EVE Online: Battle of Asakai

Overview

The Battle of Asakai refers to a major multiplayer battle that occurred in the MMORPGEVE Online^[8] in late January 2013. The battle mainly took place between two multiplayer alliances known as TEST Alliance and Goonswarm, which involved almost 3,000 individual combatants and totaled nearly $20,000 (USD) in losses for both factions, 99.7% of which belonged to Goonswarm. Due to the scale of the battle and the escalating tension of an all out war between two of the largest factions, the battle received notable media coverage throughout the Internet.

Background

EVE Online is an MMORPG in which players control spacecraft to trade with or battle against other players. The players can also wage warfare to control territory and form alliances. Two of the largest Alliances in the game are Goonswarm^[14], the unofficial group for posters from the Something Awful forums^[11] formed in June 2006, and TEST Alliance^[12], created in May 2010 and associated with a group of Redditors known as Dreddit.^[13] Prior to the Battle of Asakai, Goonswarm and TEST Alliance were bound by an agreement not to attack either factions’ infrastructure after their alliance degraded into antagonism.

Notable Developments

January 27th: Battle

On the early morning of January 27th, 2013, an unknown Goonswarm pilot accidentally warped his ship to a hostile zone, instead of summoning the alliance members to his location, just moments before the launch of a planned raid. Stuck in enemy space and unable to warp out of it, the Goonswarm pilot’s ship was attacked by rival factions, including members of the TEST Alliance. As reinforcements from both sides continued to arrive, the scale of the battle soon grew to more than 2,500 combatants involved. At its peak, the influx of Eve Online players resulted in significant time dilation and combat lag at an approximate conversion rate of one hour of gameplay to four hours in real time.^[10] In addition, the first-person crossover of the game DUST 514^[15] went offline due to the server overload. Eventually, Twitch.tv member ShigsyTV^[16] began livestreaming the events.

ShigsyTV’s livestream station was linked on Reddit^[5], where it received 3563 upvotes, 1880 points overall and nearly 1000 comments.
Other commenters in the thread began exchanging kill statistics for the lost ships, including one that was reportedly worth nearly $800 (USD), taken down by 1,070 different players.^[17] The same day, EVE players who took part in the battle began sharing various albums of screenshots as well as summaries and opinions to /r/Games^[13] and /r/EVE subreddits.^[18] Blogger Alizabeth at The Mittani^[19] also compiled a series of real-time reactions and kill reports. Kotaku Australia^[1] became the first news outlet to break the news, followed by stories on Polygon^[7] and Examiner.com.^[6]

January 28th: Aftermath

On January 28th, Mashable^[2], Eurogamer^[21], VentureBeat^[22] and PC Mag^[20] featured stories on the event. On Reddit, Lighth_Vader submitted an Explain Like I’m Five^[9] post asking EVE users to simply explain the game and the reasons behind the fight, which was met by almost 400 comments on gameplay, the battle itself and how gameplay translates to real monetary currency. Redditor jimmysaint13 elaborated further on the battle’s monetary losses in a post on /r/Gaming^[4] by breaking down the cost of the ships and estimating that more than $17,000 (USD) in ships were destroyed.