CivilWars

I will start with a little back story for those who may not be familiar with the game of EVE. Within the game you have corporations, which are basically clans or guilds, alliances, which is a group of corporations with similar goals and interests, and coalitions, which is an unofficial friends list. Within the TPG family we have players with pilots in various alliances across the universe, but there are two main groups that live within 0.0 space, which is where the majority of PVP action takes place. In order to not divulge information that others may not want public I will only refer to players by their TPG names.

On one hand we have the members of the LAWN alliance. This group includes myself, JBMCW2010, DJ Mr. White, Alundil, Highstakes72, Tractorpull, Cainun, and recent additions Gehn, and evilblackjack. We live in the north, and are part of the CFC with the Goons. On the other hand we have the members of Against All Authorities, also known as -A-. This group includes Ranger10, w4jchosen, (4)manno, and Unorignal. If you have been around TPG for any amount of time you will recognize many of these names. Not only have we all played with and against each other in various TPG hosted games, but we have also been in the same corps and alliances in the past. I have only been in LAWN for about 4 months, and in that time we have not had any direct conflict with -A- as they were literally on the exact opposite side of the map from us, but last night that all changed.

Earlier in the week the CFC (Clusterfuck Coalition, which LAWN is a part of) had become aware of a random alliance that was building an Aeon, one of the largest and most expensive ships in the game. You have to build said ship in a Player Owned Station (POS), which is a structure in space that can be attacked, and if killed, the ship dies as well; you also lose all of the materials needed to build the ship. For a point of reference the ship costs roughly 20 billion ISK, in game currency, and it costs 1 billion ISK to pay for 60 days of game time if you pay with in game currency. If you pay with US dollars 60 days of game time is $30, so 20 billion ISK is roughly the equivalent of $600 US. Needless to say this is ship is pretty important.

Now that the stage is set let's get to the action. I, along with Cainun, were in a CFC fleet of about 240. The enemy consisted of various fleets totaling about 350, including an -A- fleet that was coming to help protect the Aeon production. As an added bonus there were a few other fleets totaling about 150 that are enemies of both sides that stated they would be assisting us, but still had the opportunity to shoot us as well. When the battle first started there was too much action to really pay attention to who was on the field for the "enemy", but as the battle wore on, and as ships were blown off of the field, there were fewer and fewer names to filter through, so I started looking through the list to see if any of my brothers on the other side were in the battle with us, and I saw two names I recognized, so I tried to get their attention, but unfortunately some people don't pay attention to local chat when their are still almost a thousand people in a system.

So, who did I see you ask? None other than our old friend (4)manno. After our fleet decided to disengage the -A- fleet decided to give chase as we headed home, and one of the leaders of the chase was one of two characters that I know of owned by (4). Once they stopped chasing, and we were safely away, I invited (4) to a chat. We discussed how much fun we both had, and how it was good to see each other. We chatted for a bit like old friends who bump into each other at the bar, and then each went our own way. While we didn't get to shoot each other it was still good to see an old friend, even if we were on opposite sides of the battlefield. This is why I play EVE, and I invite you to join me.

Alundil, Affinity liked this post