EVE Online is known, even by those who have never played the game, as an epic space-fleet simulator. A complication of spreadsheets and insanely dedicated players who spend hours mining and organizing their fleets. Today, without warning, NPC fleets attacked ordinary players, destroying ships and structures across the universe.
It’s the biggest NPC attack the game has ever seen. Players usually get a warning in advance if NPCs are about to attack. It gives them time to ready their defenses and preparations to fight back.
In this unprecedented event, there was no warning from the game devs. At all. NPC fleets appeared and took down valuable trade fleets and started attacking player’s undefended home structures.
For those who aren’t sure why this is a big deal, EVE Online is a massive game with a very delicate player-run eco-system. Several clans and guilds run the show in EVE, and much of the economy is driven by large-scale warfare between these clans.
Due to this NPC event, some of the biggest groups in EVE have had to return from deployment. Rather than continue their attacks on each other, they’ve had to return home to defend their bases from NPCs.
There are a lot of interesting aspects of a PvE war, one not really seen before in EVE Online. If the devs keep up the assault of NPCs, it could change the face of EVE forever. Here’s how.
Many of the super-alliances that rule the economy of EVE Online do so through three major aspects: time zone coverage, diplomacy, and content denial.
For example, if you go to war with a mega-alliance, they have players all over the world. There’s no time of day where they are vulnerable. The power of time zones.
Diplomacy is obviously a big factor in a game where all the content is created by real-life players. Lots of problems in EVE have been solved by simply…talking about it.
Lastly, content denial. If you’re large enough, and your opponent never turns up to fight, you can instead spend the resources on denying them any mining opportunities or any kind of content.
None of these factors applies to NPC combat. NPC commanders do not get bored, they do not respond to diplomacy, and they work around the clock, regardless of the time of day.
Fans across the web are interested to see where this new approach to EVE will take the game’s economy.
