The largest battle ever held in EVE Online is going on right now
Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Events, in-game, PvP, Endgame, News items
Tweet While many of us haven't actively taken part in EVE Online's territorial warfare, news routinely surfaces of the massive alliance wars that take place in the game's lawless nullsec regions. As the number of players subscribed to EVE increases, so too does the size of the average nullsec fleet. Since there's no disadvantage to bringing additional pilots, each side in a heated war will try to bring as many people as it can physically get to attend. At a certain point, however, the server hardware strains under the weight of hundreds or thousands of players, and lag sets in. The point at which this happens has been rising over the years as CCP performs server upgrades, with previous expansions seeing fights as large as 500-1000 per side with quite manageable lag.
A landmark battle is currently raging in the system of LXQ2-T, with thousands of pilots fighting for control of the system. The number of players in the system peaked at over 3,110 pilots, with alliances from the Northern Coalition political conglomeration facing off against the Russian power block from the drone regions. Lag began to set in at around the 2,400-player mark, with pilots facing several-minute delays on warp commands and module activations. Several pilots have launched live video streams of the event, though much of the action has ceased for the moment as the server begins to recover from a severe clash with the lag monster.
A landmark battle is currently raging in the system of LXQ2-T, with thousands of pilots fighting for control of the system. The number of players in the system peaked at over 3,110 pilots, with alliances from the Northern Coalition political conglomeration facing off against the Russian power block from the drone regions. Lag began to set in at around the 2,400-player mark, with pilots facing several-minute delays on warp commands and module activations. Several pilots have launched live video streams of the event, though much of the action has ceased for the moment as the server begins to recover from a severe clash with the lag monster.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Tempes Magus said on 4:39PM 10-30-2010
"several-minute delays"?!
That's not lag, that's the servers dying. Lag is measured in second, not minutes unless lag is normally many seconds even during the best times.
Several-minute delays. LOL
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Mirkinz said on 4:52PM 10-30-2010
In the eve world
few seconds = "lag free"
several minutes = "Laggy"
15-30 minutes = "Really laggy"
Anything more = "Node death"
Brendan Drain said on 4:57PM 10-30-2010
In years gone by, lag this bad would result in a node death, and everyone in the fight would be stuck looking at black screens on trying to log in. Even just jumping into an overloaded system used to be suicide. What's really impressive is that the server has stayed up. With over 3000 pilots in the same system, the worst they've experienced is several minutes of module activation lag.
Joker said on 4:52PM 10-30-2010
I hope someone out of the 3,110 people fighting puts up a youtube vid of it so I can show it to a few friends.
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DLemke said on 9:20PM 10-30-2010
I understand how much some people love the idea of blobbing it up, and how impressed they all are, but…
Once you start measuring lag in seconds instead of milliseconds, let alone minutes, … it’s not pvp, it’s a slog through quicksand, it’s turn based pvp, not real time pvp.
You can’t claim to be ‘good’ at pvp when you have forever and a day to make decisions. Pvp in Eve isn’t about being ‘good’ , it’s about 1) not being as ‘bad’ as your opponent by not making huge, obvious mistakes nobody should make 2) about having the baffling capacity to endure the torture of moving so sloooooooooowly. That isn’t at all baffling anymore when a person discovers most of the players in these battles are watching tv or movies on a different screen while engaged in these battles that sometimes take all day, and I’m not kidding about ‘all day’.
You do see how crazy it is to jump from normal PC pvp with lag measured in milliseconds, or 10s of milliseconds, to…. 1000ms x 60 x Y number of minutes… lag, right?
1, 10, 50, 100ms for normal good PC pvp,…then there’s Eve…. 60,000xYms lag for any major fleet battles.
Joker comment: “I hope someone out of the 3,110 people fighting puts up a youtube vid of it so I can show it to a few friends.”
Show paint drying for a day? What?
If it makes some Eve fans happy, that’s great, but holy cow do Eve people misrepresent when they pretend their pvp remotely resembles other real time PC pvp.
Axler said on 10:25PM 10-30-2010
ahh...haters gonna hate
well eve does not have just one type of pvp. when you engage in normal fights the lag is like in other games, measured in milliseconds. if you think so fast milliseconds are turns for you, then I am one impressed player.
even in big battles, on supported nodes, once you load grid (takes a few sec) lag is measured in milliseconds. No other game has fights this big with lag so small. 500 people fight is very manageable
huge fleet fights are a different matter, and to be honest there it doesn't really matter if you are good at " 1v1 pvp" or not. its a whole different type of pvp.
how well you do in that kind of fight depends on the FC, on fitting doctrines, and the ability of people to follow orders, shoot at primaries and remote rep.
"If it makes some Eve fans happy, that’s great, but holy cow do Eve people misrepresent when they pretend their pvp remotely resembles other real time PC pvp."
so, to reiterate, as long as you don't go over to high numbers, which is most fights, as large fleet battles tend to be expensive, lag is, as you say, like any other real time pvp. So we don't misrepresent.
Joker said on 7:23AM 10-31-2010
@DLemke. I watched some of that stream and it didn't look that bad to me.
But my first PC MMO had 8-1 FPS for the first year on my old crappy PC so lag really doesn't bother me much.
Matt Wagner said on 5:04PM 10-30-2010
I'm continually impressed by the news I read here about the depth and scale of EVE, but I'm also far too intimidated to pick it up and play...
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Dirame said on 5:50PM 10-30-2010
Don't worry, if you come into Eve know two things; 1. Don't live in Caldari space, 2. Don't trust anyone with your isk or assets.
Also be patient, learning in Eve is an ongoing process, you can never have learnt everything there is to learn about Eve.
interitus said on 6:17PM 10-30-2010
"Learning in EVE is an ongoing process"
AKA
http://ideadrought.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/eve-learning-curve.jpg
Beau Hindman said on 6:39PM 10-30-2010
Don't be intimidated. It's not doing your taxes. lol It's a great game. There are deeper aspects to it, but there are deeper aspects to every game. If you wanna' explore them, go for it. I have a 6 year old account and just pop in once in a while and have no issues. It's like any other game -- basically as deep as you wanna' make it.
Also, if you want, you can literally buy currency by selling time codes. Unless, of course, things have changed since last time I played. The time before that, I sold several codes and bought several ships.
Get the trial -- it's a really cool game.
Beau
Eridal said on 8:19PM 10-30-2010
Death to the NC :p
What Dirame said above is sage advice in EVE trust no one. But hey that is what's great about EVE the freedom to do what you want overall. The learning curve is very high in EVE though there are things being done to lower that but it's still there. Probably the best thing a newbie can do is find a good corp that will accept them and teach them the ropes as there are plenty of vets that would help you get started.
But in the end EVE isn't for everyone it's a game that requires a huge amount of patience and time. Me personally I still get a rush every time I see my enemies ship lighting on fire as I burn down the rest of their structure I just hope it isn't mine that's burning though that can be fun too :P
WeirdJedi said on 12:34AM 10-31-2010
Had a friend on Eve Online who would constantly talk about the battles he was in. I picked up the trial and began exploring the world.
Tutorial was super long at the time and I totally psyched out at my first warp, but then I began learning the core of the game. The missions you got were basic RPG scripts (kill X, go Y, collect Z). Mining took forever; I watched tv while I waited for it to be done. Top skills required weeks to months to obtain and as the picture demonstrated, there were a ton of things you had to learn to survive.
All the parts I liked about MMOs were very limited in Eve Online. Asked my friend why he liked it. "Realism" he called it. The game is very political and you literally could do anything you want from being a pirate to watching sections for a corporation. It definitely wasn't the game for me, but maybe it is the type of game you would like.
Neurotic said on 3:45AM 10-31-2010
@ interitus
roflmao :D :D :D
Dude said on 5:09PM 10-30-2010
The Emperor: Come, boy, see for yourself. From here, you will witness the final destruction of the Alliance and the end of your insignificant rebellion.
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hkedi said on 5:44PM 10-30-2010
It's hilarious on the galaxy map. there is this ENORMOUS red dot at the site of the battle, it far outshines anything in high-security space.
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Knob said on 5:51PM 10-30-2010
Tonight, on When Spreadsheets Attack...
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Archipelagos said on 6:05PM 10-30-2010
Oh you.
Grak said on 10:20AM 11-04-2010
This is exactly it though. I tried Eve thinking it would be an immersive space combat game with rpg elements. Sweet lord, combat was realistic alright: shooting being done from kilometers away at dots on your screen, where you cant "fly" so much as click holding patterns while watching sets of numbers to see if you've won or lost.
It really just made me think of Excel with a spacesky backdrop.
Axler said on 6:17PM 10-30-2010
yes, a few minutes lag is bad, but it worked, the server didn't die. you would click a button, wait 10 minutes, and your ship fired a shot. push it again, wait 10 minutes, and it fired another. yes it was 10 minutes, but it worked, you didn't crash, you didn't disconnect. and there were 3000 players patiently shooting the shit out of each-other.
with a few engagements over eventually someone "won", and is now (way more patiently...those things have loads of structure) shooting the stations.
I agree, in normal gameplay 10 min would be unacceptable, but this was a 3000 player fight. now I don't know of any MMOs that ever had so many players in the same place at the same time. Course there might have been some I have not heard about, but this is pretty damn impressive.
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