In a Galaxy Far, Far Away

On a whim, I moved one of my alts over to the system of Luminaire this morning, to check out the site of the live event that would be going on. I've never participated in a live event, since they are usually not within a convenient time for my time zone, nor in a convenient place. (Since it was high sec, I couldn't participate on Susan with her being -10.0)

It was pretty busy, even 3-4 hours before the thing was supposed to kick off, so I just cloaked up and went to get some work done for a few hours. I'm glad I jumped into the system early.

When I came back, all hell had broken loose. The system was in deep TiDi, and you could practically feel the system shake from people beating at the gates to get in. CCP locked it down initially to 1,000 pilots, and then later to around 1,600 pilots.

The Caldari Navy brought in some Wyverns and other caps initially. It's funny, a question I was asked more than once was, "how did they get the capitals into the system if they can't cyno?"

Guys, it's CCP. They...you know...built this game. They can drop ships wherever they want.

We started getting Gallente on scan --a rather large group of Moros, as well as Nyxs and etc. The Caldari dudes apparently saw them too, and started jabbering about "Defending the State" and that the Gallente should leave the system. The players also were spamming local --about fighting for the Glory of the State, or the Glory of the Federation. There was more Glory in local than at a Baptist revival meeting.

Of course, the Gallente Navy warped right in and started pounding on the Caldari Navy. That's when the Global Suspect timer went up, and the field turned into a sea of flashing yellow targets. It was like a John Wayne bar fight...
in the middle of outer space...
in slow motion.

I stayed at a careful distance, cloaked up a little distance from the titan. I'd have thought that everyone would have killed each other off within a few minutes, but it seemed like for everyone who got podded, another was immediately inbound to take his place.

The Caldari and Gallente Navy shouted at each other in local, or just shouted in general. They yelled evacuation calls just before their ship was about to go down. The Caldari yelled at the Gallente to disengage. They even called primaries in local, though in very 'official' language of course.

And on the planet, apparently, tons of Dust 514 battles were taking place. It's too bad they couldn't see the light show going on around the planet.

After killing the Wyverns, and several of the other capitals, the Gallente turned their attention to the Leviathan. According to CCP during the Live Feed, at one point over 900 people were shooting it at the same time. That is a LOT of incoming DPS.

The Leviathan finally exploded, part of its 'wreckage' catapulting down onto the planet to take up residence as Dust 514's first Live Event monument.

Overall it was a pretty cool event. I've never been to a live event so I really have nothing to compare it to. Next time, I'm going to forget the press badge and bring a ship with guns on it.