Guinness Recognizes EVE Online for Million Dollar Battle

I few years back I mocked Daybreak for hyping up an event to their community simply to be recognized by Guinness.  It was a staged publicity stunt.

Not that that is so bad.  Lots of people do that.  What made my eyes roll was Daybreak claiming how “truly massive” their game was when they could get 1,158 people on the same server.

This happened at a time when EVE Online had already had 4,070 players in the same system and same battle at 6VDT-H.  A battle which CCP didn’t have to stage and hype to the community themselves.  The players just make that sort of thing happen now and again.  Having just 1,158 people in a battle wouldn’t get much attention now or back then, not unless a pile of titans were lost.

But CCP has never sought that sort of official recognition for the scale of their game.

At the EVE Fanfest Keynote CCP Falcon announced that instead Guinness had sought out CCP to find out about the size of the recent “million dollar battle” that had more than 6,000 players clashing in a single event.

And so today Guinness posted on their site about a new record set by that battle:

Fans of space-based video game EVE Online have helped set a new record after achieving the Guinness World Records title for the Most concurrent players simultaneously involved in a single multiplayer PvP videogame battle.

A total of 6,142 players took part in an enormous battle – the Siege of 9-4 – in January 2018 with the certificate being presented to the game’s creators at EVE’s Fanfest event in Iceland on Saturday (14 April).

They also put a note up on Twitter.

Congratulations to all 6,142 players who took part in an enormous @EveOnline battle, with a new record announced last weekend at #EVEFanfest 2018 https://t.co/A4d8Vqqmz1 #GWRgamers

— GuinnessWorldRecords (@GWR) April 18, 2018

It is nice to see EVE Online getting some recognition for what it does well… bringing people together in space to blow each other up.

CCP Falcon and CCP Guard with the official certificate

Now CCP needs to work on their server tech so we can beat the 6,142 high water mark set by the battle.  Also, I am happy we finally have an official number.  CCP was being somewhat vague about the count up until this point.

H1Z1 – Going Live in Time to be a Zombie

Daybreak’s one-time H1Z1, then H1Z1: King of the Kill, then just King of the Kill, and finally just H1Z1 again, is reported to be leaving Early Access today.  There is a Producer’s Letter on the official site full of enthusiasm for this monumental day.

H1Z1 2015 Logo

At least they are trying to own the whole naming thing.

You missed one I think…

Starting as the Battle Royale mode of their zombie survival game first announced almost four years ago was a surprise success, selling in the seven figures and dominating the Steam charts.  Rightly wanting to reinforce success, the rest of the game was partitioned off as the aptly named Just Survive while the company focused on the bit that was getting attention.

I don’t think we’re here anymore…

Of course, what it also did was spawn imitators.  We hear all about PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds these days, a title that leapfrogged H1Z1’s success in a way reminiscent of what WoW did to EverQuest, and which spawned its own imitator and competitor, Fortnite and its Battle Royale module.

Meanwhile H1Z1 has slid down the charts, having lost a reported 91% of its player base.  Once things looked rosy and there was a deal with Tencent to bring the game to China.  Now I wonder if that is in jeopardy.

So it seems like exactly the right moment to leave Early Access I guess.  Not that leaving Early Access means anything at all these days.  The game was supposed to leave Early Access last year, but then didn’t.  Now it has and it doesn’t mean much of anything.  There is no launch day bump when you’ve been acting like a shipping product for a couple of years already.

They do have some new features that come with launch, the main one being a car based Battle Royale mode.

Zombies in cars getting coffee

Of course, in what I can only see as an ironic twist, they announced a beta feature on launch day.  We will see if the updates that Daybreak are bringing to the game with its long past due launch will stem the tide of its fleeing player base.  Is it too little, too late?