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The War in Fountain - The Biggest Fight in Video Game History

This will probably be the last great battle for Fountain. I saw 6VDT-H peak at 4070 players in system. It didn't remain over 4000 for long, but still, a number that's gobsmacking. For the time I was in system it mostly hung around the 3700-3900 mark, and I was in the battle for a few hours.

It was, quite simply, the biggest fight in video game history, and EVE Online probably already owns the top fifty spots in that category. (If not more.)

Way back in 1999, when I was playing Everquest, I helped organize one of the first large scale PvP fights of that era. This was during EQ's first year, on Rallos Zek. The only Zek server at the time. The only PvP server at the time. East Commonlands crashed during the fight, with only about 150 people in the zone. Ten years on and even World of Warcraft struggles to have that many people engaged with each other at one time in PvP. So, to have several thousand people fighting each other, well, that's kind of jaw-dropping. Moreso because the node stayed active.

The fight was at 10% time dilation for seven hours. It was only at 10% because TiDi is capped at that value. It can't go lower without CCP intervention. If there were no cap, it probably would have dropped to 1%. Of course, that would have been entirely unplayable. Even at 10% and on a reinforced node, the server was stressed beyond its limits. Dropped commands were common during the fight. I'm not complaining about the dropped commands. Far better the occasional dropped command during 10% TiDi in a fight that size, than a total node meltdown without TiDi technology. CCP is to be commended on time dilation. This fight could not have taken place pre-TiDi, that is for sure.

I was in Baltec Fleet 7, with Cor Six as our FC. We were the last Megathron fleet to jump into 6VDT-H before the fighting started in earnest. Our first kill was a Nidhoggur. It was a strange kill. The dude undocks from station and then immediately enters triage. He melted in under three minutes (and that's three minutes of 10% TiDi.) Shortly after that the Test & Pals fleets started landing.

Our fleet went after Damnations and Legions first. I was party to about nine kills before I was primaried off the field. This all took about ninety minutes. I took the pod express back to 4-EP12. Safely docked, I decided to go eat some dinner. I returned about an hour later, bought another Megathron off contract, joined a reinforcement fleet, warped to our titan and waited to be bridged in. That didn't take very long. I was back in 6VDT in about 15 minutes. Dropped from the reinforcement fleet and rejoined Cor Six in Baltec 7.

Test tried to take down all of our FCs and failed on every atttempt. They got closest with Cor Six, who dropped as low as 5% armor. Hero logistics kept him in the fight. On the flipside, the CFC took down every Test & Pals fleet commander.

The rest of the evening we mostly went after Zealots. I survived the rest of the fight. Thank god. Because after returning back to 4-EP12, I realized that I'd forgot to update my clone. Bloody fortunate I didn't die again. That would have been horrible. The last time I forgot to update a clone, I lost 750K skill points and Advanced Weapon Upgrades V.

In the end, Test & Pals stood down their reinforcement fleets. The CFC held the field.

I'm glad I made it to the fight. I completely blew off any pretense of watching the Alliance Tournament today, because I love these big fights. I had no idea it would be this big, and I wasn't sure if it was going to happen at all. There were rumours the CFC might blueball Test, or that Test might blueball us. Either way, it wasn't something I was going to miss. Instead of getting up early, being groggy and watching AT XI, I slept in, and was fresh and alert for 6VDT. I couldn't have made a better choice. It's definitely kinda cool being a part of video game history.
Source: The War in Fountain - The Biggest Fight in Video Game History