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The winner’s victory lap

I had the privilege of attending a starship race in the MMO EVE Online recently, and in return for the favor wrote a race report for the forum thread where races and announced and standings are tracked. That’s what’s so remarkable, to me, about this kind of phenomenon: the race I attended was the 11th race of a season that started at the beginning of the year, and which is being run with no input from the company behind the game at all. This is a completely emergent phenomenon, and it’s damn robust. It’s exciting, too, as I hope my race report conveys:

ENDURANCE RACE TAXES IRA PILOTS TO THE BREAKING POINT

DATELINE YOUL — Planet VII, Moon 10: Amarr Navy Logistic Support station — Racemistress Gyra Rho and course designer Kaleigh Doyle sprang a challenging surprise on the Interstellar Racing Association’s competitors on Saturday, sending racers on an endurance course that taxed pod pilots’ skills to the limit. By the time the 12-waypoint race was over, three pilots had dropped out, and one of the season’s toughest challengers was forced to limp angrily home, her faction frigate trailing the winner’s Rifter by almost a full 30 minutes

Though season leader Owi of Alcatraz Inc. [ALTZ] was first through the Thebeka gate coming out of Youl, not a single one of the race’s eight pilots — a record turnout — was spared some unfortunate surprise over the two-hour course, the IRA’s 11th and longest race to date. An IRA official’s communications error at the first waypoint, in the 0.4 Miyeli system, left pilots stranded in the wrong belt, searching for an audit log can that was actually clear across the solar system. After a quick guidance adjustment, navigational errors continued to plague several racers, splitting the field in two early in the race, with Owi leading Iconath of Dragonstar [DS], followed closely by Iconath’s teammate Kayleigh Jamieson tied with Shemar of Photoesthetics [PTO] in a dead heat for third. Elsebeth Rhiannon of Gradient [GRD] (the season’s second-place corp), who had come into the race with high hopes for beating Owi at his own game, left the first waypoint in fifth position after technical difficulties — and a pre-race disappointment when her wingman failed to show up on time.

The early legs of the race saw no real challenge to Owi’s lead position, which only seemed to stretch as the stargates flashed by. The battles for trailing positions, though, were as hot as they come short of turret fire — none of which was heard from racers’ ships on Saturday. Shemar’s Atron fell behind early on, and gate-bounces seemed to go in Kayleigh Jamieson’s favor until she and corpie Iconath were warping wing by wing coming out of the fifth waypoint in their matching Republic Fleet Firetails. By that time, however, perhaps taking advantage of the confusion at the first waypoint, Synergy’s [S.Y.N] Captain Sonic had quietly snuck up on the pack to take second place — though he still trailed the leader by a good three minutes.

Though a scare with a pirate camp in Avair left racers relatively unscathed, the race’s early casualty was young Civire pod pilot M1rth of The Older Gamers [-TOG-], who lost his Condor to belt rats before reaching even the halfway point. With no other Condors easily available in Domain, M1rth was forced to resign. The irony of his having traveled through five 0.0 systems to reach the starting line was lost on no one — though it rang more bitterly for M1rth than for the other racers, who sent him home with their best wishes.

First-time racer Mister Uglee, whose Succubus also had trouble getting out of the first waypoint, puttered bravely through the wreckage, exclaiming confidently to all in the RacingLeague channel, “I have last place all wrapped up!” Only a few waypoints later, though, Mister Uglee’s Succubus too fell to a spawn of battlecruiser belt rats, leaving him unable to retrieve even the named MWD and other mods left in his can, until a bit of creative bookmarking allowed him to warp in and collect his salvage.

By this time, several ships had been taken into armor by rats and passing pirates on a course that first took pilots through eight low-sec systems in a row, then through a further 11 in a row on a later leg, and finally through a stretch of seven before a long passage through high-security space to the finish line in Sharhelund. Shemar was an unfortunate casualty not of violence but of time, forced to leave the race to attend to communiques reaching him from beyond the EVE galaxy.

Though Owi stretched his lead to eight minutes by the time he reached Sharhelund — giving him a stunning six firsts for the season — it was the three-way race for second place that was the story of the day. Coming into the 10th waypoint, at the boiling yellow sun of Mamenkhanar, Captain Sonic, Kayliegh Jamieson and Iconath all appeared in system local within a minute of each other, and all in Firetails. Sonic had a clear lead coming off the can to take second, but despite two unfortunate gate-bounces for Kayleigh Jamieson, the Dragonstar Sublieutenant managed to finish less than a minute out in third, with teammate Iconath pulling into Sharhelund only a minute behind her to take fourth. The mammoth 99-jump race took pilots from the heart of Domain to the doorstep of Providence, skirted the Myridian Strip in Devoid, and bounced toward Genesis, all the while avoiding the seat of Amarr power, where such diversions are often frowned upon.

Even accounting for the loss of Mister Uglee’s pricey Succubus, the real tragedy of Saturday’s race was the technical difficulty that seemed to dog the heels of Elsebeth Rhiannon no matter how fast she pushed her own Firetail — which has become the frig of choice for many IRA racers. Rhiannon had started the season strong, with a win over Owi in her first race and another several races later. “I’d say it’s about 50-50,” she said going into Saturday’s race. “Given no dirty tricks from the opponents, it’s all in luck and navigation details.”

But luck was not with her in Domain. After compounding the miscommunication at the first waypoint with a mistaken warp, she remained a contender through at least the fifth waypoint, having come into the race determined to give Owi a run for his money. But a botched transfer of the bookmark at waypoint #6 in Hisoufad left her temporarily without a destination, and the audit log container managed to elude her long enough to put her irretrievably behind. Adding to her troubles was a painful CTD late in the race. Testament to her unbreakable competitive spirit, though, was the fact that she completed the entire course, gaining an additional three points for Gradient and keeping the corp securely in second place for the season.

The winner’s purse added 2.6 million ISK to Owi’s wallet after accounting for entry fees. The ALTZ Drug Baron, who has been piloting his pod for 2-1/2 years now, puts his success down to lessons learned in Alliance space. “I live/lived a lot in 0.0,” Owi said from his victory orbit of the Sarum Family Assembly Plant in Sharhelund. “You need to be fast to have a chance there.” Making things easy on a ship’s Neocon system by removing unneccesary objects from his overview also speeds his way, Owi said. The 5.0 sec status pilot flies on the stick as much as possible. “Manual, fast, quick, and professional is the ticket for the win,” he says.

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