How the EVE Online Servers Deal with a 3,000 Person Battle
The report of the battle they link to (<a href="http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/01/28/eve-online-battle-asakai/" rel="nofollow">http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/01/28/eve-online-battle-asakai/</a>) is even more fascinating to me.  You spend hours and hours of effort in order to get a ship, and one way of thinking about them is as the time spent to earn them compressed into 3d form.  Unlike (most) other MMO's, battles actually destroy things.  So in that youtube clip, you're watching years and years of effort getting evaporated because of a mis-click.<p>In most of the games I play, the pay off of the grinding is getting to enjoy fighting more.  But I could never play EVE, because battles would be so anxiety provoking.  There would be no pleasure at all in earning a Titan, because I would be forever terrified of losing it.<p>Of course, all games are kind of there to destroy your time.  But for some reason it doesn't feel quite as wasted when you have a virtual thing there that is bad-ass in proportion to your time investment.