Jita is the most populated system in the entire galaxy of EVE Online. It is far from the dangers of null sec, an incredibly safe zone guarded by a deadly NPC police force with impeccable response time. Hundreds of billions of ISK move between players every day as the rich traders and industrial overlords manufacture the goods that fuel the entire game and trade them on the well-protected markets in Jita, the heart of the Empire.
That was before last night. Today, Jita is a chaotic mess, trapped in the middle of an anarchistic suicide bombardment months in the making. We talk to members of Goonswarm, the group behind the attack that’s continuing all weekend, to try to find out what the crazy players of EVE Online are up to this time.
I talked with Goonswarm pilot and former CSM member Zastrow to get the full picture of Goonswarm’s invasion (which the developers have said they will not interfere with). He starts off by telling me, “There’s just something special about building 15,000 spaceships and loading their guns with 1 round of ammo to shoot. And doing it right in front of the police.”
Goonswarm is an infamous alliance of corporations in EVE Online whose public purpose is to grief other players and generally try to break the game. For the past three months, they’ve been planning and building up a suicide squadron of fighters for their next campaig, called “Burn Jita.” Zastrow explains the concept, “These ships were built for the express purpose of getting one shot off and then dying to the police, but killing the target in the process. They’re fit with artillery that has a long reload time but does a lot of damage per shot.
It’s an extremely unconventional tactic for an unconventional military campaign: the Goonswarm’s goal is no less than invading the most protected and populated hub of industry in the galaxy and crushing it. Conquering the most populated system in the galaxy that’s also guarded by the richest players and over-protective NPC police is not a small job. Zastrow tried to explain the scope of the operation to me, “We have hundreds of dudes each with different jobs. Some are cargo-scanning Freighters, looking for the best targets. Others are in the Battlecruiser fleet to blow up the chosen targets. Other fleets include a couple dozen smaller destroyers looking for small but valuable ships to pop, and yet another fleet is in regular combat ships. Instead of suicide-ganking, those ships are fighting off the player-organized fleets trying to stop us.”
They launched that campaign last night with hundreds of suicide runs into the system. Their actions have brought complete chaos to the system, destroying millions and millions of ISK worth of ships and goods. “It’s a pretty massively coordinated event,” Zastrow tells me, “Literally thousands of people are involved and the single system [Jita] has like two and a half thousand people in it, with more in the neighboring systems.”
Yeah, EVE definitely sounds like the most interesting MMO there has ever been. Everything I've ever heard about it sounds awesome. I'd never actually play it since I'm not especially interested in that type of game that it is, but it's pretty cool to observe and hear about.
I would never dream of playing Eve but the concept of it - total player freedom over everything - makes it a fascinating thing to admire from a distance. the fact that terrorists are about to crash the world's economy is kind of awesome.
I mean I'd never play the game cause it seems a lot better in concept than execution-- like I think reading about this would give me about as much amusement as participating in it. Just not really the type of game for me.
But yeah, really cool, this.
-- No problem! This is a cute and pop genocide of love!
Actually, yeah, that sound about right. I've been meaning to give it a try to see what it's like from the player perspective. From the outside it's something I look at and say that's so cool, but I'm not so sure I'd necessarily be on board with playing it long-term.
PCG: Last night, Goonswarm made a strong push into the heart of Empire space. Can you explain what that means and what the significance of that is for those not familiar with EVE?
Lazarus Telraven: In EVE there are 3 market hubs: Rens, Amarr, and Jita. Jita is the largest market/player meeting ground in the entire EVE universe, it typically has roughly 1,500 players in the system at any give time. And right now, [we've formed] a Coalition known as the Deklein Coalition that can field roughly 1,500 guys to cram into the Jita, the biggest market hub in the game to kill Freighters, JumpFreighters, Industrial Ships, Faction Battleships, and basically anything else they deem worthy of destroying.
[Our primary targets] are the people that stock the market with ships modules and other things. For them, it’s as if you just ran this awesome raid instance in Rift or WoW and looted an awesome Bind on Equip purple item. You take it back to town to put it on the auction house, but 100 guys jump you as you walk into the front door and take your item, your clothes (or in this case ship), and send you on your way.
PCG: That’s pretty brutal. So what prompted this attack, and what does Goonswarm hope to gain from it?
LT: The “Burn Jita” campaign has been in the works for roughly 4-5 months now. The idea originated with a member of Goonswarm directorate that goes by the name Aryth. Aryth is the guy that we in the Goons call a super-economist. His first major manipulation was the Oxygen Isotope collapse in which GSF (Goonswarm Federation) paid its members to kill anyone in EVE that was mining Oxygen isotopes (the most widely used isotope in the game), thereby cutting off the supply and causing the price to rise 5 times over, going from 450 a unit to 1500+ a unit.
Once we ended the Oxygen Isotope manipulation, our economists started looking at next viable targets and the “Burn Jita” Campaign is what came of that. The weekend of April the 28th was chosen as the official launch date for the campaign because it’s the first weekend after CCP launched the first part of its Inferno expansion. Inside this first implementation, they changed the Drone Regions where NPC spawns dropped Alloys. Before Alloys were added to the game, the price of minerals was much, much higher. They’ve deprecated significantly since then, but [the Drone Regions] change removed them from the game again, so the cost of ships, modules–practically everything–has just gone up.
With everything costing more to build and with Alloys out of the game, GSF has invaded Jita for the entire weekend to gank as many ships as possible to further drive the market into the ground. The members of GSF were told in advance about our plans and have all pre-purchased billions of ISK worth of minerals at the lower prices available before the patch and now the “Burn Jita” campaign. In other words, anyone that pre-bought minerals is going to make a lot of money off of the inflation caused by this invasion. Lastly, the locals or empire-dwellers [derrogatory term for players afraid of the PvP zones] are very, very frustrated with all of this which adds to the satisfaction
and I love how the developers are excited at somebody crashing their entire economy:
“The people they’re going to hurt now are people who have quite a lot of security. There’s not a lot of turnaround on ships and goods in Empire. I think it might be healthy if we lose a lot of this industrial power, if they have to go back and save up for their ships again and be a part of the cycle of life everyone else is a part of. I don’t like complete security, and I do like when a large group of players who live in complete security have that pulled away temporarily. It’s going to be healthy.”
I mean the developers seem to think this will have the added bonus of forcing people who have become too comfortable and complacent with their wealth to work their way back up in the world, but their goal basically just seems to be to cause chaos.
-- Ace Detective in Sir Chris' Police http://i55.tinypic.com/16ljqbl.png
I think both are true. yes, these guys are just griefers who are exploiting the game, but CCP really likes the idea of being able to do all of that. I think that is valid.
put another way, you'd never see a player have this profound of an effect on the world in, say, WOW or Old Republic.
yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. no one honestly has any idea what's going on in Eve. those guys are so far removed from the rest of the internet. they could make up the most elaborate of stories and we'd believe it.
EVE is so old/outdated that most people won't ever find out about this or care though.
That's probably why it works though, the playerbase is so unconcentrated and I'm betting a good thousand-two thousand of these people joined EVE with the sole purpose of doing this. (Aka more people joined to be terrorists in the past few months than you'll ever find in Jita)
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Never underestimate the power of stupidity in numbers. ~War13104 Never stoop to the level of idiots. They will drag you down and beat you with experience.
But its practically a dinosaur now. When I think EVE I think Runescape.
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Never underestimate the power of stupidity in numbers. ~War13104 Never stoop to the level of idiots. They will drag you down and beat you with experience.
reading those stories about people ruining stuff just to do it is kind of depressing
maybe I shouldn't take too much from it because they're just messing with a game and it doesn't matter
but man it seems like everyone is a bunch of dicks and the only reason everyone doesn't do that in real life is because people will shoot you or put you in jail for doing it
there's an anonymity and lack of accountability in online worlds. that's why people do this stuff. the games are based on competition and the goal is to out-earn one another. these people are just taking it to the logical extreme.
if you want to be cynical about it, I bet things like this happen with millionaires and billionaires on occasion, too.
From: OmarsComin | #034 but man it seems like everyone is a bunch of dicks and the only reason everyone doesn't do that in real life is because people will shoot you or put you in jail for doing it
Nah. I mean, that's part of the reason I'm sure. But not the only reason. There's also just the understanding that whatever harm you cause to other people in the game world is not going to be impactful to their life. It's like how people don't think twice about shooting each other in video games while they would have a much harder time doing the same thing in real life.
-- Ace Detective in Sir Chris' Police http://i55.tinypic.com/30sga2r.gif
It isn't this sort of stuff that scares me about people who play EVE
What scares me is that I read a forum discussion once where most players couldn't see anything wrong with spending a year of their lives infiltrating another player corp to gain their trust and then bring it down from the inside.
Random acts are one thing, but honestly pulling off year-long espionage is another.
From: Robazoid | #038 It isn't this sort of stuff that scares me about people who play EVE
What scares me is that I read a forum discussion once where most players couldn't see anything wrong with spending a year of their lives infiltrating another player corp to gain their trust and then bring it down from the inside.
Random acts are one thing, but honestly pulling off year-long espionage is another.
That's why Eve is awesome! It's almost as if the line between life and game is blurred.
As much as I like the idea of having freedom over this stuff, they're still losing a ton of time and money that they invested into the game because some people are just ****s.
then don't trade in Jita for a few days! there's tons of systems out there
i'm pretty sure nothing decays in Eve, and since a ton of stuff is getting destroyed right now prices will go up once all this settles down, so this can be a business opportunity if you don't decide to jump straight into the fire
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http://i.minus.com/ibvYdtuL5c1867.gif KrahenProphet and Kana are on opposite ends of the Awesome Spectrum.