24 | October | 2023 | The Ancient Gaming Noob

GM Week kicked off in EVE Online yesterday with the traditional Yulai Bot Bash.

GM Week 2023

The event did take place in Yulai despite the fact that the location was not included in the GM Week announcement post. But more than 1,300 people were in system at its peak, so clearly people assumed correctly or found out on the fly.

We learned a few things on the stream about the event.

First, they clarified that while Team Security has been on the job, the scarcity of bots to which the GM Week announcement referred was bots in capital ships. Capital ship botting isn’t really a thing in the current meta. They invited viewers to watch the Team Security presentation from Fanfest for more details. I have linked to that video at the end of the post.

Second, due to this capital ship bot scarcity, this year’s bot bash is the final one they plan to have. There was a promise to come up with some other sort of event to replace the bot bash for next year, but what that might end up being has yet to be decided.

Third, in order to not get into guilt by association, for this final bot bash the banned player accounts were not used. Instead, each of the capital ships was piloted by an old GM account.

Anyway, as for the event, I tried to put together a plan in advance since I would need to duck out of work for it. This year I figured I would go for a long range fit so it wouldn’t matter so much where on grid the targets landed. I dug out a Ferox with a Sensor Booster II and a Tracking Computer II fit, with a targeting range and optimal range script installed respectively, which gave my alt the ability to target and hit out to 150km with Spike loaded. Ample range to hit whatever dropped into our laps.

Cruising by the Yulai graveyard

I was there on time. I had my overview setup to show me suspects… which are safe to shoot in high sec… and was orbiting the area with a couple hundred other people. You have to take care who you shoot and mind your standings. CONCORD is especially tough on even the beloved when it is on their doorstep.

Oh, Henry!

It took CCP a little extra time to show up, but I knew it was on when CCP Swift showed up in a Polaris frigate to stir things up.

CCP Swift arrives

Then the in-game announcement hit.

CCP telling the New Eden cluster it is on

I tuned into the CCP Twitch channel to listen to the play by play as we all waited for the first capital ship to drop. There were already 700 people in local when the message popped up, and nearly 900 when the first target warped in… a Rorqual… and everybody opened fire.

You can’t see the target from the fire

Well, almost everybody opened fire. For reasons unknown to me, I had moved the stacked 250mm railguns off of the F1 position and was so busy moving the camera around to watch the show that I didn’t notice that my guns were not cycling. I finally caught on after the first carrier landed and was already done.

A Thanatos getting the works

I finally got my act together when a Phoenix was warped on grid for us to hit next.

Phoenix under fire

That one blew up nicely.

The Moros takes a turn

Then it was on to a Moros.

They were escalating through the various capitals and supers. We didn’t get every flavor of carrier, but they made sure to bring out one each of the empire supers. As the Moros was blowing up, there was a Wyvern arriving and an Erebus titan under fire.

There Erebus under heavy fire as the Moros begins to explode

After the Erebus then a Leviathan was warped on grid. It took a beating before people broke through its shields.

Breaking the Levi’s tank

The Leviathan’s shields were tough enough that it seemed like the Ragnarok that came in next would die first. But the Levi melted once its shields were down while the Rag… well, it didn’t last too long after that.

The Ragnarok under fire next

There was an interlude where the last super carrier, a Hel, was warped on grid to be melted. Then it was time for the grand finale with probably the most recognizable super of the bunch, the Amarr Avatar.

And the retired GM character piloting this particular titan was none other than CCP Guard.

CCP Guard’s character flying in the Friendship

That brought back some fond memories. Like the Avatar, CCP Guard was among the most recognized and recognizable and well liked members of the CCP team in his day. Yulai IX, above which the CONCORD Bureau offices are anchored, is named Kjarval, which is CCP Guard’s real life first name.

All that goodness didn’t stop anybody from opening fire the moment the Avatar landed.

Avatar taking all we have to give

It stood up to the focused fire of more than 1,300 people in system at that point, but eventually succumbed to the attacks, slowly brewing up.

The Avatar beginning to explode

And that was it for the event, the last Yulai Bot Bash… at least the last one planned.

Normally I would link the kill reports over on zKillboard, but that will have to wait. It seems that zKill was having its own problems during the Bot Bash, problems which have yet to be resolved as I write this. The frailty of the community run EVE Online ecosystem confronts us once more as all the sites that depend on zKillboard for data to create things like battle reports are down now as well.

Addendum: zKillboard is recovering. Here is the GM Guard Avatar kill mail.

Addendum 2: It looks like I did hit all the capitals. I had my drones out as well, so I must have hit F to send them off after targets after hitting F1.

All the bots/GMs I hit in Yulai

Anyway, if you missed it you can watch the replay of the Twitch stream, which gets you all the commentary. Or you can watch this sped up version of the event in just 13 minutes.

Brackets on gives you a sense of how many ships and drones were flying about, but it is really only pretty when the UI gets turned off and the video gets slowed down for some of the kills.

There is, of course, more to come for GM Week. But for me that is always the highlight, a bit of controlled chaos that I can break away from work to enjoy.

Also, as a reminder, you can click on any of those screen shots to see larger versions.