EVE Paris 2019 took place on October 12th: the main event of French and wider francophone community was held for its 8th edition this year. After witnessing what was a bigger meet at EVEsterdam and G-Fleet in Berlin, we decided to take inspiration of what was done and replicate it at our scale. We received around 60 attendees this year, and even had few anglophones that were courageous enough to spend their night with French people.
As every language-oriented one, the francophone community has its idiosyncrasies. It once was almost united around a common project: Tau Ceti Federation (TCF). But the fall of TCF and its progressive disband starting around 2010 left the community divided, with no francophone project having a real impact on the geopolitics of nullsec since then. Even if a lot of smaller entities emerged, most of them lasted a few months only before being caught up in the community’s old grudges.
But as some wise man once said: “The best ship is friendship”! And all those divisions never stopped us meeting IRL, sharing drinks and having fun while discussing and trolling each other in the most EVEian way.
FINDING A PLACE
This year, we all met at the Meltdown, a famous Parisian gaming-themed bar. Located in Bastille’s neighborhood – near the place where, you know, we started a Revolution centuries ago – the Meltdown is close to what could be an obscure cantina in a rusty Minmatar station: a perfect meet-up place for spaceship nerds. The venue offered us enough space, a large variety of drinks, and the staff was very welcoming and helped us setting everything up.
EVENT,REPORT, WORLD TOUR
Beside this general ambiance, computers and gaming consoles were accessible for everyone to play together while drinking. This allowed us to set up what we thought would be a small tournament, and ended up being a 40-man, 5-hour long death match. Thanks to CCP, we had a specific access to ThunderDome, the server where all tournaments take place. Once attendees arrived, we started registering them, distributing their badges, t-shirts and gifts. We then let everyone spend time with their ingame friends or foes before starting the hostilities.
SHOOTING WITH CANNONS AND WORDS
Our initial plan was to run a 12-man tournament, with six teams involved. But the occasion to have fun on ThunderDome was so popular that 40 persons registered. The rules were simple: 2v2, one frigate and one cruiser per team and elimination matches. As soon as we displayed fits on the walls, participants stormed around them, making plans, trying to figure out which combination would suit them and lead them to victory. Surprisingly, some the “best players” ended up being eliminated quickly, and we saw some very good matches from people that usually are not much into PvP. There even was an international team composed by a Norwegian and a Brit, who offered us one of the most engaging fights of the night (they were both wormholers, by the way).
The tournament was way bigger than planned, and it took over our other activities. But we still took time to organize our infamous Bad Faith Debate™. The rules are simple: every participant is attributed an ingame entity (alliance or corporation) and must defend it. Obviously, no one is assigned its own group and we usually try to give one that would require very bad faith from the debater to defend. What’s more French than debating space politics while drinking? We finally ran a raffle with prizes generously offered by attendees.
We had a great night, lots of people won cool things ranging from PLEX and ingame ships to exclusive mouse pads designed with our visuals. The most courageous ones then stayed outside after the bar closed for a last drink, getting something to eat or just hanging out with their old and new friends. Thanks everyone for attending and we hope to see many of you next year!
