The inter-galactic, inter-corporate wars that are a hallmark of Eve Online's special place in the MMO universe have come to a crashing halt, because there's a new enemy to unite the warring factions against and it's flipped the table on the typical grind of back and forth gameplay in the spreadsheet-heavy game. Ancient humans are attacking, and these augmented aliens are tearing apart the galaxy of New Eden like never before.
Attacks were expected, but not in this manner. Over the past few days, the heads of every major corporation have had their homebases besieged by new hordes of these "Drifters," with massive, super powerful fleets blocking all assistance and harassing anyone who even strays close to these warzones. It's left even the most mighty of corporations scrambling to respond.
"It very much caught everyone by surprise," an EVE player named Rhivre told PCGamer. "There was no warning or hint that it was going to happen, then suddenly reports came in from all across null-sec about structures being shot at."
Each alliance has been faced by fleets of 100+ Drifters, targeting upwards of 30 starbases at a time. There just aren't enough players to protect everything and things are starting to go badly for the player-run factions. No one knows how long this is going to last either, so it's an exhausting slog to even keep the humans in the game at this point.
Some heads of factions are frustrated at what amounts to NPC raid content spawning into the game on such a scale, but others enjoy the shake up of what has become a typical tit for tat gameplay between the factions over the past few years.
CCP hasn't even acknowledged the invasion, suggesting that it isn't planning on halting it any time soon.
Image source: PCGamer
