CCP Clearly Victorious in “Burn Jita” Event

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.

Burn Jita Makes it to Le Figaro

Dans ce macrocosme fascinant s’est instaurée une société complexe, un far-west spatial où le commerce de matières premières côtoie le crime organisé, la délinquance financière ou l’escroquerie pure et simple.

Le Figaro, on EVE Online

There is a sentence that sums up EVE Online pretty well.  Go on, use Google Translate on it.

So many things are made better by being in French.

And EVE Online making the culture section of Le Figaro… amazing.

Okay, it isn’t quite Le Monde, but it is still one of the “papers of record” in France.

Though I do have to nitpick about their headline.

EVE News 24 logo right at the top...

It translates roughly as “Anarchist Insurrection Launched in Online Game.”

I wouldn’t exactly call the Goonswarm or the CFC anarchists. (Comments on the article point this out as well, before the thread turns to the tired violence in video games argument.)  More unfettered capitalists really.  They don’t want to burn down the universe, just the parts where other people live.

There are other errors.  Jita is a star system, not a space station, and you cannot really ruin the insurance companies since they are NPC run and have limitless resources available.

But the article as a whole gets across the spirit of the game… and the viewpoint of CCP.  The didn’t stop the event, they just reinforced the servers running Jita so it could go on.

Of course, I might be biased about the article, as they chose to embed my Jita movie further down the page.  First Poland, then France… wait, don’t go there.  Anyway, like Jerry Lewis, my works are appreciated more overseas.