"This was the best event I have ever participated in after 15 years of playing the game. Thank you Rixx and A Band Apart for all your hard work! o7" - Solidus Zero via Twitter
Saturday hundreds and hundreds of Capsuleers grabbed free Frigates and headed into space to find combat, duels, insane battles at the Sun, and do it all over again for four straight hours during our FFA in Ouelletta. Nearly 6,000 ships exploded in glorious balls of fire during the event. All in all A Band Apart handed out over 3,200 fully fit Frigates.
You can watch the entire thing over on Streamfleet thanks to Corvus Onzo and Streamfleet, ISD Thalack, CCP Convict, CCP Aurora, and everyone else who helped make the event such a massive success.
This was simply the best FFA of the six I've created and hosted in Eve so far. You never know what might happen, as I kept telling everyone "this is Eve" so anything is possible. But aside from Snuff hot-dropping a Moros, and some Russians causing some minor trouble here and there with a small Cerberus gang - we really didn't have much trouble at all. It's easy for me to judge based on how much time I have to spend in the Security Fleet and Saturday that time was minimal. A few groups who didn't know about the FFA came in and joined in on the fun as well, which is always a welcome sight.
Another aspect that made this one special was how eager people became to undock something and sacrifice it to Bob. We planned on quite a few "events" as we call them, to keep things interesting. But a lot of what ended up happening was simply spur of the moment decisions.
Some of the bigger ships sacrificed on Saturday:
A few years ago I formed a special team for a very special operation in High Security space. Our goal was to steal a Concord spaceship. And not just any spaceship, but the personal black-ops ship of one General Therabik. Called "The Hand" this ship represented Concord forces patrolling the High Security systems around Black Rise, Placid, and Verge Vendor. In particular the corrupt system of Uedama in The Citadel. The good General was taking bribes from local corrupt forces and turning a blind eye to camp gates in the area. In a daring raid we managed to steal The Hand and re-locate it to Ouelletta and there it sat for years in my hangar. Saturday I decided to undock it and sacrifice it as a statement of how little we think of Concord, their corruption, and the hypocrisy of "high security" space and the boot heel politics of the Empires. That's a 7b isk statement.
A special shout-out to Corvus Onzo for putting on an epic stream and to all those that showed up as guests, helpers, and participants. The best part of these events for me personally is seeing players having a great time, especially those that may never have experienced anything like this before.
A very, very special shout-out to all the players in A Band Apart who helped hand out 3,000+ ships, those that made them, and those that exploded them. This was our Alliance's time to shine and all of you put on a tremendous show that people will remember for a very long time. Thank you.
And yes, I believe this will become an annual event for us. And I hope it becomes one for you as well.
Onward & Upward.