These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Live Events Discussion

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

The Sansha attacks: Benchmark for Live Events

Author
Jandice Ymladris
Aurora Arcology
#1 - 2014-05-30 20:22:14 UTC  |  Edited by: Jandice Ymladris
*Warning! Big post ahead! Read summary table to see what interest you most!*

All too often, when discussions happen in Live Events forum, they invariably will mention the Sansha Live Events and say *but CCP could do way better* or *This is how it should be done* or any other remark involving the Sansha Live Events.

Hardly ever it is explained on why they were so good and these days many people haven’t even attended them. I’ll try to explain on why these Sansha attacks are seen as such a great example of what Live Events can be.
The blogpost I made to accompany this post, showing the Nation Live events from an ingame perspective:
When nightmares turn reality: The Sansha invasions
This link also contains quite some enjoyable short videos & screenshots about the various attacks.
A more official summary can be found on evelopedia: Nation War of Resurgence


Content

1: Short summary: What were these Sansha attacks?

2: Event timetables: Events for everyone!

3: Event interaction: This is the line! Here and no further!

4: Event progress: You think this is all? It hasn’t even started yet!

5: Devs & their tools: I am Legion.

6: Player Organisation: Spies be damned!

7: Conclusion: There is no greater power than Nation


Short summary: What were these Sansha attacks?

Lets start with what exactly these events were about. A few years back, CCP wanted to introduce the Sansha incursions through a massive live event. These are now known as the Sansha Live Events. They are the most successful live events CCP ever ran, They are known for their large scale, easy accessibility and all the epic stories the vets tell when you ask after them.

Most of these events revolved around Sansha bringing a fleet in a system to abduct people and us capsuleers trying to stop them. What made them so great will be unveiled in the rest of this large post.


Event timetables: Events for everyone!

If you check in on Live event discussions, an often used argument is: *But I can’t attend this events because: timezone, location, RL limits, ingame limits etc etc *
The Sansha Live events circumvented this both by sheer number of events & their locations. In total there have been over 150 (!) attacks on systems all across EvE, from highsec to nullsec (but most of them were reserved for highsec/lowsec)
They also occurred roughly equally in all timezones. This meant there was no excuse to miss out on an event, especially not if you poked around a bit, as there were several channels then dedicated to find & hunt sansha fleets.
Adding to this, most of these attacks happened in clusters. A few weeks of heightened activity was followed by a few weeks of silence (sometimes just a week, sometimes a month). This meant, if an attack happened earlier then it payed off to hang around more often in Eve, increasing your chances to attend one of these events.

‘But weren’t these events announced then?’ I hear you wonder. And they weren’t. Most recent live-events have been announced in advance, giving people ample time to schedule in this event if they could.
If you attended the Sansha live events, you didn’t had this luxury, but in turn, the number of events, combined with their clustering of attacks made it acceptable.
The moment a Sansha actor was spotted in a system, a general mobilisation call went out from players. The sighting & organizing of sansha events was in player hands, adding to the feel that you mattered in this event (a sore point also mentioned in quite some of the more recent Live event discussions)
This surely increased the number of people having fond memories of these live events, as they could say “Yea, I spotted that attack” or “I took part in mobilizing the fleet that defended system X”
And that’s the essence of EvE, being part of a story, the feel that you mattered.

Providing a new home for refugees in the Aurora Arcology

Jandice Ymladris
Aurora Arcology
#2 - 2014-05-30 20:23:22 UTC

Event interaction: This is the line! Here and no further!


And with that, we landed at the subject of interaction, a sore point in the more recent events. The Sansha Live Events are renowned for their high degree of interaction.
From simple responses from True Slaves on your comments during attacks to fully integrated operations set up with Live event actors. Add to this their presence on the forums (their post marked by green outlinings, identifying them easy) to separate websites made specially for these events!

All this combined made the events feel alive. It wasn’t just a CCP run event where you could show up and shoot Sansha and get bounties. It felt much more because of all the ways you could interact.
It was Kuvakei sending down his Nation Armies to come and enslave the Universe, and you, the Capsuleer were the first and last line of defense for Eden’s population. Assisted by officials from the 4 main factions & Concord, they all gave their own flavor to these attacks.
All these interactions were needed because very little was told outright, most had to be puzzled together from various sources.
This helped people’s connection to the events, as anyone could had pried out valuable info, to be shared with one of the several player organisations fighting nation (or helping them!)

The easiest way to interact was through the invasions. Often, the True Slaves were really talkative, often responding to witty & cheesy oneliners from the people attending it. But if you took a more serious approach, you often got a more serious response as well, giving hints on why Nation was doing all this.
In successful serious interactions with True Slaves, they went into exposition mode, explaining in much greater detail their reasonings & actions (from nations viewpoint). This felt as a reward for all the serious attempts to talk with the True Slaves, motivating people to act in character during these events.
Note, these expositions did not explain everything, but they usually were a great help in gathering lore information and hinted at other things to come, giving players a headstart in preparing for new things that would be unveiled in future Sansha events

Also, in the attacks, the whole plotpoint of abducting people happened through RP, there were no dropship models, nor any form of their representation ingame. It was all in imagination, yet through RP, they became alive, people positioning themselves between the planet & the sansha Carrier, ‘blocking’ the dropships that the Live event actor announced as deployed. people RP’ing ways of taking out these dropships. It all turned ‘real’ as people interacted with the actors about these dropships.

You could also keep a tab on the IGS forum about the recent developments through the various Live Event actor posts, from Kuvakei boasting his power & support, to Concord officer Dorgiers informing players of dire developments in the sansha attacks.
They also often replied to people posting serious theories & observations about the attacks, giving people an idea if they had it right, or had to search for a new angle on things, helping the story progress through players.

There were also deeper levels of interactions with Live Event actors, on both sides. One that’s often mentioned is the Freighter ops, where Dorgiers (Live event actor) escorted a players Freighter to self destruct a wormhole. Another often mentioned is the famous sansha Fleet picture, obtained by a player as he RP’d a sensible approach to get info from the other side of the WH.
There were many more of these deeper, more personal interactions with Live Event actors. Quite some of these allowed for crucial developments in the Live Event storyline, making these people part of the very lore of the game.
One of these crucial contributions was a (partial) nullsec activity, namely attempting to locate the sansha staging systems. As more info was collected, it became more and more clear that sansha used one or more systems as a staging point before attacking. As people went out & explored, they managed to locate these staging systems! This gave the defenders an early warning that a Live Event was imminent. It did not always work, hinting that some staging locations weren’t found (it’s suspected that there was one in a WH, but never confirmed)

Something extra to note is this: the outcome of all these events would always have been: Sansha Incursions. I find this important to stress, as an often heard complaint is *we cannot influence the outcome of events, we should!*
What made this a non-complaint in these Live events, Simply, while the outcome (sansha Incursions) was set in stone, every event individually was up to you to affect. The outcome of each attack lied in the hands of the players. A successful defense, and Sansha had to cease the attack, returning with empty hands. A failed defense, and Sansha just added millions to their ranks.

With that we landed on the events itself, they responded to players. You were just there with a handful? Nation responded in kind. Your backup arrived? Nation multiplied it’s presence. You are the FC leading people? Get ready to be primaried by Sansha’s fleet.
And this is one of the major selling points of the events. When you showed up, you knew the fighting would be good, no matter the numbers. Even if you were part of a fleet of a hundred players, Nation would still be a challenge as the event adapted to the number of players present. Still, some events were easier, some harder, but they always provided a nice fight with lots of shiny laser fireworks and Nation actors providing witty banter.

Providing a new home for refugees in the Aurora Arcology

Jandice Ymladris
Aurora Arcology
#3 - 2014-05-30 20:27:04 UTC

Event progress: You think this is all? It hasn’t even started yet!


And with that we arrived at Event progress, events adapting to the players and their actions. The first sansha Live events were simple & straightforward: Live event actor chatting in system local as he was in a battleship, escorted by a dozen sansha NPC’s orbiting a planet. Players entered system, warp to the temperate planet and killed off the Sansha Fleet.
But it wouldn’t remain this simple. As the number of players increased to fight this Nation threat, so did the size & power of these sansha fleets increase.
First the Live Actor manned a capital, players reacted by bringing more firepower. Sansha reacts by bringing in bigger fleets, attacking in waves. The response was organized highsec fleets and specialized intel channels. Once more the events evolved, wormholes now needed to be probed out, and this time, there could be multiple, allowing for more diverse attacks (you could get your fleet attacked in the back!)
People reacted, working closer together, finding ways to sabotage the wormholes and organizing specialized taskforces to tackle the various attacks & events more efficiently.

This evolution kept on going. Sansha showed off a new ability, players responded in kind. People found new ways to tackle the attacks? Making them over too fast? Sansha adapted, by new ways to attack, bringing more power or simply by changing attack/fleet doctrines.

In short, you would never know what Nation would bring to the table next time. A multiple system attack? Forcing players to divide forces? A Nation carrier warping in the middle of a player fleet, detonating it’s smartbombs as you were tackled by the myriad of little sansha frigates? Or just a massive attack force that outnumbered you 5 to 1 and was under direct control of a Dev ( Focus fire!)
Every time people thought *this is it, they can’t counter this!* Nation went out and did. Success was not a guarantee. This simple fact, that you could lose, added to the event’s popularity. Victory had to be fought over, and even then could be bittersweet. Yes you won, but dang, half your playerfleet lies in tatters and Nation did manage to abduct a million souls from that planet…

The largest shift in progress happened in the last months of the Sansha Live Events. People were veterans of the fights and knew what to expect, intelchannels ran good & fluent, fleets were organized and had a record-response time due to their strategic rally points.
It felt Nation was contained and controlled, that their threat would diminish….
Nothing could be farther from the truth as the last few months of the event saw the largest scale events for years to come.

If you heared of massive battles involving sansha fleets, they are mostly from these last months.
It combined everything people learned from all the previous events and multiplied the force used. This tested the organized defense force to the limits. Fleets of hundreds of players getting hammered by massive fleets of NPC ships under direct dev control. If you wiped out a hundred NPC ships, a hundred more took their place. You took down a wormhole, two more spawned in the system, sending out even more waves. And yet, you had to keep going, because this was history being written, this was you, being part of Eve’s story. Would you stand aside and be branded coward as the universe burned under Kuvakei’s revenge, or would you take up arms and defend the galaxy from this madman? This is the story on how Nation launched an invasion on all of Eve, and your part in it alongside your fellow players… But the role you played in this was yours to fill in….

Providing a new home for refugees in the Aurora Arcology

Jandice Ymladris
Aurora Arcology
#4 - 2014-05-30 20:28:05 UTC

Devs & their tools: I am Legion.


And with that I landed on the most controversial part of this postings: Devtools. The Event actors of the sansha events had a powerful set of devtools at their disposal. This allowed them to summon massive fleets of NPC ships and direct these ships their firepower to specific targets. The devtools were also used to create some interesting variations of Sansha NPC’s. They usually used lasers, making people field EM/thermal tanks. In order to throw people off guard, there have been attacks where the sansha NPC’s used missiles instead of lasers, or a mix of both, requiring people to rethink tanking strategies for these events.
It also allowed them to summon/delete scenery at will (the wormholes) as they were ‘closed’ by gravimetric ECM deployed by players.

The devtools also allowed them to turn off aggression mode on their ships, allowing players to fire with impunity on their ships, without fearing Concord or a suspect flag, but it also allowed the actor to return fire without Concord intervening to help the player! You took on Nation? Concord said *sorry buddy, you are on your own there!*
This greatly added to the threat of these events as concord would only safeguard you against other player aggressions in highsec, as the Live event actors were free to fire on your ship without risking Concord aggression.

The devtools also allowed for better immersion of various important live event characters. the True Slaves being able to command capitals in weeks (with a lore explanation) Kuvakei being part of Nation for over 100 years, the renaming of the treacherous Concord official to reflect her defection to Nation and more of these smaller quirks that improved immersion.

Now why aren’t these devtools used for the more recent events? As quite some could have benefitted from having a large NPC fleet supporting them, or the deactivation of the Concord protocols for an easier & better event?
The reason lies in the crimewatch system & NPC overhaul (new AI in missions), introduced after the sansha Live events were over. According to the devs, the changes rendered many of the commands incompatible, or cause too high serverload to be used.
I do hope CCP is working on a new devtool set for the live events, as giving more options to the actors is a good thing, giving them the ability to create more diverse events.

What also helped the live events was a dedicated Live Event team in CCP. It allowed them to set up events around the clock and create some large scale events. Not to mention that it allowed for far more complex interactions with players involving the interests of Nation, Concord and the four factions who all had their own agenda.

Providing a new home for refugees in the Aurora Arcology

Jandice Ymladris
Aurora Arcology
#5 - 2014-05-30 20:34:36 UTC

Player Organisation: Spies be damned!

Now while much of the focus went to the devs & their role in the Sansha Live Events, it was ultimately the players response that made it such a great success.
In the wake of the Sansha Live Events, many player groups & organisations spawned as these attacks gave highsec an incentive to get organized at a higher level.

One of the first actions once these events kicked off was the formation of the Live Events channel (and many of it’s derivatives) that was open to all! Players were encouraged to spread the word about this channel, making it one of the central channels used during the whole duration of the Sansha attacks, and it continued to exist today, as a focal ingame channel to follow and participate in live events.

Among all this, a very successful open intel setup was created as well. Unlike most intel channels/groups this was open to all! So yes, it was easily infiltrated and infested with spies. Yet, despite this apparent disadvantage, the intelsetupprovided to be very successfull. They were able to quickly separate false information from true. Sightings of true Slaves could be verified or disproved in record-time.
The success of this channel could actually be attributed to the many spies. It was a self-regulatory system. Spies like to remain hidden to increase their chance to get valuable info. The best way to remain hidden is still ousting other spies, or sharing true/valid information.

Several other fleet organisations have been created or resurged as well in response to the sansha live events:

Bad Moon was a player taskforce that tried new & creative ways to combat the nation attacks. They could be seen as a sort of Black ops group, not large but very dedicated and well organized. A small Bad Moon Fleet could often turn fights in the players favor by deploying their special tactics in dealing with nation. From Gravimetric ECM ships to close down wormholes to hard hitting strikeforces, meant to go down in lowsec and take out sansha attacks in recordtime, they were a feared opponent for Kuvakei’s loyalists

FCORD was one of several organisations that gave coordination to the large amount of players that wanted to participate in the event. They had a solid core of competent Fleet Commanders and friends, allowing them to guide a large amount of inexperienced players in fleetcombat.
One of FCORDs greatest achievements was (and is) the ability to lead large numbers of PvP inexperienced people into lowsec, even people who under normal circumstances wouldn’t go there.
For many, the Sansha Live Events also gave them their first introduction into PvP and the adrenaline that goes with it. It attributes to the FCORD FC skills that they managed to successfully thwart sansha attacks in lowsec despite PvP players trying to stop them.

But not all players fought sansha, many also supported his cause and joined or supported the TSF, a player group that focuses on supporting Sansha’s Nation. They made the live events much more interesting by presenting a continuous threat, and their ability to interact with the Sansha Live event actors to set up events of their own.
They were also the initiators of the largest player event related to the sansha attacks: the Battle of Maut

The Battle of Maut started by a rumor spread by the TSF that Nation would launch a massive attack on the system. This rumor had merit, as Kuvakei was sighted there, and it had been silent for a while, usually a sign that something big would happen (usually a new approach or trick to enhance the attacks)
Originally, it was meant as a trap laid by the TSF to purge a spy from their ranks and kill a whole bunch of players along with it. But as the date of the ‘attack’ came closer, the rumor was unveiled, but it was decided to go on due to the massive support. We would spring the trap, so the TSF would face a loss.
To be prepared, several groups with capital ships had agreed to assist us, should the TSF escalate the situation (which was suspected)
And then the day itself arrived, a large fleet of hundreds of players set course for Maut. It was hoped the TSF would spring the trap, allowing us to spring ours to behead the TSF.
But it turned out we all (TSF and defenders alike) jumped right into a Morsis Mihi/Pandemic Legion trap… As the defender fleet engaged the TSF fleet and both sides were ready to escalate, MM/PL entered the system with a full blown massive nullsec fleet, wiping us all out.
Despite the crushing defeat, the main sentiment about this was positive. Most folks enjoyed seeing a nullsec taskforce in action.

And with that I arrived at Pandemic Legion. I felt they needed special mention, as they often show up in live events, and when reading comments, people seem to forget that PL always did this.
They were present in alot of the Sansha Live Events as well, especially the lowsec ones. Yet they only managed to dominate a few. In quite some cases, the whole chaos of PL trying to mess up the event was their undoing. In other cases, PL choose sides, either supporting the defenders with their forces, or helping Sansha NPC’s & loyalists removing the defenders.
In short: PL was a wildcard, and what they did usually depended on which PL FC was present. Some were reliable in helping the defenders, others felt more sympathy for the Sansha loyalists and then you had the PL FC’s who just wanted to claim it all for them (but usually ended up fighting a combined front of system defenders & Sansha Loyalists).

All these player groups & actions helped greatly in making the event such a great success, you could join the events easy. Players provided fast intel on where the attacks happened, allowing you to join at least a few events. All the player organisations also boosted people’s willingness to interact on a deeper level on these events, causing quite some people to get known for a breakthrough one way or another concerning these attacks.

Providing a new home for refugees in the Aurora Arcology

Jandice Ymladris
Aurora Arcology
#6 - 2014-05-30 20:43:12 UTC  |  Edited by: Jandice Ymladris
Conclusion: There is no greater power than Nation

In short, the combination of everything made this event the benchmark of all future live events. They were easy accessible, offered alot of action, you could easily interact with Live Event actors, from fun banter to serious exposition. Not to mention the combined operations you could have with Dev actors and players.
Also, the ability to affect the outcome of the various attacks, making each one of them unique also helped alot. The unpredictability and the need to find out things through player actions boosted these events to legendary status as well.
Discovering Wormholes were weak to gravimetric ECM? Players found out by experiments. Locating Sansha’s staging system? Players got out and looked for it, giving them a 1 minute warning prior to attacks (a serious upgrade from *keep an eye out, they can strike anywhere, anytime without warning)

Also, the diversity of it all meant there was something for everyone, from shooting Sansha to dust to collecting data to give a better idea on what Nation is actually doing.
What also helped was ths slow progressing of the events, from simple small fleet attacks with only a dozen participants that eventually evolved into complex multi-stage, multi system attacks involving thousands.

I know it’s one big post, but I felt it was needed to highlight why the Sansha Live Events are held in such regard, but that it is also needed to remember that they started out small & simple, and gradually evolved into these great & fantastic events we all remember. And they only got this great because lots of players invested alot of their time into this as well.

For the folks who made it to the end, some enjoyable videos giving an idea on the scale of the attacks!

Sansha attacks Suroken, cold voice explaining the event

Sansha attacks Uedama, behold the power of LASER!

Sansha Kuvakei announcing his arrival to EvE

The first deployment of a Revenant Supercarrier, Seylinn invasion

Edit: if you got any questions and/or remarks, don't hestitate to ask, there's plenty more to it, but I didn't want to write & publish a whole book on this!

Providing a new home for refugees in the Aurora Arcology

Evi Polevhia
Phoenix Naval Operations
Phoenix Naval Systems
#7 - 2014-06-01 23:40:42 UTC
Fighting against Nation? Down with this sort of thing!

Also those were excellent posts. Thank you for taking the time to write all of that.
Nevyn Auscent
Broke Sauce
#8 - 2014-06-02 00:21:11 UTC
I'm going to present a counter point. As someone who came into live events near the end of this stuff.

I found it vastly labyrinthine and incomprehensible. And it almost caused me to not bother with live events. While for people with time involved (in the correct time zone for the plot advancement rather than shooty events) and who were there right from the start the depth may have been grand, but it was actually too deep for people to try and catch up on what was going on.

Slightly shallower and easier to grasp plots actually enable more involvement by being understandable, as well as clear methods to interact that you know a GM will read. It's great players having to do actions, but how do they get feedback on those actions, how do they know that a GM actually read it and their actions proved to have no effect rather than a GM never even read them.

In short, even more important than the in game Dev toolkit is an out of game (Or at least out of the shooty part of the game) system for players to pass actions to Devs that isn't haphazard like the current mail system, and a method for the Devs to pass clear information back to the players. That information from the Devs may first have been passed to them, or may represent the NPC's own research (The Empires don't do literally nothing after all) or a combination of the two. But that clear flow of information between Devs & players is critical.
Drake Arson
Phoenix Naval Operations
Phoenix Naval Systems
#9 - 2014-06-02 15:17:48 UTC
Some Good stuff in here, Especially Grinning at the Maut mention.


The Underground/Shadow play of Spying and Espionage me and a Few others I worked with to undermine SYNE and FCORD and crew was some of the most fun Iv'e ever had in EVE.

Not too mention so many other things that happned that will never happen again. Good memories.
Eran Mintor
Metropolis Commercial Consortium
#10 - 2014-06-02 18:20:49 UTC
Good read and I fully agree that they are a great example of Live Events done well.
Aynen
Federal Guard and Recon Corporation
#11 - 2014-06-11 23:19:49 UTC
I'm a little late to the party, but great posts!
Glad to see people are still trying to convince CCP of the value of these particular events.
I have to also agree with Nevyn's counter point though, I can definitely see how a person seeking to get started with those events near the end of them would find the situation dauntingly complex.
If these kinds of events ever happen again, the active players may do well to keep that in mind when looking for ways to get more players involved.
Velarra
#12 - 2014-06-12 00:26:55 UTC
Were the events perfect? Did they include absolutely every-player in Eve who remotely wanted to participate & understand everything easily? No. Could they have been better? Maybe. Is there room for criticism of them, in hindsight? Yes.

Were they the best Live events i've ever been on the fringes of, yet kept up with? Yes. Absolutely. They were something you could, for a while, nearly live/breathe.

They're how you ought to run *any* future live events.
Herzog Wolfhammer
Sigma Special Tactics Group
#13 - 2014-08-06 18:36:03 UTC
Jandice Ymladris you made the very kind of posts I have wanted to make on this topic, and have done it much better than I could.

Bring back DEEEEP Space!

Coffee Rocks
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#14 - 2014-08-10 03:49:38 UTC
OP, check your mail. Loved this.
Jandice Ymladris
Aurora Arcology
#15 - 2014-08-10 08:08:34 UTC  |  Edited by: Jandice Ymladris
Hey, thanks everyone who took their time to read! Glad people enjoy it!

@ Nevyn Auscent:

You do have a point indeed & it shows at once that nothing can be perfect. It's true that by the end, the plots got very complex. This can easely be attributed to the length & number of events as it ran for over 150 events. Plot progress actually happened in different timezones, adding to complexity hoever.
Initial plots were easy, but as people uncovered those fast, they grew more & more complex & intertwined, requiring more data & cooperation between people to resolve, reaching a labyrinthine difficulty.
It's a hard act to balance really, you like to please both veterans & newcomers, make it too simple & veterans of the events would uncover it too fast & easy giving no chance for newcomers to contribute, make it too hard & new folks joining in have trouble grasping the plot, let alone contribute. Also, keeping plot developments to a single timezone would have reduced complexity alot, but that has other problems as well.
Do keep in mind this was the first event that ran on this scale & magnitude, so problems were to be expected.

On feedback & flow; hard to get any better feedback & info when GM's respond to you directly, when folks posted theories on the forum, live event actors tend to respond if you were serious with your theories. Also ingame, chatting with various live event actors helped alot to determine wether you were good to go or not. This kind of interaction is only possible with a dedicated live events team however (which is currently scrapped, so the kind of interaction we got in recent events is what'll have to do for now, unless they restart the old aurora volunteer program or reform the Live Events team)
Information could be passed on through ingame mail, the forums & various ingame channels. Thanks to the now defunct live events team, responses were smooth.
The out of game system to pass on things has been used in more recent events however. Caldari Prime saw the usage of facebook, twitter & other social media to promote it. the Provist attacks also saw the usage of twitter to spread info rapidly.


@Drake Arson,

Glad you enjoyed it! You were one of the thorns in the side of he defenders Blink. And indeed the long duration & the need to gather intel oneself about all the plots & attacks allowed for some fine espionage gameplay to unravel actions & knowledge that went beyond the usual stuff in eve. The Maut event was indeed one of the highpoints of this cloak & dagger gameplay, hence my mention, our intel failed spectacularly there, thanks to your guys P


@Aynen,

Indeed, the complexity at the end saw quite some complains and does show that the Sansha Live events, while good were not perfect. It was the first event on this scale & magnitude however. Would the Live events team continued to exist, I'm sure the knowledge they gathered would helped them to overcome this obstacle eventually.


@Velarra

An excellent point you make & I agree with you fully. The events were not perfect (as above criticism shows) but they are still the best live events CCP ran like you stated.
Only thing that comes close to it would be the Arek Jalaan project, not due to scale, but because it offered players a chance to directly interact with the game's lore, building & expanding on it (something that was far less present in the Sansha Live events or almost any other event) To this date, the result of Arek Jalaan can be found, picked up & read in the Eram system. When you do, know that every one of those pages you read are the result of players inetracting with CCP (there's even a few Arek jalaan projects directly linked to sansha's live events, the WH generator & sansha's mind workings I believe)

@ Evi Polevhia, Eran Mintor, Herzog Wolfhammer & Coffee Rocks

Thanks for the compliment, this article consumed alot of my time to write, so it's great to know people appreciated it! Especially due to the large size of it.
Did read your mail Coffee Rocks, expect an answer soon. I tend to take my time to write responses.

Providing a new home for refugees in the Aurora Arcology

Coffee Rocks
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#16 - 2014-08-22 10:40:20 UTC
Obviously, mails were read and acted upon :)

I'm very happy to see this mirrored on The Coffee Rocks!

Can't wait to see what you post next P
N'maro Makari
Itsukame-Zainou Hyperspatial Inquiries Ltd.
Arataka Research Consortium
#17 - 2014-09-06 10:37:05 UTC
Bumping because people should read these dammit!

**Vherokior **

Varru Iskutomi
Iskutomi Strategic Operations
#18 - 2014-09-23 15:11:43 UTC
I had a great time with the Sansha live events. If there's one thing I would say EVE desperately needs right now, it's more community involvement and dynamic encounters that make the world really feel alive.