EVE Players Pulls off Most Badass Grief Job Ever

eveWow. This is one for the record books. Seriously. I’ve heard of some crazy junk going down in multiplayer games, but this one really takes the epic griefing cake. Basically, last night, a virtual mega-corporation was taken over, and it all happened inside of EVE Online.

For those of you who are unaware about EVE, it is essentially a spaceship-fighting MMO. It’s a lot bigger than that, but that’s the simplified version. Basically, in this game, there are guilds, factions, corporations and the like, the biggest of which was known as the Band of Brothers, which owned most of the territory in the game for quite some time… up until last night. When spies attacked. What follows is the greatest gaming teabag of all time.

To build ships in EVE Online, you need to own territory, and these guys had all of it. There have been many attempts to overthrow or take down the Band of Brothers through violent force, but all were futile. This even included what players have come to call “The Great War”, in which many of the largest guilds all banded together to attack the Band of Brothers and push them back out of their territory.

The empire held on to most of their territory, and the last to quit was the Goonswarm, finally conceding victory to the mega-corporation. However, while the battle was lost, Goonswarm continued to plot. For a while, they built up a vast network of spies, and set out on an espionage mission. Eventually, they were able to infiltrate the ranks of the Band of Brothers.

Last night, the league of spies coerced one of the leaders of Band of Brothers to defect, essentially handing over the keys to the castle. He handed over ownership of the corporation, accounts, funds, ships, player lists, even passwords to the forums. From there, all hell broke loose. The Band of Brothers was disbanded, their in-game accounts emptied of all of their money (billions of in-game currency) and their territory was released back into the wild. It has resulted in one of the biggest territory grabs in EVE history.

To me, this is one of those things that is just nigh-on incredible. In a world with thousands of players, this entire game is player-based and player-run. They have created their own factions, corporations, and guilds, and ended up creating their own epic and grandiose story within the confines of the system. These guys took down an empire through coercion. I remember years ago sitting around with my friends (Nick among them) and talking about the future of MMOs being player-progressed stories, and these guys just did it.

I know it’s incredibly dorky, but seriously, this makes me want to play this game. I’ve left out quite a few of the details, but if you’re interested in reading more, check it out here.

Source- Destructoid

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I write about samurai girls and space marines. Writer for Smooth Few Films. Rooster Teeth Freelancer. Author of Red vs. Blue, The Ultimate Fan Guide, out NOW!

20 thoughts on “EVE Players Pulls off Most Badass Grief Job Ever”

  1. That’s pretty impressive – and hilarious as well. How on earth did they “coerce: him over the Internet, though?

  2. I don’t understand the game very well so I could be wrong but I think wiping the slate clean would be good for the game. If I were playing I would be frustrated if I could never expand because a big corporation was already there but now even the smallest of guilds can own at least some land errr space

  3. Wow, EVE sounds epic. The fact that it’s an entire universe of players, for players, by players is really cool. Yahtzee never included that in his review, the bastard.
    Anyway, ROFLCOPTERUPTHEBUTT!

  4. Well that’s part of it. Basically the idea with EVE was that the devs wanted to see what happens when players decide everything. Heck, they don’t do anything to stop even malicious practices like figuring out another player’s account, because in the real world, real corporations would use evil tactics just like this. It’s really insane, and has resulted in a long and awesome history of several alliances and wars.

    Btw, here’s a before/after map of the game.

    http://tinyurl.com/bf9re8

  5. Eddy, thanks for sharing this. This honestly is one of the best in game stories I have heard. I know about EVE, a friend played it, but to hear something like this is AMAZING. As you said they let everything run as in real world (they wont stop players from even stealing accts) so it makes everything very much real world. To have some overthrow like this, that makes for an unbelievably epic game story.

    Really this is one of the coolest things I have heard in a long while. Thanks for sharing!

  6. Ok reading that link. Basically if the 30billion ISK that was said stolen was converted to time card real world money (they trade time cards for roughly 10mil ISK to the dollar) they stole 3000 of time cards basically. WOW!

    Not to mention they stole over 13bil in liquid ISK and then ships and other stuff! (Man what a great story!!)

    Heres something I dont get though. Those “Titan” ships go for..and I quote
    “We have no way of knowing how many ships were under construction, but if they lost even one Titan in this way… well, Titans have an estimated value of around $5,645 US.” WHAAAAT?!?!?!

    As they said there. This is the future of video games. I remember watching .hack and seeing “The World” and how that was all player run. I think this will show developers that this IS the future of MMOs. I sure hope someone writes a book on this.

  8. You can see vids on youtube of the tians being destroyed.

    Amazing story. That wiki article will need to be re-worked.

    I went to the BoB website and forum. Apparently they are goign to try and scrape together to regain their territory.

    This story truly is fascinating.

  10. [quote comment=”4382″]This is pretty awesome.

    Has anyone ever seen the Funeral ambush in WoW?

    It wasn’t as epic as this, but it was funny as hell.[/quote]

    Googling it now

  12. I wish that more MMOs had this kind of liquid gameplay. Wouldn’t WoW be so much more interesting if the horde could take territories from the alliance and vice-versa? Man, that’s incredible.

  13. I had to make a comment on this news… Been playing eve for 2 year off and on and this is the kinds of stories that make me miss this game. it would suck if it was due to an account hack but if Haargoth (the CEO) handed his account details to a member then its perfectly a valid account theft lol

  14. Wow. I didn’t know MMOs had THIS much potential of community workings. Without a doubt the most interesting thing I’ve heard in ages. This is just… wow, just, anyone care to help me sum it up?

  15. [quote comment=”4402″]Wow. I didn’t know MMOs had THIS much potential of community workings. Without a doubt the most interesting thing I’ve heard in ages. This is just… wow, just, anyone care to help me sum it up?[/quote]

    The Destructoid link is probably the best, and it links to some other notable articles on it as well.

    It really is just completely absurd. I mean, the developers really treat it like a blossoming nation. At one point, the devs were accused of helping a corporation cheat, so the developers allowed the players to appoint 9 elected representatives to do an independent inspection of the developers. And yes, they flew these people out to do this. Basically, the game formed a DEMOCRACY to solve one of its problems. Pretty wild.

  16. First things first Eddy Goonfleet are actually called goonswarm not goonfleet

    I think I can describe it

    The Shit of greater Dexterity just hit the fan then level grinded for a day to final reach leven 1337 and cast greater awsome on a guitar that was on fire

    Anyways Ive been reading about this all day and looks like the Gm’s arnet going to fix the damage caused because they put the news on the offical site and the only way to fix it would to be a rollback

    Goonswarm’s going for all the 0.0 (ocean front property) solar systems.

    Band of Brother’s is evacuating although the leaders are telling them all not to.Its probobly better to not evacuate because there is sure to be pirates swarming to get some stragler’s and mug emm

    Goonswarm is telling all there mates to get all there assets and get ready to move east because they plan to take over the former stongholds of the BoB

    The brothers are also having a panic attack because all the jump gates are F’ed

    Goonswarm has declared war on all the corp’s formally part of the BoB aliance

    I cant wait to see how this all plays out

  17. ya when i was playing the demo for the game i got really into it with my friend but even though i saw epic stuff i didnt know that was goin on

  19. This singular action has made me want to play this game. And it is an excellent game. I just started and found that the other players are STILL buzzing about this, and not even everything is completely understood, and probably will never be. There are great people playing that game, it’s a visually stimulating environment, and it’s just overall a great game. You can sign up for a free trial on their website. I strongly suggest you try it out.

  20. Already on the free trial it’s quite a complicated and hard game it will take me a while to get my head round it.

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