In our second part of the interview with the EVE Online player Pandoralica, he talks to us about the faction wars in the space MMO.
What are faction wars? EVE Online recently received a major update that changed the faction wars. There are now loyalty points for PvP kills in the faction war, but the payouts of loyalty points for faction war missions assigned by agents have been reduced in return. We spoke with the EVE Online fleet commander Pandoralica about the faction wars, which take place basically around the clock.
The well-known EVE player Pandoralica, who has been active in the space MMO since 2008, explained it to us as follows:
A faction war is fought by players, but for one of the four main factions within EVE. There are certain areas where the empires fight for sovereignty, and the players fighting for their empire enjoy some advantages. To take over a system, players must claim objectives, which in other MMOs are dungeons, and when enough of them have been successfully captured, the system eventually flips. Obviously, this rarely happens without the enemy at least trying to stop it, leading to a fight between a handful of players or fleets of hundreds when things get a bit crazy.
In faction wars, people have a clear incentive with system benefits to argue, while player organizations fight for all sorts of reasons. Wars can be started over income, personal grudges, or just for fun. Similar to the real world, morale plays a big role, and it is not uncommon for groups to create and push narratives in the media (usually Reddit) to keep their members engaged and battle-ready.
EVE player Pandoralica
Battles Full of Tension
The player also explained the individual factions to us:
Caldari, Amarr, Gallente, and Minmatar are the four main factions engaged in an endless war. Why they are at war, I have forgotten, and I doubt they would remember if they had to be honest. Each of them has their own ships, weapons, and styles. Then there are so-called “pirate factions,” which are usually a combination of two main factions and may have their own ships. Now there are the “new guys” called Triglavians, who have entered the game fairly recently and are currently developing their own ships and identities. To fly these ships, players must find the right factions, weapon systems, or defense modules, but they can master all skills and are not tied to a specific one.
EVE player Pandoralica
That’s why the battles are so interesting: Also regarding the faction wars, Pandoralica shared an exciting anecdote with us, as EVE Online thrives on such stories:
It has been 10 years since I actively fought in a faction war, but I still remember the first large fleet I ever joined. Back then, my experience was no more than killing a helpless miner with a few friends, and seeing over a hundred fleet members in space blew me away. In EVE, there’s no game mechanic that forces people to join a fleet or follow orders, so everyone had to be there voluntarily. Our fleet commander at the time was Fatmanpaul, and although a fleet in a faction war consisted of random people, everyone seemed to trust him and his decision-making. With a hundred random internet spaceship nerds in voice chat, you would expect it to be complete chaos, but everyone was surprisingly disciplined.
After months of planning and preparation and four days of continuous focus on the fleets, we finally destroyed one of the largest structures in the game, which people expected to be invincible. It was more of a relief than excitement when it finally exploded and the team that had worked on it began to celebrate. But the fun part was sitting back and watching over a thousand players fly around trying to grab the hundreds of loot containers floating everywhere.
EVE player Pandoralica
What is EVE? To conclude, Pandoralica revealed to us how he would explain EVE to someone who doesn’t play video games, and he also gave newcomers a tip:
Imagine you are sitting with your friends creating a science fiction series about spaceships, battles, and entire wars, but the villains in this series can write their own story. Every day there’s a new episode, and it’s up to you to make it a good one.
I would argue it is actually the most complex game, and it depends on the player’s mindset whether they see it as an obstacle or a challenge. There are many stories of people who had to try multiple times to “get it.” My advice would be to stick to what you enjoy and get better at that small part of the game, and let the friends you make slowly take you on the journey to discover the rest.
EVE player Pandoralica
In the first part of our EVE interview with Pandoralica, we mainly talked about the security systems in the individual sectors of space. Here too, the player had an interesting story to tell, in which his team lost 5,000 euros in a battle.
