In the sci-fi MMORPG EVE Online, the developers blew up a whole sun on November 2nd at exactly 18:00 and our author Mark Sellner was allowed to be there live in the first row. Together with the culprits, i.e. the developers, he looked at the “absolute destruction” and was enthusiastic.
EVE Online isn’t bringing its newest expansion, Uprising, until November 8th, but there’s already a lot going on in the world on the 2nd. In advance, players were warned via in-game news that something bad was going to happen in the Turnur system on November 2nd at 18:00 GMT.
Despite the threat of a massive disaster, 1,800 ships were there when the timer ran out. But I didn’t know what was about to happen either. I sat in a discord channel with the developers and watched their stream.
Right up front, facing a sun with a large laser pointed at it. Player ships were all around and I was told what was actually happening there.
Just at the Fanfest in May, EVE wowed us with this new trailer:
EVE Online: The Caldari State in the trailer
A scientific experiment goes horribly wrong
One of the four NPC factions has made the technology of an ancient alien nation fit again and is now trying it out in a low-sec area of a rival empire. Incidentally, low-sec in EVE is called areas in which there are hardly any rules.
This means that players here regularly shoot at each other and destroy their valuable ships forever. The developers told me that some ships have already been reduced to rubble on the way here.
Who writes here? Mark Sellner is an MMORPG author at MeinMMO and has been working in the genre for over 15 years. While he never fully mastered the complexity of EVE Online, he still enjoys seeing what’s going on in the game.
Then the time came. At 6:00 p.m. sharp, the laser beam became more massive and I was completely blinded by a white-blue screen. It wasn’t until the glare died down that I saw what was happening. The entire sun has practically imploded.
It’s still there, but it was pulsating white and definitely didn’t look like what a sun should look like anymore. Everything around was also crushed. The ships of the present players were burned to 5% of their hull strength, their shields destroyed.
Turnur 1, the only planet in the system, was also burned. All player stations, buildings and even the space station around were burned or completely destroyed. Chaos broke out immediately because no one was able to escape. The Stargates in the system also stopped working.
Players react completely differently – Showing what EVE is all about
The over 1,800 players caught and burned in the system reacted completely differently. Some heroes immediately started flying to the planet and space stations to evacuate the NPCs living there.
But it wouldn’t be EVE if all players were so friendly. Most of those present tried to find easy victims under the burning ships and immediately a huge battle began, with everyone shooting at each other to take advantage of the situation.
About 15 minutes after the big bang, the Stargates reactivated. That is, players could flee the system and others could jump in. Almost immediately, a few smaller player fleets hopped into the chaotic Turnur system and shredded everything that could still fly.
They were only interrupted by other fleets that had the same goal and didn’t want their loot taken from them. Some clever pilots used this to escape.
All of this happened in a matter of minutes, and I was right in the middle of one of the most chaotic situations I’ve ever seen in an MMORPG. A total of 599 ships were irretrievably destroyed after an hour. The whole thing not only looked awesome, it also felt really good.
The players reacted in completely different ways, some with malice, others with compassion, others with profit motives. Situations like this clearly show why EVE Online can hold up even after years.
Event changes the system – forever
The developers told me what this explosion meant for the players during the action. Sun Turnur and planet Turnur 1 remain changed forever. But not only that changes for the players.
Two similar devices have been detected in the universe of EVE, pilots must now figure out how to stop these cannons and prevent two other systems from being destroyed.
Furthermore, there will also be more gameplay-relevant changes in rotation, which we are not allowed to talk about at this point. There should also be other events that will finally launch the new expansion Uprising.
Incidentally, the event was part of the “narrative story arcs” announced at the Fanfest, which aim to actually tell and continue the story in the game and not to announce new systems via patch notes, but to bring them into the MMORPG with events of this kind.
The event was also a visual highlight
What do you think of such an event? Are you as gloating as I am, and are you happy about something like that? Or, despite the warning, do you feel sorry for the 599 ships destroyed? Would you also like to be part of such a big boom live? Or are you perhaps even one of the players who lost a ship? Feel free to write it to us in the comments, here on MeinMMO.