Further developments in EVE's 'Grand Theft Alliance' drama
by James Egan 
Feb 5th 2009 at 10:00PM
Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Events, in-game, Game mechanics, Guilds, PvP, News items
[Notify] Drama bomb hits you, wrecking for total damage.
We broke the story late last evening that one of EVE Online's most powerful alliances has finally fallen after years of continual struggle with rival player alliances. While some details surrounding the incident remain hazy, we do have some more information than we did when we published the rumor. Band of Brothers (aka "BoB"), the self-styled villain alliance in the game, have repeatedly professed a desire to control all of EVE's galaxy of New Eden. This motivation driving their collective action has made them the focal point of hatred for much of the community, and BoB wouldn't have it any other way. More enemies equates to a real challenge for them to overcome, and in this respect -- whether you love them or despise them -- Band of Brothers has been a major driver in player warfare since the early days of EVE Online.
Despite the thousands of pilots in the game fervently committed to wiping Band of Brothers from the influence map, the alliance has held on. Even though they were forced to sacrifice vast territorial control for a smaller region of consolidated strength, even when on the ropes, they remained impossible to destroy. The irony is that for all their raw military power, the alliance was ultimately cut down from within, with only a few simple clicks of a mouse. It was a bureaucratic snafu from the perspective of Band of Brothers -- a member of the alliance named Haargoth Agamar (a director with Black Nova Corp) being entrusted with too much control -- and a windfall for GoonSwarm, the major alliance rival of BoB.
This all came about when GoonSwarm, as they're known to do, pulled a recruitment scam on Haargoth Agamar, a Band of Brothers director who was in the guise of an alt. The way this scam typically plays out is that a non-Something Awful member is allowed to join the corp, sometimes for a fee, and move their assets to a station held by the Goons. (GoonSwarm was born on the Something Awful forums and being a part of that community is required to join their alliance.) Once the time is right, they boot the individual from the corp and keep those assets. Essentially, it's griefing. Only in this case, rather than the victim becoming irate... he wanted to stay. According to The Mittani, resident spymaster of GoonSwarm, the Band of Brothers director found he preferred the company of his "enemies" to that of his friends. Agamar then revealed his main character to be a director in the Band of Brothers alliance. It would be false to say that The Mittani turned Agamar into a double agent, when in truth he turned of his own accord. He provided access to the Band of Brothers director forums as a show of goodwill. From there, the plans were made to dismantle (quite literally) GoonSwarm's main rival. Once assured a place within GoonSwarm, Agamar proceeded to disband the Band of Brothers alliance using his director level access. In addition to shutting down the alliance, he cleaned out his corporation's ISK reserves and stole their dreadnaught (capital ship) fleet, which became a gift to GoonSwarm.
This is where the details get somewhat hazy, as CCP Games hasn't released an official statement on the matter beyond the volunteer-reported news piece. Despite numerous allegations and rumors, there is no evidence that account hacking or account sharing took place, and CCP Games hasn't provided comment on the issue.
Both BoB and GoonSwarm had the opportunity earlier today to express their views on the current state of affairs on the player-run EVE Radio, hosted by "Funkybacon." The show set a new record for EVE Radio with over 1800 simultaneous listeners. It featured Dianabolic, who is well-known to many EVE players as the CEO of Reikoku, formerly a Band of Brothers corporation. Dianabolic laid out what he knows about how the alliance was disbanded, catching BoB by surprise. He also announced that the former BoB corporations will, as of tomorrow morning, have joined an existing alliance in the game. Dianabolic didn't state which alliance for obvious security concerns, and although there's speculation as to which alliance it will be, the answer will not be known until Friday.
The Mittani spoke for GoonSwarm on EVE Radio as well, which is fitting as he was integral to the theft of BoB's alliance. He laid out the entire scenario for the listeners, right up to where things have played out as of Thursday afternoon. Both Dianabolic and The Mittani engaged in a bit of discussion which was tense at points, but made for a great show. Due to its overwhelming popularity the BoB/GoonSwarm interviews and debate are being re-broadcast and will also be made available for download shortly.
One of GoonSwarm's stated motivations from their early days as an alliance was to punish what they viewed as the arrogance of Band of Brothers. If they've held true to that ideal, stealing the alliance out from under BoB effectively means GoonSwarm has accomplished what they set out to do years ago. To add insult to injury, The Mittani has stated he'll be publishing the archived BoB director forums he gained access to for everyone to read. In the meantime, GoonSwarm and many other enemies of Band of Brothers are absolutely storming BoB's home systems in Delve, and chaos reigns. The political lines in EVE Online have been completely redrawn, and we suspect that the ensuing drama is far from over.
Update: EVE Radio has made their interview recordings available for download.
- Dianabolic from Reikoku, formerly of Band of Brothers
- The Mittani from GoonFleet, GoonSwarm alliance
- The complete show, with debate between Dianabolic and The Mittani
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Holgar said on 11:35PM 2-05-2009
Ooooh the fallout from this will last months at least and decades at most....
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Dalrint said on 11:59PM 2-05-2009
Okay, so, if the game has all of this intrigue and excitement, how come when I tried it, all it seemed to be was boring?
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Holgar said on 12:15AM 2-06-2009
Because you wern't a high ranking (No life) member of a high power (Greedy basterds) corp :)
Trust me even if you found EVE boring the politics and drama the game creates are often 100% undiluted win served with a side of awsome with just a touch of hilarity.
Firebreak said on 9:21PM 2-06-2009
You did it wrong?
In all seriousness you have to get out of empire to really have fun in EVE. Sitting in an EVE starter corp in empire is about as boring as it gets. However joining a PVP corp in 0.0 or low sec is a ton of fun.
Graill said on 4:40AM 2-06-2009
Because with "lord of the flies" gameplay and nothing you can do the perps in this situation of course it is naturally boring. With the exception to those that think no consequence in any form is really exciting......lets you right in on the basement level demographic that plays EVE.
Kaamos said on 12:27AM 2-06-2009
I couldnt play this game unless I had NO-OTHER mmo's to play.
But I love watching the videos, reading about it.
If only I wasnt so poor i'd have an account and just train skills for three months and THEN play.
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Einnis said on 9:17AM 2-06-2009
Heh, it takes way more than 3 months to train up to that level. But i suppose you could still mix it up in that time. I'm 4 months in, I like Empire, but then again, my skills are all over the place.
koehler83 said on 2:21AM 2-06-2009
This whole situation has done nothing more than make me realize that have absolutely no comprehension of EVE online.. and I even played it briefly...
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rokknroll said on 4:55AM 2-06-2009
To put this into a perspective the above comments may understand:
Jeff Kaplan reveals himself to be an employee of Mythic, deletes all WoW accounts and sells the info to the russian mafia.
If you didnt do pre-pc gaming, or started at WoW gen mmo's, EvE is probably somewhere you cant get to, sorry.
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robomb said on 6:50AM 2-06-2009
I think the above comments about accesibility are fairly short sighted, of MMOs in general but also of Eve particularly.
In Eve (as in most decent MMOs) any PvP is significantly more fun than PvE, it forces you to interact with the game and with other players in a much deeper and more enjoyable way.
To access PvP aspects of Eve you have options.
The general path is to get recruited (fairly easy, corps always want to recruit, participation is everything) then access some fairly quick skills that allow you to take part in PvP for that corp in a specific special role suited to young characters (the classic role here is 'tackler' which is a ship which prevents other ships fleeing combat, the skills are easy to get and the equipment is cheap).
That's the typical first PvP step but recently (last couple of years) several corps have appeared which offer more specific noob PvP training. These corps will specifically recruit young characters (usually in Empire space through random chat), help them out a bit with getting some basic cheap ships, give them advice on fittings etc. and then organise fights with varying levels of supervision, rules, etc. This sort of thing is really good to see, the motivation for the corps is that strong members are generally those who enjoy the company of their fellow members, not just those whose characters match the corps requirements.
Finally, beyond simply PvP it's true that there's also this higher level of alliance politics which, obviously, you need to contribute significant time to access, not for most people of course, but then, as with everything, you get out what you put in.
The point is, it really isn't a question of all or nothing, and the Eve learning curve really isn't as bad as people say. These days loads of corporations exist almost entirely to soften that curve by introducing new players to PvP, making low-security space accessible, etc. I would suggest that anyone who played the game for a few hours and came away with the impression of an entirely elitist, basement demographic world, probably didn't actually try talking to anybody in game to find out what the possibilities are.
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mandrill said on 7:44AM 2-06-2009
This has repercussions across the entire universe of EVE. I predict that Tech 2 prices will spike as a growth in demand due to more fighting over BoB's space and a drop in supply due to BoB's demise ripple through the economy. Even an Empire Lurking carebear could make a killing in this environment if they do it right.
This whole scenario is why I love EVE and believe it to be the future of MMO gaming. There is nothing else like it. Once you get past the really scary learning curve and start interacting with real people, it is probably the most rewarding MMO currently on the market.
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W. Graves said on 8:08AM 2-06-2009
if anyone needs a corp let me know... im a long time massively reader and about a 15 month eve player.
http://splu.guildlaunch.com/
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Morat said on 12:48PM 2-06-2009
Where most MMOs are pillow fights with chuckles and cookies afterwards, EVE Online is a cage fight. Not everyone likes it in the cage.
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Aramis said on 6:19PM 2-07-2009
This is the key. Also, if too many people play Eve it will dilute the IQ pool, so STOP staying nice things, and tell them to go play SWG or WOW or something else.
Leave Eve for us Brainiacs...
Eve is Boring. Play something else. PLEASE!
Aramis Rosicrux
Alachene/Everyshore/Gallente/Eve
Rive said on 2:22PM 2-06-2009
Wow, thats crazy. This makes me want to give EVE a try.
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m0o said on 6:05PM 2-06-2009
EPIC FAIL on GoonSwarm. They thought they had control of the situation by blobbing major outposts with 200 man cruiser gangs. But someone had the brilliant idea of turning on sovereignty in a backwater system before BoB sov was reset at EVE Downtime the same day the alliance was disbanded. They gained control of the same outposts Goon tried to take over. Most of Delve region is back in ex-BoB control, and the friendly fleets are keeping it that way. Sorry folks, nothing to see here, business as usual =).
Regardless of what you see them smacking about in local chat, they do NOT have the upper hand.
Yes they stole lots of money. Yes they got lots of nice big ships. But they forgot one very important detail: all the disbanded corps still have their pilots, ships, isk, modules, and resources.
** And they did not run. **
reread that line above a few times to get the idea.
** Disbanding an alliance != destroying it. **
Sorry for the BoB haters, but you get no love today =)
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Through the Mirror Darkly said on 7:16PM 2-07-2009
One well placed time bomb, just took out an enemy captial ship fleet... Any way you try to look at it, BoB has suffered a loss unlike anything seen in quite some time. There aren't many wars where you have a weapon capible of not destroying an enemy capital ship fleet, but comandeering it, as well as ISK to help with strategic fortifications.
It's far from game over or a catastrophic loss -- but it isn't beyond compare to the damage that might be done to both sides of a 100 man skirmish.
Remianen said on 9:12PM 2-10-2009
So, lemme get this straight.
You're trying to come here and pose (because that's exactly what you're doing) by saying "everything's the same! We're not busted down at all!". Hmm. You were once the Iraqi Minister of Information, weren't you?
Fact is, whether BoB reforms under a new name (they will) or not, this was a terribly painful blow. Granted, if BoB's leadership is worth a penny, they'll reform into a leaner, meaner, more cohesive alliance and they won't let complacency and bloat do to them what it appears to have done this time. Honestly, when you have devs handing you BPs and stuff, it's easy to feel untouchable.
So, reform, regroup, and go back to handling your business. But playing the ostrich role only gets you sand in your ears.
Atojams said on 4:31AM 2-07-2009
Learning curve? For elitists? Feh! I feh at thee!
It takes less than a day to learn the skills to pirate non-combat ships. You don't need to even join a corp, there's always unprotected miners and industrials waiting to get killed by a small PvP ship... and boy howdy is killing them fun.
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Foogar said on 6:03AM 2-12-2009
Although the trick was pretty neat inside job, they made one crucial mistake in the first place, allowing third person to use their account to gain access out of game systems which would fall under juristiction of law enforcement.
Well, as awesome as the trick was I truely hope that the forum owners come up with law suit for illegal access that can yield some time in prison. THAT would be even more awesome. Could give some new commercial for EVE Priceless.
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