crispydiesel

As far as more proper MMOs go, I would have to talk about Minecraft and Elite Dangerous as two interesting sources of stories. Minecraft's best stories would probably be the griefing ones, since the only other noteworthy aspect to read about are the massive works of art/architecture. Which are best just looked at, though the fully functioning calculator someone built using in-game redstone circuits was impressive conceptually. The best griefers would have to be Team Avolition, back in the day. They were professional dicks and their shit only got more damaging as they got better at programming. Their greatest achievement would have to be the Chaoscraft raid, where they turned a server with very outspoken christian admins/owners into a literal hell, complete with Satan worship. (the link is to a re-upload with better sound syncing than the one on their channel). I also found the episode where they stole several thousand torches and crashed a server in preparation for Earth hour classy as well. As for Elite Dangerous, there was an interesting cluster-fuck caused by a player baiting a Farragut-Class battlecruiser into shooting at him whilst next to the Hudson Dock Space-station. For reference, these are both 1-2 kilometer long structures that have infinite health and ridiculous amounts of firepower, which were never intended to engage one another. I also believe they were part of the same faction. The development team had to step in so the system could function again, and managed to turn the whole thing into a player event where supplies were provided by players to repair the station. Whilst this may not count as a large/important story, the economy and missions of the game in a universe that can be a little too organic for it's own good can have some very.... interesting results. Usually as a result of a single player (sometimes me) finding a trade-route that can upset the economy and social fabric of a system via the number of trades happening. Such as when I traded so many slaves along a particular route in the Ngaliba system that there was a civil war and the entire market dried up. The new ship I bought with the profits was more combat-capable and I proceeded to make even more money on combat contracts in the ensuing chaos. I'm still not sure how to feel about what I did, other than wealthier. Another system had a major civil war and I made around 20 million credits supplying body armor and highly restricted weapons to both sides till the war ended. The funny thing was, it was probably due to the "stability" stat increasing for both sides increasing as I supplied them with more hardware. I realize this is probably for balance reasons, but this was effectively the equivalent of a civil war in Africa being shortened by an arms dealer supplying each side with more and more AK-47s, kevlar, and artillery. This was a true NRA lesson of social stability.

A couple of memorable stories from when I used to play ARMA 2 wasteland - not really an MMO, but you got 80 people per server in multiple factions with access to high grade military hardware that acted close-ish to real life. The basic premise of the game is that you are in 1 of 3 factions - Blufor, Opfor or Independent. There's little difference between Blufor and Opfor in reality, independent are just a load of bandits who kill everyone. You spawn in a random location, find/buy guns and link up with your teammates to complete objectives (which reward you with guns, RPGs, tanks, helicopters), make/fortify a base and assault the enemy base. The first of these events was where Opfor (who I joined) heavily fortified a village around a trader in the centre of the map and put a spawning beacon on it. This had the advantage that we had a near infinite supply of money from re-spawning players, so we could keep buying guns as people died en mass. Blufor assaulted the base for 3 hours in real time, with infantry and armored vehicles to no avail. They eventually won when they crashed a Chinook into the base and wiped it out. There were so many knocked out vehicles and bodies from both sides by the end that the server had to be reset due to frame-rate issues. The second one had two parts - I was on Blufor and was part of two separate assaults in the one day. First one, where we found Opfor's base in a stone tower on a hill in the woods. No-one had really any money and we resembled a rabble at this stage, but we really wanted the loot. We only had enough guns for half the "conscripts", so it was really similar to Enemy at the Gates, right down to where people were telling each other to pick up the guns of the guys in front once they got shot. This worked surprisingly well, and we captured the base in under 20 mins through sheer numbers and persistence. The second assault happened 2 hours later, when we had gotten really well equipped and organised. Too well organised. The assault on the enemy airfield was delayed multiple times (to a total of 30 mins) to let everyone get set up in IFVs and assault at the same time. We even had our own squads, which was crazy for such a large group of random players. And after all this preparation, we were massacred in the first 2 minutes by LMG fire and RPGs from entrenched positions. I have never encountered a battle in an online game that failed due to too much organization, it was weird. I should also give a mention to DayZ, back in the ARMA 2 Mod days. There are several great stories online, but my favorites have to be the saga of the DayZ psychopath, where a guy named PartyPomcer kept stalking and murdering a livestreamer whilst screaming incoherently and threatening to skin him. I also loved JackFrags back when he did his DayZ hive bandits series. The highlight would have to be this episode where they kidnap players to fight in gladiatorial combat armed with hatchets.

Similar to this story is one I heard about recently, it also involves the CFC; the Fountain War. This wasn't a solitary battle, but a full scale war between players that lasted months and is a tale of clever tactics, betrayals, opportunistic banditry and massive set-piece engagements. I'm not an EVE player and probably never will be but this was something else. Full credit to Scott Manley for his account of the saga.