A look at EVE Online's sweeping alliance warfare
by James Egan 
Aug 15th 2008 at 11:00AM
Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Culture, Economy, Guilds, PvP, Endgame, Opinion
A few weeks ago, Jim Rossignol kicked off a series of EVE Online focused articles with his look at the basics of combat in the game. But small-scale PvP doesn't suit all players in EVE. Some get hungry for more power. They join up with like-minded pilots and form corporations. Those corporations band together in alliances and wage war with one another over territories and the riches the others hold. Rossignol's "Alliance War" is a look at the large scale fleet battles characteristic of the constant struggle between 0.0 alliances, as well as the struggle itself. Rossignol states what he views as the impetus for alliance warfare and how it's evolved over the years he's played. In the beginning, holding choice regions of space was important to players because of the high-bounty NPCs and choicest ores to be mined from the asteroid belts in claimed territories. Then, conquerable stations and outposts were the goals driving alliance machinations. Now, Rossignol says, it's mostly about controlling moons and the vast streams of revenue they represent.
Still, it's not all about the money: "There's a grand sweep to all this that is not present in any other game. Seeing the fleets form up, watching the capital ships jump en masse, seeing the dreadnoughts engage enemy structures -- it's got the kind of bombast and enormity that no other game, before or since, online or off, has been able to capture. Not only that, but the logistics, espionage and counter-espionage, all add up to a game that has more depth than the nine circles of hell," Rossignol says.
High praise indeed, but Rossignol also addresses a critical drawback to having all of these aspects of the game set in motion: choking lag. So, what drives players to deal with the lag? It's likely the rewards that are less tangible as players strive for success and sovereignty, beyond the excitement of PvP. "There's no equivalent experience in gaming to that of being caught up in the enormous communal effort of several thousand people trying to defend their slice of the universe, or to take what belongs to someone else," Rossignol says. The collective action players can take in EVE is a huge part of the game's allure. Alliance-scale gameplay may not be for every player in New Eden, but it does represent one of the most engaging experiences that EVE Online can offer.
