funniest-eve-online-moments

Scott Manley, Max Singularity, & Peter Farrell share their funniest EVE Online moments with us.

Not everything in the giant operatic space MMO EVE Online concerns epic space battles. Following our collection of heart-warming EVE Online moments, we have another special collection to share in our ongoing Stories of EVE series.

Seeing as the date has just been announced for the next EVE Fanfest, what better time to bring you some unreleased snippets from last year's convention. Snippets wherein we asked EVE Online's foremost celebrities about the funniest EVE Online moments that really made them ROFL (roll on frigate laughing).

Where better to start than with the one and only moral arbiter of outer space. The man, the myth, the legend, the space pope...

Max Singularity aka the Space Pope -- "EVE's Dropping"

I was sat in a restaurant, chatting to a couple of my fellow EVE players. The three of us, we build ships -- freighters -- and that was our topic of discussion. I was saying: "Oh I'm really having a hard time getting the tritanium, I've spent tens of millions trying to get it. But these ships are a billion and a half each. Still, I've sold a few big ones recently so I've got about 7 billion lying around."

On the next table over, there are a couple of women -- attractive women at that -- and they're looking over at us, constantly smiling and batting their eyelashes. And this isn't something that happens to me, I couldn't work out what was going on.

It wasn't until I left that I realised they were thinking, "These guys are billionaires, ship-builder billionaires importing their goods from all over the world." They were listening to our conversations without realising it was a game.

And it was like "Ohhh the old fat man's quite attractive now, eh? I'm an oligarch baby. I'm an EVE oligarch!"

Max Singularity, NASA scientist by day and papal hero by night, is one of EVE's most fascinating and endearing characters. We highly recommend reading our full audience with the space pope or at least another of his glorious EVE tales.

Peter Farrell aka CCP Swift -- "A Mass-ive Mistake"

Like many of my funniest stories, I'm kind of ashamed about this one. When I was in my EVE Online prime, I was leading Pandemic Legion. I was a fairly notable player because not only would I lead the alliance, but I'd lead my fleets in combat. And Pandemic Legion were formidable -- they made me look a lot better than I was. We ended up having the reputation that we were the best at everything. We were like the bogeyman; if you were doing something, we'd fight you and we'd win. It didn't matter what numbers you had; we'd always find a way to end up on top. That was the reputation at least.

In one of these encounters, I was leading a fleet, but we were being chased by a way bigger fleet. So, I came up with a genius plan wherein I'd hide our fleet in a pocket wormhole that we'd scouted out. We took the whole battleship fleet in, hiding in the wormhole's fog-of-war. I was confident they'd never find us. We could just chill until they pass by, then we'll turn predator to prey and hunt them down when the numbers were more favourable.

An excellent plan, in theory. The problem being that wormholes in EVE Online have a fixed amount of mass that you can bring through. And I brought through an entire fleet. As soon as our last ship entered the wormhole, the wormhole reached maximum mass capacity and closed with us inside it.

So, there we were. A 200-man battleship fleet stuck inside a collapsed wormhole. I'm thinking, "What now guys?" And they're thinking "Well, he surely knew this would happen; he must have a plan." I didn't. This was our contingency plan -- not getting caught.

So instead, we did what we had to do. We knew we couldn't take our ships with us, and we knew we had to die. So, we split up into teams and just slowly shot each other to death. It took about an hour because we were all in very tanky, slow-moving ships.

Thankfully, we had a multi-year relationship by this point, so they forgave me. But forgiving someone for something is different from letting them forget about it. There are a few things I'm notorious for in EVE Online, but this one really seems to stand the test of time.

From pillar of the community to CCP community manager, there are few in New Eden who hold such respect as CCP Swift aka Elise Randolph aka Peter Farrell. He's also a wonderful storyteller who often drops by for our monthly EVE Online interviews and more great stories.

Scott Manley aka Astronogamer -- "Hellfire Capitalism"

As you do, I was just hanging out with Max Singularity, the space pope. He was reminding me of when I was burning the holy books of the Amarrian Empire to feed the market. I was acting as a real industrialist.

Sure, many people will have these amazing stories of battles in space and being there when titans fell... but I was there in 2010 when the market really needed nocxium. I figured out that I could buy these holy books -- the Pax Amarria -- tell Amarr that I was distributing them to the faithful, and instead send them to the incinerator to melt them down and build spaceships out of them.

Max had to confirm to me that he is a heretic and that I was therefore doing his work. It has weighed on my soul for some time. Max, of course, being a space person in real life like myself. So yes, that was a moment that really worked for me in many ways. We were both actually at the JPL [NASA Jet-Propulsion Laboratory]. I'm sure our paths will cross again in some form, one dedicated role-player and one data-analyst who enjoys picking apart the systems of the game.

With over 1.5 million subscribers, Scott Manley has entered YouTube superstardom thanks to his insightful videos based upon his professional knowledge of both internet and real-world spaceships.

Check out more Stories of EVE Online like that of ZIPZAPBOOP - a tale of intergalactic Cat and Mouse. Alternatively, there's Stories of EVE: Humans of New Eden, Stories of EVE: Snuffed Out? A Tale of Karmic Justice, Stories of EVE: The "Jaw Droppingly Insane" EVE Online Star System Run, or another compilation piece Stories of EVE: Superfans' Most Heart-Warming EVE Online Moments. Or to find out the latest in New Eden, check out our last Uprising-focused directors' interview.