"Eve Online" shows that virtual wars can be just as expensive as the real ones, as the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) supposedly just had its first million-dollar space battle.
However, in a rather anti-climactic turn of events, recent reports indicate that the intended space battle came up short of $996,000, meaning it was only worth $4,000. The said cost was supposed to be the damage in terms of digital space vessels lost. The loss is said to have come from players who spent in-game currency, that can be bought for real money, for their virtual space armada. The scale of the battle was supposed to be so massive that the intended loss predictions came in at as much as $1 million worth of in-game currency spent on ships.
But, this was not the case thanks to poor internet connectivity and server instability, according to Polygon. This was because the scale of the intended battle was so huge that the servers of the MMORPG kept crashing for a lot of players. Developer CCP Games has even admitted that they had difficulty catering to all the players who joined since it was the largest concentration of players ever in a single star system.
Previously, with prior big battles, the developers had to slow down the in-game time to a crawl in order for their servers to keep up with the battle, but this time, that did not work as well as intended. The approximated 6,000 players who were in the battle frequently reported crashing and latency, and in the worst cases, some could not even maintain connectivity.
This infrastructure blunder ultimately prevented the attackers from executing their plan successfully, leading to minimal losses and failed attempts to storm the opposing side.
Still, a lot of players enjoyed the match and even let the server issues slide since the spectacle was still "Eve's" biggest battle ever, and a lot of players still got the opportunity to show off their impressive fleets. CCP Games, on the other hand, is now committed to improving their servers for future battles.
