Eve Online Had a Record-Breaking PVP Battle

Sure, World of Warcraft has a lot of people partaking in player vs. player combat, but Eve Online might have outdone WoW, Aion, The Old Republic and every other massively multiplayer online game by having one epic, huge multiplayer battle.

Eve Online's official community website released a report detailing the extraordinary and server-shaking war that players call "The Bloodbath of B-R5RB." Eve Online's gameplay is oriented to earning currencies in whatever ways a starship can throughout the galaxy. One of these ways includes running and controlling specific star systems. When the computer-controlled police force of the galaxy went to collect money declaring sovereignty for the B-R5RB region, a member of the "H A V O C" corporation forgot to leave their automatic transaction activated. This means that a player had to be actively playing in order to pay off the police when they arrived (if the option for auto transactions was on, this wouldn't have happened). Upon finding out that the zone wasn't paid for, the system became up for grabs and nearly every star fighter and cargo ship came knocking to collect.

The resulting impact of the ongoing fight for the new ownership of B-R5RB led to one of the biggest and longest MMO fights of all time. The Bloodbath of B-R5RB included 21 hours of straight multiplayer fighting with roughly 7,548 individual characters being involved in the space war. What's even more impressive, the damage reached some 11,000,000,000,000 ISK (EVE's in-game currency) in costs. That equates out to roughly $300,000-330,000 in real money.

Eve Online is releasing a memorial to commemorate the battle of B-R5RB. The memorial will consist of an open graveyard containing thousands of destroyed vessels that Eve's developers have called Titanomachy. You can check out some captured footage from the battle below, or head to the forum for actual recaps from players involved in the mega-battle. Will such a momentous clash happen again? Probably, but the odds are slim that there will be this much hype again anytime soon.