All Things Patrick - Working Hard to be Lazy!

So yesterday morning I tuned in to EVE-Radio (live radio stream) to listen to some music and maybe hear some updates on the Alliance Tournament. I was not prepared for what I heard instead...

I logged in just as FunkyBacon had started talking about what has to be the biggest news in EVE-Online history. It's even bigger news than the Peak Concurrent User record of over 47,000 users (achieved Jan 12, 2009) and bigger than the currently ongoing Alliance Tournament.

Band of Brothers (Alliance Ticker: BoB) has been a thorn in the side of a lot players. Unfortunately BoB is such a large alliance, with a lot of good PVP pilots, a large number of soveriegn holdings, and good logistics it's been impossible for anybody to dislodge BoB from their space - sure, somebody might win a battle for a system, but they'll be under siege until BoB gets it back... if BoB wants it back.

At least until now... The big news is that a director within BoB had grown unhappy with membership in BoB, went emo about it, emptied the corporation hangar into his own, removed all of the member corporations of BoB, disbanded BoB, and then switched over to BoB's enemy GoonSwarm. Disbanding BoB removed it's sovereignty (game mechanics) causing a lot of systems that were hard points to no longer have the defensive bonuses they had... Not to mention some stations were knocked offline, outposts were no longer held (requires an alliance), and all hell broke loose. BoB lost their grip on the Delve region.

After the disbanding of BoB, a player by the name of Internet Girlfriedn founded a new corporation and named it Band of Brothers (with the ticker BoB), preventing that name from being used again. This new corporation became a member of the GoonSwarm alliance, further thumbing their noses at the previous alliance.

Besides gaining possession of several capital ships from the defector, GoonSwarm moved in with a large fleet to claim as much space as they could. Throughout the entire day there were reports of massive 100+ ship fleets from many different alliances popping into various systems in the Delve region. Stations without power fell quickly, in other systems GoonSwarm and others attempted to set up enough POSs in systems so they could claim sovereignty in the systems. Late last night (Central Time) before I went to bed last I had heard was that some outpost had already changed hands to GoonSwarm, previous BoB member corporations had joined the Kenzoku alliance and were roaming in a 150+ ship fleet trying to fight off the invaders, and GoonSwarm members had been issued a scorched earth policy.

Could this be the largest land grab in EVE history? Considering the regions ASCN annexed as protectorates it may be close. However, the number of alliances and fleets involved in a single day may set a record.

Some notes for those that don't play EVE online...

• While a particular character may have an inventory of many ships, you can only fly 1 ship at a time. That means a 100+ fleet means not only are there over 100 ships, but that's also over 100 players.
• When a ship blows up, that's it, it's gone and the pilot is left in an escape pod. If the escape pod gets blown up (the pilot was podded) you're dead and end up in a clone (very important to keep your clone up to date with the amount of skill points your character has or you will lose those skill points when you get podded).
• EVE online does not have any character classes, limitations on what skills you can learn (unless you're on a trial account), or have character levels. Instead your character earns skill points and levels up specific skills (each skill has a max level of 5) and these are trained in real time so even if you log out your character is still training that skill. Because of this, 1 way to compare characters is by their total number of skill points.
• However, total skill points are not the only determining factor in PvP combat. The ship, modules and rigs attached to that ship, drones, ammo being used, possibly even implants, the tactics used, range between the ships, and speed all factor into combat.

More information...

• Band of Brothers Alliance Disbanded 2009.02.05 12:14:18
• Delve War II Begins 2009.02.06 11:08:34
• Evidence of the Theft