Eve Online, a space-based MMORPG with over half a million subscribers, has seen its share of large conflicts. But the currently escalating war between two groups, the Imperium Coalition and the Moneybadger Coalition, points toward an epic struggle that will involve tens of thousands of players. A recent post from developer CCP Games recounts a March 28 battle consisting of 5,806 pilots that went on for hours. This wasn’t the largest battle in the game’s 13-year history, either. That honor go to the super-capital “Bloodbath of B-R5Rb,” in which 7,548 pilots participated.
The Imperium Coalition is a group of over 40,000 players from numerous guilds, and is the largest group on Eve. Its authority has been challenged before, but the Moneybadger Coalition is a dedicated group that was temporarily formed just to fight back. The above video does a good job explaining what it’s all about.
The latest battle is just one in what will likely be a long and bloody conflict. This “great war” has yet to be named, but so far Easter War, Northern War, World War Bee, and Mercenary Wars have been called out. It depends mostly on how the players view the hostilities.
This new conflict has reportedly brought back players who left the game in addition to new players and veterans. The potential is there for battles involving tens of thousands of pilots at a time.
As in real-life wars, there are avenues for massive victories and losses, retreats and charges, and profiteering from shrewd opportunists who play both sides. Eve Online players have even started posting propaganda praising one side and berating the other.
As more players choose to enlist in each side, we should see campaigns and skirmishes on a massive scale never seen before in gaming history. This is how empires assert their dominance and either grow in power and numbers … or get taken down.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.