EVE Online’s ‘million dollar battle’ ends up a $3300 bust

It was touted as the “Million-Dollar Battle” — a million dollars’ worth of EVE Online ships heading to an epic showdown in 9-4RP2. Pandemic Legion was defending its Keepstar in the system while the Imperium attempted to destroy it. With 250 massive titans and a total of 6,000 pilots being brought to bear on both sides, it had the potential of being the largest fight ever in the game’s history.

The outcome wasn’t… quite as epic as it could’ve been, however. As we suspected, while the two forces threw their fleets at each other, neither committed its titans to the fight. The sheer number of participants in one location caused game performance to suffer, and eventually the attackers withdrew, leaving the defenders victorious. Only about $3,300 of ship losses were caused by the conflict, which is far less than it could have been.

One problem was that the main target, the citadel, kept repairing in real time while all of the ships were engaged in “time dilation” that slowed down the fight so that the system could process it all. Attackers claim that this gave the defenders an unfair advantage and created an impossible objective.