Massive EVE Online Battle 2014 part 2 edition

[ninju D]

I just finished reading an article about the giant battle yesterday but I'm still unclear about this business of the unpaid bill.  Do I have this right, groups can pay for a "safe place" to store their ships etc?  Who do they pay?  How much do they pay?  I've played a handful of MMOs so feel free to offer analogies.

 

[CarnivalMadness]

From what I've read, think of it like a mafia scenario. 

The player or group, or whatever entity that managed it at the time, forgot to pay their protection money to certain player-based groups (Pandemic Legion and N3).  Payment was supposedly set up automatically to pay 300,000ISK at scheduled intervals, but the last payment didn't go through for some reason, so the system lost their protection.  Another group (NFC) got wind of it, took advantage of the situation, and tried to take the system for their own.

I don't play EVE, but these kinds of system-wide large scale battles are always interesting to me.