CCP has a Dev Blog post up today that details what was going on behind the scenes for the Burn Jita event this past weekend. It is a worthwhile post and you should read it if you are at all interested in the game.
The post sets the stage for the event:
For several months now, a coalition of thousands of players have been planning the “Burn Jita” event, aimed at disrupting the biggest trade hub in game in order to wreak some terrific, universe-wide changes by shaking the very pillars of EVE’s economy at its metaphorical heart. Surely there was some sort of larger, meta-economic objective that likely would cause them great profit. This planning happened both in game and outside of game, via voice over IP chat, secret forums, Twitter and more. A sci-fi plot of the new information age if there ever was one.
Then talks about what CCP was doing to accommodate the event (including a hotfix):
Since the “Burn Jita” event was announced well in advance and CCP wants to support player-driven events (as long they are within the rules of the game), we reinforced the Jita solar system on our beefiest hardware, further reinforced all neighbouring systems and set out to monitor the event and provide the best experience we could to willing (and unwilling) participants. Then things started to unfold a day earlier than announced on Friday morning. We gathered data and fine-tuned the systems and as CCP Veritas put it: “It’s okay, didn’t want that Friday night anyway.“
And then they start to trot out the charts and graphs… something CCP does better than any other game developer I have seen… to show what happened, culminating in the actual short-term impact on economic activity in Jita.
(Graph cropped and annotated by me. You have to go read the post to see the whole thing. CCP_Diagoras posted another version of the chart here. He also posted some kill totals in the forums. You should follow him on Twitter, he is the EVE Online stats master.)
People can (and will) argue as to whether the impact was significant and whether it will mean anything at all in the medium to long term as far as the game economy goes.
But the whole event allowed CCP to send a message as well, that player stories, that players creating the content of the game, is what they want. As the post concludes:
Make your stories happen!
Clearly they mean it.
And still, people will persist in not getting the message.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
He even explains the low population cap on Friday which just happened to coincide with the time I logged on and was dissapointed to find alll the Jita gates locked.
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Best part of that tears thread: “Go diaf…ingame of course”
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@SynCaine – Thanks in part of the “Kinder, Gentler Bittervet” initiative no doubt.
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A bit further into that thread is a great explanation of the “hey I shot a flashing red pod, didn’t get a warning, and CONCORD killed me” bug that I saw a lot of people complaining about in the Help channel over the weekend: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1231364#post1231364
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I don’t play Eve, so maybe I am missing something, but I am not sure how anyone wins in this. My impressions is that if your ship gets blown up, you just buy a new one and carry on. It doesn’t seem like there is any real long term impact on anyone.
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@scotth Also, pilots insure their ships and will receive 50%+ of the value of the ship it it’s destroyed. So that’s even less impact than you think. However…
Firstly, insurance doesn’t cover the loss of the equipment fitted to the ship or its cargo. Which can be worth as much,or more than, the ship itself. Even so some of these ships are worth a quite considerable amount of in-game money. They cost their pilots weeks or months worth of earnings.
Secondly, when a player ship is destroyed a fair amount of its equipment or what it was carrying in it’s cargo hold is ‘dropped’ and can be picked up, usually by the victor. Thus there is a net transfer of wealth from the loser to the victor. Obviously cargo ships are a prime target.
One such ship killed during the Hulkageddon event was carrying dozens of smaller combat ships in its hold. Many of which were ejected into space to be picked up by the victors. Included in the destroyed ships were 13 (IIRC) Rupture cruisers, To put that in perspective I recently spent a little under 10 million credits, half of my available cash, on my own Rupture.
Thirdly, it’s all very well to say ‘just buy another ship’ but all ships (with some very limited exceptions) have to be built by players using gathered minerals. Ship replacement drives a large part of the economy. As Wilhelm has pointed out before, the Tech 2 ships all (?) require the mineral Technetium to construct, Since the supply of Technetium is restricted, economically it makes sense for the players sitting on sources of Tech’ to destroy the ships which use it. just like a glazier going around town breaking windows.
Lastly, I’ve played battlegrounds in fantasy MMO’s where there was essentially no impact at all. Yet I and other people still enjoyed them.
Mike.
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@Scotth – My past post, Claiming Victory in Jita, said that there was no real “winning” condition, so it was a matter of setting your own goals and measuring to see if you met them.
Which pretty much describes winning in EVE Online across the board.
Yes, you can usually determine win/loss in a single battle or such, but over all, there is no end game, I’ve done it all state. No Arthas or Balrog to slay.
CCP’s winning condition was getting a giant player run event and getting all sorts of press coverage as a result, as this sort of thing doesn’t really happen in other games, at least not on this sort of scale.
As for the event itself, up until now, the biggest issue with losing a ship has been the annoyance of having to find, buy, and equip a new one. Now, however, there is a chance that the prices of some ships and equipment will go up enough that people will have to make an informed choice rather than just loading up on the tech II version of what ever modules they favor.
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