Gamers were agog this weekend when screenshots and videos of an enormous (and somewhat accidental) battle in EVE Online hit the web. All told, 3,161 players duked it out in the Asakai system; 222 ships were killed, resulting in a loss of 470 billion ISK (the in-game currency), according to EVE-Kill.net.

Reports from Reddit and EVE bloggers indicate the fray was sparked when the pilot of a titan ship (the most expensive class in the game) prematurely jumped into enemy space, rather than warp allies to his location (a technique known as "bridging"). A lone titan in "low security" space is like blood in the water, and players from multiple factions rushed in, with reinforcements piling on to attack and defend.

Essentially, one pilot's accidental click ignited one of the largest impromptu capital ship battles in EVE history.

Besides the far-reaching in-game political implications of this battle (which are a bit too "inside baseball" for this publication), the spat has intrigued the Internet for a few reasons. For one, capital and super capital ships like the titan class can take months for players to build. Amassing wealth in EVE's hyper-capitalist, living economy is a full-time job, and it can be traded (legitimately) for the game's real-life subscription fees. Thus, some players at the Asakai battle were risking and losing ships worth upwards of $1,000 (real dollars), and months of work.

Image courtesy of kanodonn.

Asakai was by no means the largest battle EVE has seen by player count, according to Ned Coker, who handles media relations for CCP, the company that runs the massive online universe.

"There was actually a battle happening at or around the same time in a completely different location organized by two alliances as a free-for-all that had over 19,000 ships killed," Coker tells Mashable. "But they were much smaller ships, and it was a pre-planned event instead of an organic battle."

That's the other reason EVE fans are so enthralled by Asakai — it was not planned the way many of the game's complex operations usually are.

"If the parties involved know there is going to be a fight happening in a specific system, usually because some physical asset there is going to become vulnerable at a certain time, they use the fleet fight notification form to contact us ahead of time and let us know, so we can put our super expensive, way-fast hardware on that system," says Coker. Because all players inhabit the same persistent universe, CCP will often divert server resources to hot spots where the action is.

In this case, the game kicked into "time dilation" mode.

"We actually 'slow down time' so that all server calls happen in the right order and the fight becomes fair. If we didn't do that, the massive amount of data traveling back and forth might mean one side’s modules and commands wouldn't go through, and all of a sudden it's just a game of flip-the-coin," Coker explains. "We didn't have any technical server issues, although we do kinda wish the fight was more planned (although that would take away some of the fun), so we could have put it on a dedicated node without ruining the fight. Time dilation kicked in, lots of ships were killed, and it was awesome."

Image courtesy of Itsatrapski.

Online discussion around the battle has led to lengthy explanations of what EVE is, and how new players can get started. "We’ve seen an uptick in signups and accounts," says Coker. "Some are new players and some are old players returning who just can’t stay away once they hear about such things."

For a first-person view of the Asakai battle, check out this video.

CCP also provided Mashable with this chart, showing the loss of in-game revenue by ship class.

Image courtesy of Itsatrapski.