What is RvB?

Red Versus Blue, two alliances in a permanent mutual war with one another.

A war that has lasted three years and some change.

A war with hundreds of explosions daily.

A war anyone can join at will.

(The Official RvB Video by Catalyst XI)

RvB completed my cycle from ‘care-bear’ to ‘I don’t care bear’. I was only expecting to stay a month or so, then go back to null to round off. Now I can’t contemplate leaving, had way too much fun (Shaddai Zenjii)

2012 for RvB started off pretty much the same as previous years, with hundreds of explosions being caused by the 1800 or so pilots in RvB at that time. Little did we know what was to come our way during the next 365 days or that 2012 would be the year that RvB got into the EVE “press” more than ever before, a press usually dominated by the activities of the null-sec power houses. Fun thing is, we even had a reporter “embedded” with us for a while during the year.

Spring

As said, the year started much the same as any other, we were living in Lonetrek at the time just doing our thing with the occasional third party war thrown in, as well as the now weekly RvB Ganked roams – the 11th of which was the first of the new year & the first big item for us in the EVE press; Who knew primarying an Erebus that went on to blap most of the Ganked fleet would get the coverage it did even if many did gloss over the core fact – we did what we did for fun, just like everything RvB does.

Following the launch of the new RvB website, and the work Algis Kemokl & I put into getting it all done, I realised that all work and no play makes Mangala a very bitter boy so as a result I approached the leadership of EVE University, the other RvB command members (I started 2012 as a Director of RvB) and raised the idea of a controlled war, a war with “rules” similar to the RvB rules. Everyone agreed, and it was on. For 3 days we ran around Lonetrek and parts of Metropolis fighting the good fight with the students of the Uni.

I was in the Uni during the first war. On one encounter, I was part of a 120 strong Uni fleet facing 100 purple RvBs. I later learned Mangala was the opposing FC. The encounter left a real impression on me. Not just the battle itself but the conduct of the RvB fleet as a whole. It was a strange, seemingly laid back, kind of approach… yet disciplined. An ethos that seemed to echo RvB’s approach to serious but fun PvP. The local chat was humorous, respectful and even useful. In short, RvB’s pure PvP doctrine combined with mostly friendly, respectful local chatter left a real impression on me. (Talon White)

Life went back to normal for us after this, we had some random third party wars that were a nice distraction for some of us, and then we moved! We left Lonetrek behind and towards the end of March we pushed into The Forge, leaving Lonetrek’s markets battered & empty and its space-lanes clogged with hundreds of haulers. Around the same time as we moved, CCP started advertising RvB on the EVE log in screen.

Which saw the start of the steady rise in RvB’s numbers throughout the rest of the year, with both Red & Blue combined reaching around 5500 members by Christmas. As is obvious, this advert brought us to much wider attention, and as a result, fleet sizes got larger – the days of having 10/15 in fleet being a “good thing” ended, and the days of 30/40 man fleets began; The fights got more intense and longer lasting; Hell more isk got exploded in the two months after both the advert & the relocation then in the 6 months before it combined.

Without RvB I’m afraid my Career as Capsuleer would have drawn to a close along time ago, The sheer amount of work put into these 2 corps by both command and members is just staggering and the consequence is monumental lol’s that I will always be grateful for. For anyone who is out there wondering aimlessly through New Eden I say come and try our community out, You will not be disappointed and before you know it you’ll feel right at home. (Mandelbrot Fracture)

Another consequence of the advert was Red & Blue both reaching the a major milestone in our eternal conflict, that of having killed only the other side 100,000 times. RvB & myself provided four billion isk in prize money to the pilots with the final blow on these mails. Blue got there first, with Red not too far behind – the carnage involved during the last two to three hundred kills was truly a sight to see! If our numbers & activity had maintained the levels they were at during the start of the year, we would not have reached these numbers as early in 2012 as we did, we would have reached them around Christmas, maybe later.

I would just like to say that having flown in a small limited numbers Red fleet today after DT, that the chase into the final stretch was really good fun. I gave up a Zealot and a Crow in the name of getting Reds closer to this figure and for me that alone was worth doing. The activity that happened in Red – and even Blue – was a real testament to what people will do for isk, especially if they get to kill for it along the way! (Mangala Solaris)

Summer

From a command perspective: Keeping this crazy organization running and herding all the cats can be though, especially when I log on in the morning to read about the latest shenanigans going on in the warnings forum section or see that the ban list has grown overnight. At the same time though you sometimes wake up to great news that restore your faith in humanity. A couple examples from 2012 would be finding out about Torve’s crazy idea for blowing up tens of thousands of frigates or finding out that a member just donated 5 B isk to RvB because he had so much fun flying with us. The generosity that you get to see makes up for all the bad stuff (most days). (Professor Clio)

Summer 2012 brought RvB some huge events! From some stunning wars to the 10th Alliance Tournament to RvB Ganked’s 1st Birthday, it really really was a good time to be in RvB!

The “big” war for RvB during the Summer was a “SURPRISE” war with EVE University, which unlike the previous wars had not been arranged up front and was an all out, no holds barred fist fight between the largest groups of pilots in high security space. RvB’s unstated aim, destroy the EUNI POS, the EUNI aim to stop us from doing this & generally make us bored enough to go away. Neither aim really worked, with the POS being reinforced but not destroyed, and RvB not getting bored and going away until it was clear our members were having issue’s reshipping – and I understand the EUNI pilots were in pretty much the same situation. Despite neither side really gaining a BIG VICTORY, this war did give rise to the single largest fight in high security space ever. The Battle of Aldrat.

With the EUNI POS exiting reinforcement during EU prime on the 14th May 2012, RvB formed up some 350 pilots all willing & eager to get into Aldrat and take it down. The EUNI (and their allies) formed at least 500 to both defend it & prevent us from even getting into Aldrat. The in gate was a sight to behold. High sec had seen nothing like it, and to this day I do not believe it ever will again. For over an hour hundreds of ships of all sizes & tech levels clashed in a battle of epic proportions (in high sec terms) with RvB eventually pushed off due to a reshipping advantage by EUNI. Honestly, in my opinion several months later, neither side truly “lost” in that engagement just on the basis of “I was there”, “EVE is real”.

Thanks Mangala to you and RvB for an amazing time. Not to mention all the Unistas. (Patrick Estemaire)

The whole war was a blast for me and while I know some others disagree I believe targeting the POS is what brought about such great fights, a standard to fight for if you will. The biggest disappointment was the missed opportunity to mass undock in noobships and join in the battle at PTS undock, that would just have been perfect. (Sol Tertia) Well thanks to RvB for coming and staying with it. That was simply epic and one of those true ‘I was there moments’ that I doubt are a frequent occurrence in a computer game. Just wishing some of my RL friends played as i guess i’m going to bore people in work to death today because i’m still buzzing. (Gaim Estemaire) That was my first taste of PvP in EVE – great fun. Sorry to hear that all PvP in EVE is not like that fight. Props to leadership on both sides for the massive behind the scenes effort. (Deban Huren) Thanks for the epic fight RvB! I was afraid I was going to miss it due to work, but I logged on right in the thick of things and was able to partake in the biggest battle I’ve (and probably most of Eve has) ever seen! Thanks again for the awesome fights and experience! (Sketchy McGillis)

I can say that this particular war, and the fights that came out of it were my most memorable in EVE. Finding a group that can go toe to toe with RvB & has a membership willing to do so, is as good for us as it is for them. I look forward to future conflicts between us, for fun or otherwise.

The summer did not end there, next up was RvB’s Purple showing in the 10th Alliance Tournament, thanks to CCP for making a rule that would have messed us up, but at the last minute allowing us in as a special case. It worked better than we could have hoped. Having a wider pool of pilots to chose from made the campaign much more interesting for those of us flying in the Purple AT team, as well as for the rank & file members watching us week in, week out. We started out with a stunning victory against Get Off My Lawn, had a loss to Suddenly Spaceships, beat Rote Kapelle & Kill It With Fire, and then lost to the mighty Pandemic Legion. Ending our campaign on the cusp of entry to the Finals day!

Great showing by our team! You can hold your heads up high for sure and I think it is safe to say that you have had not just us behind you, but pretty much the whole of Eve! I along with others seriously think that we can go the whole way next year. PL saying we were too strong a team to be let through is probably the biggest compliment in itself. (Relentless Jim) AT X was fantastic for RvB and I’m really proud of our guys, everyone put in so much effort (practising 6 nights out of 8 at one point and doing it in a WH!), and I saw us really showing the rest of EVE what we were made of. We had so much backing from the EVE community which really boosted us too. (Cablex Dayspring) Wonderful job guys! I’m sure I’m not the only one unaware of how much practice and preparation was going on behind the scenes. I really felt proud watching the matches and hearing the commentators talk up our corp so much! (Hojou)

Before we could rest from such a great showing in the Alliance Tournament, RvB found itself in another spectacular war, this time against the forces of the Northern Coalition.

Over the word mate.

I have gone in to this elsewhere, so I shall let that article and others speak for themselves. Suffice to say, never in my time in EVE have I seen someone go to war over something so ridiculous, however so much entertainment was gotten out of it, and not just by RvB and our friends mates in the North, that I will remember it as long as I remain in EVE.

Autumn

We turned 3 in September 2012, and we had a lot of events and publicity to go along with it. The birthday celebrations were our biggest yet and were unofficially kicked off by several RvBers getting very messed up at the Veto meet in London!

The community here is the best I have experienced in eve. The amount of effort people put into making RVB fun and exciting and compelling day in and day out is amazing. Leadership is engaged, and organized, and always working to make RVB better. I don’t get to play as much as I would like anymore, but when I do log on, I know my time will be enjoyable, and I can’t say that about any other aspect of eve I have been a part of. (Tral Ma’Fador) Then I joined RVB. It is, quite simply, the most fun I’ve had in game since I started. I can pvp to my heart’s content or sit back in an alt and work towards the betterment of RVB without it feeling like a grind. I was also planning a short stint in RVB while receiving offers to go back to null but I’m hooked now. You guys are stuck with me. (Random McNally) Two of my favourite birthday week events were Combat Mink’s Cargo Run on 15th October and Flight of the Dauntless on the 17th October. Brilliant ideas both of them and hope we have something similar some time in the future. Towards the end of Flight of the Dauntless ( I was in an arty ruppy) I’d started to take heavy damage so warped carelessly to the sun which was bad enough but then doodled about while my shields repaired. A few seconds later a Blue pilot in a frig showed up and because I wasn’t paying attention had me scrammed before I realised what had happened. Of course he was too close for my arty guns to hit him so who ever you were know that you were whisper close to bagging a rupture that day. All that saved me was the event finished and we had to stop shooting each other . Phew :-) Such are the thrills of RvB. (Penelope Star)

For a while after the birthday events, RvB was quiet with kills dropping off due to the usual end of people’s free time, although we were still killing more daily than many do in a weeks of action! Then we started seeing more and more war decs come in, not that we actually saw targets, it turned out we had become the latest “victim” of Dec Shield’s attention seeking use of broken game mechanics. That lasted the remainder of the year and really didnt put a crimp in our activities, if anything it just made people annoyed with notification spam! I like to think it also caused the madness that has begun our new trend of holding MASSIVE FREE FOR ALL FRIGATE FIGHTS. The first of these saw some 8,000 frigates exploded in 1 weekend, along with 1 server cluster. The second went much more smoothly, and saw 12.000 frigates exploded. The third is planned for 26th January & will see 26,000 frigates made available to attendee’s to utilise in the glorious business of RvB!!!!

Winter

I first flew with RvB back in Feburary for Ganked 15. I saw it being advertised on reddit and Eve Radio and i figured “why not?” I died fairly early into that night, but It was fun nonetheless. My usual “play eve for 4 months and then quit again” was about to run it’s normal cycle, until i found ganked and started attending just about every weekend. This led to many memorable events including a revelation kill by rifters, and the decidedly annoying RnK ‘encounters.’ It was about July when i finally decided that 1 day a week of RvB was not enough for me, and i enlisted. Since then, it’s been 6 months of great fun and i’m confident that i’ll be here for much longer. RvB fills a gap in pvp that no one else has been able to; a no-risk, low-cost, instantaneous fleet combat environment where GFs are the rule rather than the exception. Some people won’t like the comparison, but this is the closest thing to spaceship ‘battlegrounds’ i’ve found, and I’m proud to be a part of such an achievement. (Rashino Zea)

And the year comes to a close. RvB has increased to around 4 times the size of what it was at the start of the year; We have passed 300,000 kills of Red & Blue by Red & Blue and are now pushing 400,000; We are closing in on 5 TRILLION isk exploded just in the eternal war between Red & Blue; In all conflicts we have passed 7.5 TRILLION isk exploded over 380,000 kills; Ganked has passed 4000 kills in over 50 null sec roams and continues to provide fun for over 100 pilots every week.

It’s been almost three years now? What was meant to be a temporary introduction to PvP has become my home. As I learned more and more about the goings on of null sec PvP the less I cared to participate. The casual nature of RvB has kept me paying my subscription where I probably would have let my account lapse a long time ago. I’ve been in hundreds (if not thousands) of fleet fights, each of them fun. I’ve flown with dozens of FC’s, some terrible but most have been supremely fun to fly with (♥ Melkor Valor. When are you going to take out a frig fleet again?). I’ve taken part in some epic events (The first Sink The Bismarck was the first time I flew a Battleship in PvP. I’ll never forget that feeling. Thanks a million Mangala.) and many epic free for alls. These days I mostly look forward to the Ganked Roams, but I can still log in whenever I want and usually find some good fights within minutes. And while RvB has grown into something that barely resembles the little fight club it started as, the spirit of casual fun remains. Thanks to RvB and all of the folks in leadership who’ve done such a fantastic job keeping the chaos under some semblance of control. I’m proud to have been a part of this community since it started and I don’t plan on leaving any time soon. (J’mee Leggs) My highlights, can’t say only one, from the crazy congas to the chaotic lemming jumps, every minute has their small history behind, enjoy everything, (Kronthar Lionkur) Best Ganked moment of the year? Without a doubt. GCC Revelation dies to rvbgank in low sec. (AdW)

A major highpoint of the year is that we have seen 1 RvB pilot pass 10,000 kills just while flying with Blue Republic. Step forward Jagtor! The wife-whisperer really exemplifies what RvB is about and he continues to do so against all odds! Now all I have to do is poke the right people and use this fine gentleman & killer space pilot as publicity for RvB!!!!

In terms of how well our 9 months in The Forge has worked out, we have over 200,000 kills in this region alone, that is nearly as much as we had killed in all our other homes put together. With nearly 192,000 of those just in Josameto, Poinen, Otela & Liekuri. Good thing we are in the same region as Jita, otherwise I do not think any manufacturers or traders could have kept pace with our rapacious appetite for destruction.

And that boys & girls was RvB’s 2012. Some of it I had covered elsewhere as the year went on, other parts I have written about from memory. All in all it was our best year yet. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did and I look forward to going even further in 2013. I will leave you with a few words from Del Delvechio “The Man” behind the scene in RvB and a wonderful video from Zaqq: