Today is the 15th anniversary of the legendarily fascinating virtual world EVE Online, a massively multiplayer spaceship game that has become famous for the incredible stories that sometimes emerge from the community about heists and wars between thousands of players.
EVE is so interesting that it even has its own historian, Andrew Groen, a video game writer formerly of Wired who studies the politics and sociology at work in EVE's virtual community over its 15-year history.
Groen raised $95,729 from a Kickstarter campaign to independently publish his first book, Empires of EVE: A History of the Great Wars of EVE Online, which has now sold 17,000 copies worldwide and is in its third printing. He's currently Kickstarting a sequel which has already brought in more than $115,000 in support and concludes this week.
Empires of EVE is half Star Wars, half Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It is a true and fact-checked account of what happened inside EVE Online from the years 2003-2009 as player factions began to accumulate power and eventually wage a years-long war between more than 50,000 real players. It's a space opera that takes place on our own internet, and all the characters are 2003 internet users attempting to build their own digital fiefdom.
The excerpt that follows is chapter four of Empires of EVE, and takes place near the beginning of the story.
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