·event MAJOR
Hulkageddon II
Image: Artist rendition of the Hulk exhumer · (c) CCP Games / Fenris Creations (used under fan-content policy)
Hulkageddon II - Helicity Boson's first one-week highsec gank tournament, January 2010, ~1,200 exhumers destroyed and ~278B ISK in damage.
Hulkageddon II
Hulkageddon II ran from 7-14 January 2010, the first iteration of Helicity Boson's highsec mining-gank tournament after the proof-of-concept Hulkageddon I the previous October. The headline change was duration: Hulkageddon I had been a 72-hour weekend sprint, Hulkageddon II was a full week, and the format would stay roughly week-long for every subsequent iteration.
The scale jumped by an order of magnitude. Where Hulkageddon I had killed 66 exhumers, Hulkageddon II destroyed ~1,220 exhumers (some sources cite ~982 exhumers + 238 mining barges + ~199 capsules; final reconciled totals from the Backstage Lore wiki put the exhumer count above 1,200) - plus a long tail of mining barges, industrial haulers, and pods. Total ISK damage was ~278 billion ISK, a record for a player-organised event at the time. Around 800 pilots registered kills against the bounty board; Helicity ran the scoreboard out of the Python Cartel and was helped on the organisational side by EVE PvPer Garmon (El'Tar).
Press coverage stepped up to match: Engadget covered the event live on opening day, Lore Hound published a mid-week status update, and the EVE Universe Interstellar Correspondents posted the official wrap-up. CCP was publicly tolerant - at this stage Hulkageddon was emergent gameplay with a killboard, not a coordinated griefing operation, and the in-fiction framing ("pirate consortium"; "AFK miners deserve it") played well against the sandbox brand.
The economic ripple was real. Mineral prices spiked across the week as exhumer losses pulled experienced miners offline; Helicity-side argued this proved the wider mining economy was fragile and over-reliant on unattended high-yield exhumers. The conclusion CCP eventually drew - buffing tank options on Procurer / Skiff so tank-fit mining was viable - was years away, but the case for the rebalance starts here.
For returning players, Hulkageddon II is the iteration that established the format. Every later weekend gank event (Hulkageddon III-V, CODE.'s periodic "Catalyst Day" pushes, miner-bumping shakedowns) descends from this template - week-long window, public scoreboard, donation-funded prize pool, gank Catalysts on highsec belts.