Eve Online: The Burning of Jita

Absolutely amazing. Eve Online, for those who don't know, is a space-based MMO (massively multiplayer online game) where you control one of a variety of ships and either trade, gather resources, or make war on other players. Apparently Jita is an important star system in the game, the primary trading hub of the Eve economy. You see, Eve Online is unique in that it has a more or less functioning economy where items in the game (including currency) have actual value in the real world.

The burning of Jita was an event organized by a group of players and involved thousands of players launching a surprise attack and pretty much destroying every ship there. Here's a helpful picture to illustrate just what happened.

Burn, baby burn. [Click to embiggen]

This is a heat map, the orange represents ships destroyed in different systems. See that big mess of bright orange? That's Jita. Holy.crap. But why did they do this? What would motivate literally thousands of players to decimate such an important system?

For several months now, a coalition of thousands of players have been planning the "Burn Jita" event, aimed at disrupting the biggest trade hub in game in order to wreak some terrific, universe-wide changes by shaking the very pillars of EVE's economy at its metaphorical heart. Surely there was some sort of larger, meta-economic objective that likely would cause them great profit. This planning happened both in game and outside of game, via voice over IP chat, secret forums, Twitter and more. A sci-fi plot of the new information age if there ever was one.

This actually makes me want to play Eve, even though you don't really pilot your ship as much as you point and click where you want it to go. Still, I may have to reconsider it.