On January 2, the largest battle in the space MMORPG EVE Online took place. But the victory is not decided by the players, but by the servers.
What kind of battle was it? The two massive fleets of the factions of PAPI and Imperium clashed again on January 2 as part of the largest battle on New Year’s Day in the Battle of M2.
More than 12,000 players were expected to participate, which would have doubled the previous record in the game. However, there was a major problem: The servers could not handle it.
A war that depends on the technology of EVE Online
What exactly happened? Before the battle, the fleets of both sides were essentially halved. One part has been waiting outside the battlefield for orders, while the other part is trapped in combat – and due to the overloaded servers still is. The players cannot, or rather are not allowed to command these more than 330 Titan class ships according to the order of their leader and are logged out; nevertheless, the ships exist invisibly on the battlefield. Why are they not allowed to command these ships?
If players log back in, they will likely be destroyed immediately by lurking opponents. This opens up the opportunity for the waiting players outside the battle to intervene. Both sides must therefore be extremely cautious, as a moment of inattention can bring the decision. The situation is referred to as “Hellcamp”.
What is the problem? EVE Online attracts a large number of players, especially due to World War Bee 2 – and this is a problem for the servers. CCP Games promotes large-scale battles, but when they occur as they have now, the technology fails.
All players combined were about 35,000 online that day. About 35 % of these players were in just three systems and tried to join this fight. […] That means over 12,000 players were trying to enter a single system.
Jessica Kenyon, Community Developer at CCP Games
How did the developers react? CCP Games faces a massive problem that cannot be solved quickly.
We need to continue to improve our servers and our software in order to enable further growth. We cannot also deceive ourselves that there are things that can fix this quickly.
Bergur Finnbogason, Creative Director
EVE Online has a major problem
The problem is that CCP Games has to significantly change the architecture of the game, and these changes will take years before they come into the game. Because EVE Online runs on an 18-year-old code that cannot really utilize multiple cores of modern CPUs.
This means that the currently ongoing World War Bee 2 will not be decided by the tactical abilities of the players of both warring parties, but by the server of EVE Online. And this frustrates Alexander “The Mittani” Gianturco, leader of The Imperium. According to him, the large battle should not have started at this point because it was clear that the servers would not be able to handle it.
The leader of Pandemic Horde, however, places the blame on CCP Games:
When the war began, I told my guys that it would end when either [Mittani’s faction] or PAPI collapses – or the servers. The servers collapsed first.
Gobbins, leader of Pandemic Horde, member of PAPI
The future of the war depends on CCP being able to guarantee a reliable playing field and the conditions for fighting; otherwise, [these large-scale wars] will stagnate because coalitions can simply grow until they are ‘too big to fail.’ In other words, to a size that breaks the server when enough people are gathered to defeat an enemy before the fight can even take place.
The war continues, but who will emerge victorious in the end will likely be decided by the server of the space MMORPG EVE Online.
The bloodbath of B-R5RB was previously the largest battle in EVE Online.
