Not With A Bang: The End of the Band of Brothers Alliance

At about 0130 GMT on 5 February, an era came to an end in Eve Online -- the Band of Brothers alliance, a powerhouse of Eve politics since 2004, was disbanded by a director who decided to defect to BoB's archenemies, Goonswarm.  In the process, he stole billions upon billions of ISK, ships (supposedly including five motherships), and other commodities, transferring it to GoonSwarm.  The disbandment of the alliance also eliminated BoB's sovereignty in Delve and other home regions, halting capital ship production, deactivating cyno jammers and jump bridges, and leaving their POS network and outposts vulnerable to enemy attack.  The last 48 hours have seen an unprecedented amount of fighting in Delve as GoonSwarm and their allies invade what was previously a nearly impenetrable fortress; hundreds more opportunists have descended upon the region to grab what they can while the chaos continues.  You can see the difference between the sovereignty maps on 4 February 2009 and 5 February 2009.

ISD's Interstellar Correspondents have been trying to cover the situation, fan forums Scrapheap Challenge have been discussing the situation almost since the start, with this thread on the general situation and this one on the actual fighting in Delve, and BoB Director Dianabolic and GoonSwarm spymaster The Mittani appeared on Eve Radio to discuss the situation (during which the station got more than 1800 listeners, more than they've ever had previously).  This is the biggest event in Eve I've ever seen, and the attention it is getting is unbelievable -- I don't think I've ever seen anything that has so polarized and energized the community.  Accusations of hacking were levied at GoonSwarm early on, but it looks like that isn't actually the case, which is good -- the mess it would have caused if this was all due to an EULA violation would have been incalculable.

For me, as someone in a relatively minor alliance that has no stake in 0.0 politics and has had little to do with either BoB or GoonSwarm, this has been fascinating to watch.  A lot of people in the game have had a love/hate relationship with BoB during the last few years; it's hard not have respect for what they've been able to do over the last four years, but they have been dogged by scandal for much of it as well.  The Goons are notorious as well, originating from the SomethingAwful forums and having the reputation for being, well, Goons.

As a roleplayer, I think I tend to side more on the BoB side of things, simply because I take the game considerably more seriously than the vast majority of Goons, but as I said, I don't really have any stake in it at all.  BoB's done their fair share of stuff I'm not so fond of either (I found the t20 scandal pretty sickening) and I was really impressed when the Goons and Red Alliance took down the first Titan in real combat, so I'd like to think I'm a fairly neutral observer.

My overall feeling on the whole issue is mixed.  This is a momentous event, and honestly 0.0 has been far too static, especially in the tightly held regions like Delve, so this has a lot of potential to make 0.0 -- or at least Delve, Querious, and Period Basis -- much more interesting and dynamic for the forseeable future.  On the other hand, I am disappointed to see one of the iconic alliances of Eve fall not from an epic battle but from basically a slightly more complicated version of corp theft.

People predicting that BoB is going to collapse like a house of cards are underestimating the core of the alliance; this is certainly going to be a setback, and I have no doubt that BoB (or whatever their new name ends up being) will lose a lot of ships and systems, but I suspect this will galvanize their membership and they'll fight like tooth and nail to keep their stations and systems.  We've already seen all the former BoB corporations join the KenZoku alliance (apparently just as a temporary measure, from what Dianabolic said in his interview) and they've lost surprisingly few POSes so far.  I've no idea if they will manage to hold onto Delve, but I suspect the alliance will stick around in some form through this crisis.

My prediction is that the biggest thing to come out of this is the realization of just how easily alliances can collapse like this.  A vote and a 24 hour wait are required for a corporation to declare war, for unlocking blueprints, and for joining an alliance, but it only takes one person and a minute or two to disband an entire alliance.  I suspect that there will be a lot of outcry for CCP to fix this.  However, if it isn't fixed, or before it is fixed, I suspect there is going to be at least one more fairly large alliance that meets its end in pretty much the same way.  Hard as it is to believe, I think a lot of people just didn't realize how easy it was to disband an alliance; even the Mittani, who made the suggestion to the BoB defector, seems to have just had the sudden realization.

This is something you'd never see in any other MMO, and it's definitely one of the reasons I keep playing.  There's no other MMO where you will get these sorts of conflicts, or this sort of news coverage -- the Eve Radio DJ in the (two hour) show I linked to above said it felt like CNN or BBC at their "studios," and listening to the show, or reading the GBBS thread from Scrapheap I linked to above, it is basically like listening to war reporters in some far off locale.  Even if you don't know anything about Eve, you get the sense that something is happening, with real consequences.