A fight in Perimeter
stargrace 
To start things off, I have to say that as a newly returning player to EVE, I have absolutely no horse in this race. I was not a part of the political reasoning to this battle, and I had not even heard about it until this week when someone posted a few PSA about removing items from the structure. There are, of course, two sides. I learned the basics. An alliance put up a trade building in highsec, a few months later CCP changed the rules so that you can no longer do this. As time went on, some drama ensued (as it does in EVE) and one side decided this structure should cease to exist – because it was funding a few large nullsec corps (though from my understanding at the beginning many people were benefiting from it and then things changed) with highsec earnings as they would collect tax. This war would have permanent side effects since you can no longer place this building, and honestly, as has been said a few times over the course of this battle, it’s not actually about removing the building – it’s about the story. You can read about this really long feud over on TAGN, who explained it much better than I could since he has way more experience.
Anyway, at one point there were over 5.1k people in local. It was INSANE. Probably one of the best (and by far the largest) events I’ve ever seen take place in a video game. I learned many new terms, like TiDi, and that it was not in fact lag, but TiDi that slowed actions down so that the servers could cope with so many players being in such a concentrated space. EVE became a literal spreadsheet game, almost turn based. I’ve honestly never seen anything like it before. No one enjoys when TiDi happens but everyone adapts and goes along with it because let’s face it, a space battle with 5000+ people is something to talk about. That’s how I felt, at least.
It took over 5 hours, but both of the structures fell, and I learned things like how timezones play an important role in these battles because of the way TiDi stretches out the fights. I lurked in a few streams, and listened to the community, something I truly enjoy doing. The community of EVE is.. unique. Friends and enemies alike came to twitch to chat, which I wasn’t expecting.
It feels like I came back at a great time to be able to watch this happen, and while I know EVE isn’t all sunshine and roses (anything but) it was still a neat feeling to be ‘part of’ something on this large of a scale. For now, it’s back to my quiet area of space to scan down some more relic/data sites.
