In 1964, Stanley Kubrick's cold-war political satire "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" hypothesized a "doomsday device." On the 26th of September 2006...
The first player-owned Titan was built, attributed to the Ascendant Frontier Alliance (AFA, Eve-Online). On October 1st it was reported that AFA's Titan deployed the first hostile doomsday device seen in said game world. It's use appears to have been miscalculated and the weapon inadvertently destroyed a great number of the AFA fleet.
Wry remark aside, this event begs at least three questions.
1.) Has there ever been a comparable mass-casualty weapon used in an MMOG by a player against other players? Disqualified are the inadvertent misadventures, e.g. Virus!
2.) How many times can one use a doomsday weapon in an MMOG before it ceases to be one?
3.) While this doomsday event is tiny compared to what Kubrick humored (~60? versus "Now I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, but I am saying no more than 10 to 20 million killed. Tops!") is it still a notable game design accomplishment (all those players contributing those resources for... *bang*) or is it just derivative (Dragon raid anyone)?
See also Kotaku's discussion (including video of the event).
