But almost immediately PIBC began to bolster 3V's forces, and overwhelmingly crushed the two aggressors. Realising they were effectively being throttled over the long-term, things turned nasty and FDK and July Alliance attacked 3V for control of Tribute. Not only this, but an audio recording was leaked among the Chinese player community of a PIBC higher-up explaining that Tribute was an effective blockade against these alliances expanding. Over Christmas 2013 both FDK and the July alliance attempted to negotiate with PIBC for the region in order to secure a route to some of their more remote territories. 3V have had control of this area, under the ultimate sovereignty of PIBC, since 2009. The dispute began over a region of space known as 'Tribute' – which is basically a chokepoint to the north of Serenity. Beyond even this, Serenity's producer Duo Ye pointed out that the leaders of PIBC and 3V both live in the city of Chengdu, and are thought to be IRL buddies. This inclination and PIBC's enormous coffers have led to a meeting of minds. 3V are in essence an enormous mercenary alliance – think of a PMC. They 'own' most of the north, the west and a big chunk of the centre of Serenity. The PIBC coalition, which stands for Pan-Intergalactic Business Community, is not only the biggest but also the oldest alliance in EVE China. A huge western coalition existed between PIBC, the biggest corporation on Serenity with over 25,000 players, the mercenary group Veni Vidi Vici (usually called '3V'), and the July and Fadeklein alliances. Serenity's great war occurred in the system 49-U6U between two enormous coalitions, and was sparked by a defection. “And basically less people means less war.” “Before that point there were also less people playing,” says community co-ordinator and senior gamesmaster Ray Zhou. “Before Retribution it was mostly skirmishes, but afterwards we saw stuff like sovereignity and more life-or-death battles.” “Fights in Serenity since Retribution have got bigger and more frequent,” says Ye. In April 2013 they released the Retribution expansion and in August the Odyssey expansion – these together did things like rebalancing the most common combat ships (frigates, cruisers and destroyers) adding more ships, allowing players to train dual characters (so they could have a 'combat alt'), revamped scanning, and various other minor tweaks. “So this was designed to get people fighting. ““It was too calm and we wondered if we'd made an error in judgement,” says Ye. What's really interesting is that Tiancity, at this stage in Serenity's life, thought that things were too quiet. At Fanfest one of the game's producers, Duo Ye, ran through Tiancity's strategy – they started trying to reduce the time between Tranquility's expanions and the launch in China, naming the first in June 2012 'A New Era.' They immediately started to pull the audience back in, setting a new simultaneous user high of 42,000 players, and by the second expansion 'Inferno' saw paying subscriptions double.īut player numbers are one thing. When the licensing agreement expired in 2011, CCP decided to go with a new partner Tiancity. Over 2007-2009 Serenity was in relatively dark times, never seeing more than 6,000 players logged in at one time. After a hugely successful opening few months, which saw over a million accounts registered and a simultaneous login peak of just under 39,000 pilots, the game began to tank. It was given a simple name: the slaughterhouse.Ī brief history lesson about Serenity EVE Online was launched in China in 2006 and initially operated by the publisher Optic Communication. Barely two months after all those headlines about B-R5 being 'the biggest / most expensive videogame battle ever,' a 23-hour war in EVE China made that look like a dry run. The Chinese version of EVE Online has its own server, Serenity, operated by the publisher Tiancity – and it has just as much, if not more, capacity for the enormous player-driven events EVE is known for. Cool story bro, but the only problem is that's not quite true. For some reason, I struggle to keep track of what rats are in what region, or to find a good single page source for that information.One of EVE Online's most important features is that everything takes place on a single UK-based server called Tranquility.

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