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Games Hardware

How EVE Online Dealt With a 3,000-Player Battle 398

Posted by Soulskill from the cry-havoc-and-let-slip-the-load-balancers-of-war dept.
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."
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How EVE Online Dealt With a 3,000-Player Battle More

How EVE Online Dealt With a 3,000-Player Battle

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  • 3000 players you say? (Score:3, Funny)

    by alen ( 225700 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @05:43PM (#42732229)

    How many were divorced the next day?

    • Re:3000 players you say? (Score:5, Funny)

      by icebike ( 68054 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @05:51PM (#42732299)

      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.

      • 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.

    • None, you'd have to land a wife... to begin with. In the case of EVE players, they should shoot for a female that talks to them that isn't their mom for starters.

  • Relativity (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @05:51PM (#42732297)

    Time was running at 10% speed during this 3,000-person battle, which is the maximum amount of time dilation possible.

    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)

      by girlintraining ( 1395911 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @06:57PM (#42732937)

      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.

      • 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

        • 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

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by afidel ( 530433 )

        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)

        by EinarTh ( 143782 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2013 @05:02AM (#42735913)

        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)

    by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @05:53PM (#42732311)

    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)

      by Darby ( 84953 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @06:01PM (#42732413)

      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!!!"

      • 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)

          by cockroach2 ( 117475 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @06:37PM (#42732807)

          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.

      • 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

    • 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?

      • 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)

          by jxander ( 2605655 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @06:18PM (#42732605)

          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.

          • So... just to clarify, did this guy actually spend $3500 on his ship?

            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.

            • So... just to clarify, did this guy actually spend $3500 on his ship?

              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.

            • 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.

            • 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

            • I just have a difficult time seeing somebody spending 3.5k on a ship, short of being stinking rich and bat shit crazy.

              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.)

            • 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.

          • 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.

          • 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)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @06:18PM (#42732599)

        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.

      • Real Money($) can be converted into in game money (ISK) through the use of PLEX so it's pretty simple to calculate the amount of ISK lost and convert the value back into dollars to get an approximate real money value. The current lowest sell of a 30 day PLEX is about 530,000,000.00 ISK and it looks like 30 Days PLEX costs $20. So some division (*depending on if billion means thousand or million million) and some multiplication gives you a rough Real Money cost. [eve-central.com]
      • Yes much like the finance industry. Except swap the cocaine and hookers for pizza and porn.
    • Why he simply didn't jump back to escape from this territory?
      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)

        by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @06:19PM (#42732609)

        Why he simply didn't jump back to escape from this territory?

        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.

        If he couldn't jump back, why he simply didn't use his escape pod to escape, sacrificing only one titan, instead of three?

        *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)

          by L4t3r4lu5 ( 1216702 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2013 @06:07AM (#42736127)

          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.

      • 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

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Jim Haskell ( 162156 )

        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

        • Why is it so easy to jump (is that effectively warp or hyperspace a-la Asteroids) to the wrong place?

          • He jumped instead of opening a bridge which (a bridge) lets you send others in your fleet to the cyno (which meant he went there instead of the people in fleet). The commands are extremely close to each other, pretty much separated by one command. It's happened many a time.
      • He surely was instantly tackled (prevented from leaving), there was no way that ship was getting out of there alive. Mistakes happen, but the Goons compounded it when they brought in reinforcements. I don't know how the Goons managed it bungle things so badly but it was a massive route [eve-kill.net].

      • 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).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Marful ( 861873 )
      The fact that you can lose that much money in a GAME is why EVE sucks.

      It's not a game, it's a job.
      • The fact that you don't really understand why your statement is stupid is why you can't get-by in Eve.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sarysa ( 1089739 )
      So I've googled that there's no permanent death, so how was $3600 at risk? Would it have just been that one ship that the player lost? (I don't play EVE but this stuff interests me)
      • The value is tied to the ship, which can be destroyed. The character survives, but its value is not involved in the calculations.

      • 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

    • 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)

    by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @05:59PM (#42732377)

    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)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @06:02PM (#42732425) Homepage Journal

    so who won and what did they get?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by meddle99 ( 1946010 )

      so who won and what did they get?

      EVE Online won. They got $25k.

      • Not directly; the real world cash values of ISK and property in-game is derived from trades between players, for the most part. CCP's primary income comes from subscriptions and novelty items sales, much like WoW. (It's just that CCP accepts in-game currency as a subscription fee proxy, which makes it seems like CCP is getting a windfall from value destruction, when it’s simply value they already received a long time ago.)

  • 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

    • I'm sure there are second-years studying military strategy who are shaking their heads at newbie errors.

      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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 30, 2013 @03:34AM (#42735593)

      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

  • 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.

  • 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!

  • Bullet time (Score:3)

    by tylernt ( 581794 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @06:46PM (#42732875)

    Time was running at 10% speed during this 3,000-person battle, which is the maximum amount of time dilation possible."

    Cool: bullet time!

  • Screenshot from the battle (Score:4, Informative)

    by Aereus ( 1042228 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @07:08PM (#42733033)

    This is apparently what (part of?) the battle looked like... talk about a clusterfuck...

    http://puu.sh/1TcVz [puu.sh]

  • The summary reads hilariously reminiscent of this:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkCNJRfSZBU [youtube.com]

  • What EVE does is just decides its going to slow everything down 10x so its only getting 1/10th the things happening over the same period of time. With this 3000 players are really effectivly only sending the traffic of 300 players operating at normal time. When you think of it like that, them being able to handle 3000 players without problems is not much of a boast, only that they found a way to simulate/force lag on everything. Its not a bad idea, but they are no more impressive than any of the

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