasn't any single player who lost that much in the battle; those are the losses attributed to the losing group of players, which in this case is huge, so those assets were originally generated by the collective work of probably thousands of players.
2) Even those thousands of players did not collectively pay $25,000 in real money to acquire those assets, they just played the game like anybody else.
3) The conversion of 700 billion ISK (the virtual in-game currency) into $25,000 is based on the ability to buy 30-day play-time cards for $15 and then sell them in-game for (as of writing) ~600 million ISK each.
4) If you do the math on the above, it's clearly wrong; 700 billion ISK would only buy ~1167 play-time cards, which would have cost only $17,500.
5) To top it all off, that real-dollars-to-game-ISK conversion only actually goes one-way; you can use game money to buy the play-time cards, but you cannot (legally) exchange those cards for real money. So the 700 billion ISK isn't *really* worth $17,500 since it's impossible to (legally) exchange the ISK for the dollars;, the conversion ratio is an academic metric.
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IANAL but AIUI there is at least a legal theory in some places that if you violate the agreement you agreed to when getting permission to use a computer system you do not have permission to use that computer system and hence you are guilty of accessing that computer system illegally.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/05/08/20/1423242/kutztown-students-get-felony-charges [slashdot.org]
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Not quite. Nobody uses a PLEX they bought for US dollars to extend their own subscriptions because they cost $20 and you can buy a month's extension to your subscription directly for $15. PLEX are bought from CCP solely for the purpose of selling th
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If he couldn't jump back, why he simply didn't use his escape pod to escape, sacrificing only one titan, instead of three?
Re:$3600 ship (Score:5, Informative)
Because the first thing any opponent does in this situation is have tacklers web and warp scramble you. And they'll start bumping you to push you away from directions they don't want you go. And you materialize from an incoming jump a few kilometers away from the gate/cyno field. You ain't goin' nowhere.
*That* is an excellent question. It's probably what he should have done. But he didn't want to eat the loss, so he upped the stakes, hoping he could win.
Re:$3600 ship (Score:5, Informative)
Because the first thing any opponent does in this situation is have tacklers web and warp scramble you. And they'll start bumping you to push you away from directions they don't want you go. And you materialize from an incoming jump a few kilometers away from the gate/cyno field. You ain't goin' nowhere.
Clarification for those who haven't played:
- Tackler: A very fast and highly maneuverable ship fitted no offensive weaponry, just modules designed to prevent your escape. Very fragile; Relies on its speed to survive.
- Web: Propulsion suppression; Severely restricts your speed an maneuverability.
- Warp Scramble: Prevents you warping. In Eve you can warp to planets, stations, asteroid belts etc in the same system from anywhere at any time. Almost all ships need to be at a Jump Gate to leave a system; Capital ships are the exception, of which Titans are an example.
- Bumping: Eve ships have non-catastrophic collision detection. They "bump" off each other, with the imaginable results. You need to align your ship towards a destination to be able to warp there; Bumping prevents that.
- Cyno(saural) field: A point created in space onto which Capital ships can lock and jump to without traversing the systems between your current location and the Cyno. Jump distance has a maximum range, depending on the ship.
One tactic not mentioned is "bubble": A ship called an Interdictor may be fitted with an Interdiction Sphere Launcher. Interdiction Spheres ("bubbles") prevent warping while within their area of effect.
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I believe one of the pirates started "locking up" the initial leviathan in an attempt to prevent it from escaping.
and in the initial stages i would imagine that they did not anticipate meeting as many as they did so throwing in the extra ships for an extraction made sense with imperfect intelligence
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He didn't jump back because he was physically incapable of doing so. In Eve: Online, other ships can use ship modules on you that prevents you from leaving the area. It's called "tackling." The pilot in question, upon erroneously jumping into the system, was tackled by enemy forces before he could escape. Instead of eating the loss, he called up on his allies to jump in to attempt to destroy the ships that were tackling him. (A titan-class vessel is largely unable to destroy the much smaller Heavy Interdict
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Why is it so easy to jump (is that effectively warp or hyperspace a-la Asteroids) to the wrong place?
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It's a gamble - lose one ship or potentially hundreds of ships, while possibly also taking out a large chunk of the enemy fleet.
If they knew the result in advance, they may have chosen to just let the guy die (or not, perhaps the balance of power is now more in their favor then it was before).
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It's not a game, it's a job.
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The $3600 was,yes, the equivalent cost of just the one ship. *You* don't permanently die, but your ships and equipment and items can, and do. Also, while death is not permanent, you *can* be killed; when your ship is destroyed, you eject in a pod, which can easily be single-shotted by even small ships. This kills you. That results in the destruction of any implants you may have had installed (which in the case of high-level pilots can run into the billions of ISK) and means you must re-upgrade your med
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Incidentally, estimated losses for the entire battle (which included *three* titans lost before it was all over, all on the side the guy who misjumped) is over 700 billion ISK. That's about *$25,000*, kiddies.
$25,000 for 3,000 players?
So each participant lost, on average, 8-9 bucks. Not exactly a mindblowing number there.
My Takeaway (Score:5, Funny)
The leader of a huge coalition, preparing for a moderately sized assault, mis-clicked and accidentally warped himself into enemy territory without his support fleet,
UI issue leads to massive server load.
so who won and what did they get? (Score:3)
so who won and what did they get?
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so who won and what did they get?
EVE Online won. They got $25k.
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Computers, Soldiers, Men (Score:2)
Computer-wise they need some virtualization-clustering fu. Not having coded so a logical node can run on several physical servers I can understand, but having some crazy-powerful server/nodes but no way to seamlessly move users to them seems a pity.
Military-wise, those who made the first mistake decided not to cut their losses, tried to recoup by throwing the good after the bad, throwing in reserves to save suddenly severely exposed friendlies, and they got severely burned for that. I'm sure there are secon
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Well, it is a game. I won't claim blowing stuff up is the whole point, but it's certainly a big part of the attraction. They were in the Great Battle of 2013. (I'm betting they have a more colorful commemorative name for it already.)
Re:Computers, Soldiers, Men (Score:5, Informative)
Military-wise, those who made the first mistake decided not to cut their losses, tried to recoup by throwing the good after the bad, throwing in reserves to save suddenly severely exposed friendlies, and they got severely burned for that. I'm sure there are second-years studying military strategy who are shaking their heads at newbie errors.
You are wrong. The narrative you are basing your comment on is the story both sides want you to believe (for different reasons) but it is probably not what actually happened.
Here is my current understanding of events:
There are three major coalitions involved in this battle: CFC, HBC and N3. CFC and HBC used to be very close friends but grew apart over the past ~6 months with tensions escalating to a cold war-like state as of late. N3 is nominally hostile to both but has good diplomatic relations with HBC.
There are also two small alliances involved - Drunk ‘n’ Disorderly (DnD) and Liandri Covenant (AZULA).
On January 17th DnD engaged a CFC fleet in a very ballsy maneuver - it didn't pay off for them as the CFC fleet commander DaBigRedBoat (dbrb) was very fast to call in massive reinforcements (many EVE players are connected to their coalition's jabber or IRC server even when not playing and will log into the game if a "ping" on jabber/IRC goes out. In this case dbrb called for everyone to log in which was a completely disproportionate and unnecessary response.). DnD took more losses than they could deal damage but the CFC now knew them for being a bit reckless and DnD had seen dbrb escalate a small engagement beyond reason.
On January 21st DnD showed - while fighting an unrelated opponent - that they could call in support from Pandemic Legion (an alliance that is part of the HBC) and were quite willing to do so if it would get them the advantage they need. Everyone following current events in EVE took notice of this fact.
On January 25th DnD attacked a Liandri Covenant POS (player-owned starbase) but due to game mechanics couldn't finish it off quite yet (a starbase goes into an invulnerable mode for 42 hours after being dealt significant damage - this defenders time to organize a defense and prevents a starbase from being sniped in some off timezone where no defenders are online).
Knowing that DnD would return the next day to finish off the POSm knowing that alone they would have a hard time defending it and being aware of the events of January 17th Liandri Covenant contacted the CFC (some CFC pilots probably have alts in AZULA) to organize a trap: Liandri Covenant would engage DnD when they returned to kill off the starbase, then dbrb would jump with a superior CFC fleet right on top of them.
The CFC was well aware that DnD could call on support from the HBC within minutes and factored that into their plan. Once DnD was engaged they would jump a Nyx supercarrier into the fray while having a supercapital fleet on standby - hoping to bait the HBC reaction. Nobody knows why dbrb thought this would be a good idea - maybe he just thought he could take on the HBC in late US TZ (as some of the HBC's supercapital-heavy alliances are EU TZ).
Today is the day... dbrb has set up his trap and DnD arrives to kill the AZULA starbase. The HBC is probably aware of the CFC trap (spies are everywhere). When DnD is on the field dbrb intends to jump in his bait Nyx first. Multiboxing several accounts (he is known to praise himself for his great multitasking capabilities) he makes a grave mistake and jumps his Leviathan-class titan instead of the Nyx supercarrier (he needs the Leviathan to stay back and "bridge" other ships to the battle, also the Leviathan is about 5x more expensive than the Nyx [which already is pretty expensive]).
DnD tries to prevent the Leviathan from escaping and calls on Pandemic Legion for support (which takes at least 10 - 15 minutes to form up). dbrb knows that this escalation will come and is pinging madly to get more CFC members to reinforce his planned t
The game is SLOOOOOOOWWWW! (Score:3)
So, the answer to how the game stayed up is that it's not a twitch game, and is actually pretty fucking slow with regard to "real time" actions of other games. In other words: It's basically a turn based game where latency isn't an issue so big fucking deal folks.
Re:The game is SLOOOOOOOWWWW! (Score:4, Insightful)
Please repeat after me:
Slow does not mean turn-based.
Turn-based does not mean slow (ever seen a game of blitz chess played?)
What the ??? (Score:2)
Okay, in this day in age of scalability and Cloud Services, why the hell can't they host this in an EC2 Availability Zone on Amazon? Use Rightscale or Scalar and like that massive Scale on-demand.. Slow down time. Pfft.. this is like thinking in the 90s.
Now, when my Civilization 5 battle comes into Eve you guys are toast!
Re:What the ??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay, in this day in age of scalability and Cloud Services, why the hell can't they host this in an EC2 Availability Zone on Amazon?
Because that's a completely asinine idea, not even warranting a technical response?
I'd urge random smarmy Slashdotters to dig through the EVE dev blog and get a glimpse of the boundaries they've been pushing. Their infrastructure team knows their fucking business.
Boundaries of stupidity. They are using Stackless Python (NO multicore support) on the server.
>'We move other solar systems on the node away from the fight
No they dont, They disconnected people left and right, basically kicked them out of that node and made them reconnect. Its been what, 7 years? and they still didnt figure out how to do live migration.
>Once server load reaches a certain point, the game automatically slows down time by certain increments to deal with the strain. Time was running at 10% speed
He failed to mention your FPS counter also goes to 10% :) It takes HOURS to kill one ship in that SHIT hack of a lag fix mode.
Instead of implementing proper multicore support, or even dividing load among many racks they run everything in ONE python thread ....
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Boundaries of stupidity. They are using Stackless Python (NO multicore support) on the server. :) It takes HOURS to kill one ship in that SHIT hack of a lag fix mode. ....
No they dont, They disconnected people left and right, basically kicked them out of that node and made them reconnect. Its been what, 7 years? and they still didnt figure out how to do live migration.
He failed to mention your FPS counter also goes to 10%
Instead of implementing proper multicore support, or even dividing load among many racks they run everything in ONE python thread
This 100%
Time dilation is a kludge at best, it serves only to make large fights just bearable instead of impossible.
The single threaded nature of EVE is grossly apparent in large fleet fights where all input is processed in order, so if you commanded your ship to go in 10 different directions, your ship goes all those directions in order, even if the last command was an all stop, and during the larger fleet fights this may take minutes to complete so most likely you are way out of position, add to that weap
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Don't dismiss what you see that easily. Sometimes there are perfectly good reasons why things came to be the way there are.
1. CCP practically invented Stackless Python, which is quite different from normal Python, although it retains the GIL
2. The core of EVE online was written in the late 90's. Multicores were not really on the radar back then. They became practical and affordable only years later.
3. Throwing away millions of lines of working code behind the company's single most important product (which w
Bullet time (Score:3)
Cool: bullet time!
Screenshot from the battle (Score:4, Informative)
This is apparently what (part of?) the battle looked like... talk about a clusterfuck...
http://puu.sh/1TcVz [puu.sh]
Re:Screenshot from the battle (Score:4, Informative)
And another one:
http://i.imgur.com/xXhcWOy.png [imgur.com]
LEEEEROY JENKINS! (Score:2)
The summary reads hilariously reminiscent of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkCNJRfSZBU [youtube.com]
So really they can barely handle 300 people (Score:2)
Re:Since when? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I figure he ragequit when he lost his cruiser. Unlikely that he lasted long enough to work up to a BC.
Re: (Score:2)
It should probably read "Journalists know Eve Online from the amazing scamming stories."
I have never heard of their userbase as elitists, assholes yes, but elitists?
Re:Since when? (Score:5, Informative)
The elitists definitely earn it. They have real money in the game, if they didn't buy their characters, their skill levels came with longevity, and they survived the jump from carebearing around in high sec with destroyers and cruisers modded for salvage and mining to doing PVP in null sec with total assholes. I would have loved to be amongst them except I just found the game frustrating for the constant "Join my clan!" invites. I like soloing, and it's not easy advancing fast without help and protection. I remember slipping into near low-sec territory because I wanted to sell some merchandise at a higher price. I decided to make a quick raid on an NPC pirate hideaway and do some good mining when a player jumped in, destroyed me, then held my pod for ransom. He pod-killed me when I refused to pay. Have to say I respect the guy's style. That you can play EVE that way or you can play EVE my way and try to earn a modest living selling components speaks much about this game.
Re:Since when? (Score:4, Interesting)
Low-sec still offers plenty of opportunities for solo / small gang PvP, whether you learn it on your own or as part of a noob-friendly corp is entirely up to you. I went pirate after some dreadful months in high-sec and I have to say it was probably the best EVE-related decision I ever made.
Re: (Score:3)
It'll probably quite some time before I return to EVE. I just don't get the time to do more than log in and train. For anyone interested, in EVE you can queue training so that your character can be constantly training to level up even when you're not logged in. Low-sec is definitely where the fun begins even if you're wanting to play the market. Right now though I'm really craving a real world based competitive MMO FPS with a lot of customization options for my character builder game personality, but I don'
Re:Since when? (Score:4, Informative)
I read that as "stories about EVE" (things that happen because of player actions), not "stories in EVE" (things that happen within the scope of the game's narrative). Whether you like the game or not (I couldn't get into it), there certainly have been a lot of interesting/cool stories about things that have gone on inside the game. This event is one of them.
Re:Since when? (Score:4, Informative)
http://themittani.com/news/breaking-massive-super-fight-asakai-lowsec
Re: (Score:2)
Hahaha this is nothing new VOTF Xirtam did this a Few times and even a Red Alliance Leader did this.
Although we did not have 3000 players on back in those days.
So you're saying that they didn't do this? The point of this story is that there were 3000 people fighting in the same area.
Re: (Score:2)
yeah, I'm pretty sure the 3,000 players compared to what you had "back in those days" is not actually anything "new".
Re:Fascinating article. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
No, you're reading comprehension is just poor.
I think you mean ".. your reading comprehension is just poor". Oh, the irony.
Re: (Score:2)
eve isn't a direct action game so the slowdown doesn't matter as much.
this type of gameplay is though also why I usually view it as just glorified tradewars..
Re: (Score:2)
Okay, let's run through your "points" one by one here (note: I don't play EVE, mostly because I've heard the learning curve is an absolute bitch).
* Unlike most other MMOs, it's relatively easy to put a real-world value on stuff in EVE (thanks to, if I'm not entirely mistaken, being able to spend in-game currency on your subscription fee rather than actual cash). The value of the "make-believe spacecraft" is enough currency to pay for X months, which is also how long $3500 would pay for.
* Nearby systems get
Re: (Score:2)
If I am understanding it right, they are doing a controlled disconnection. A given node handles multiple solar systems. When battle started, the network moved the non-battle solar systems to other nodes. This required the users be disconnected from the node and connected to the new node. In other words, the only people being disconnected were the people not part of the battle. Not sure if they were automatically connected to the new node or if they actually had to log in again.
As far as the time slowdown go
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think he was able to run away, it wasn't an option. It probably takes the ship a while to get ready for a jump.
Re: (Score:3)
Sort of... (Score:2)
There were many of us who came in and didn't pick any side but simply started using AOE attacks against everyone else for the lols
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Help an old guy understand this (Score:5, Funny)
> l
Gimli the Dwarf (Necromancer)
Strider the Human (Greater Necromancer)
Legolas the Elf (Necromancer)
>'hey guys, are you all ready?
You say, "hey guys, are you all ready?"
Gimli says, "y"
Legolas says, "wait, I think Frodo is coming"
> s
Pirate Cave
You are in a pirate cave. There are various pirate props here. The only exit is to the north.
Sauron the Maiar (Greater Necromancer).
Saruman the Istari (Necromancer) (blocking the north exit).
Grishnakh the Orc (Lesser Sorcerer).
Magic helmet.
Balrog the Balrog (Greater Necromancer).
Ugluk the Orc (Lesser Sorcerer).
Balrog says, "I see them on who, so there's a chance they might attack today"
>ooc oh shit, meant to type 'lead s'
You say (ooc), "oh shit, meant to type 'lead s'"
> n
The exit is blocked.
Strider shouts, "aren't we coming with you?"
Ugluk takes Magic helmet.
Legolas shouts, "wait"
Sauron grapples you!
Sauron says "what do we have here?"
> n
The exit is blocked.
You can't move while grappled.
> kill sauron
You attack Sauron!
Sauron attacks you!
> shout help!
You shout, "help!"
Saruman laughs.
Balrog blocks the north exit.
Gimli shouts "Are you coming back or should we wait?"
Ugluk wears Magic helmet.
Grishnahk attacks you!
Legolas arrives.
Legolas says "come back north, we're not ready"
You hit Sauron hard!
Ugluk attacks you!
Legolas tries to move north but is blocked by Saruman.
Azog arrives.
Strider arrives.
Bilbo arrives.
Strider says, "did you mean to lead us?"
Shagrat arrives.
Frodo arrives.
Sauron shouts "lag!"
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://themittani.com/media/pretty-lights-video-battle-asakai [themittani.com]
Tada!
Also..
eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&adjacent&kll_id=16069454
and...
http://dog-net.org/brdoc/?brid=16053 [dog-net.org]
There, it did happen!
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks. Excellent!
Strange the article didn't include any of that.
Re: (Score:2)
As long as you enjoy it you're not wasting your time, are you?
Re: (Score:2)
Well it is possible yes. You could be doing something necessary and important but choosing instead to spend your time playing EVE.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, Eve is rather easy on the computer (as is the case with most older MMOs). You zoom out less to save CPU/GPU cycles and more because it's the only way you can see the actual tactical situation, since in most battles, it's likely to be spread out over dozens of kilometers at a minimum--hundreds if you've got ships outfitted for sniping.