02 August 2021 ·event MAJOR

PAPI Retreats from Delve - WWB2 Officially Ends

Image: Razorien / CCP Games (via Polygon) · CCP IP / Razorien composition / Polygon redistribution

After the failed assault on 1DQ1-A, PAPI leadership ordered a full retreat from Delve. World War Bee 2 officially ended in August 2021 with no final battle.

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Eve Online's World War Bee II ends (BANG Gaming, 10 August 2021) · BANG Gaming

PAPI Retreats from Delve - WWB2 Officially Ends

Background

WWB2 ran from 4 July 2020. PAPI (Legacy + PandaFAM) had pinned the Imperium in 1DQ1-A - Goonswarm's last system in Delve - for months. Roughly two-thirds of EVE's player population at the start of WWB2 was on one side or the other.

What "PAPI" was: two coalitions joined for the war. Legacy Coalition (TEST + Brave + smaller allies) and PandaFAM (Pandemic Horde + Pandemic Legion + Northern Coalition. + Fraternity. + Winter Coalition + smaller allies).

The 1DQ1-A push

2 August 2021. PAPI swung the haymaker. ~3,000 PAPI ships were thrown into the bubble field around 1DQ1-A, planning to break through to the Keepstar. ~4,000 Imperium pilots were in 1DQ1-A at peak. Concurrent-user record set: 27,350 accounts logged into EVE simultaneously. Time dilation hit 10% in the system.

The Imperium meat-grinder caught the push. The assault stalled. Legacy alliances began unanchoring their own structures during the battle to save them from a counter-attack - a tell that leadership had already decided to retreat.

The retreat order

PAPI leadership issued the retreat to internal alliances on 2-3 August 2021. The Imperium never accepted a peace treaty; The Mittani publicly disputed PAPI's right to declare the war over. In practice, the war ended.

What broke PAPI

Three converging factors:

Recruitment uplift PAPI's war plan had assumed never materialised.
Imperium morale and numbers grew through the siege rather than collapsing as PAPI had bet on.
CCP's mid-2021 Tranquility Trading Tower (TTT) economy adjustment cut the income stream PAPI alliances had been paying their pilots with. By August 2021 PAPI couldn't afford to keep the war going.

Campaign aggregates

~13 months. ~57 weeks. 200+ trillion ISK destroyed across both sides. 30+ Keepstars lost across the campaign. ~580 supercapitals destroyed. None of these were officially certified by CCP - they're community aggregations from killboard scrapes - but they are the figures repeated across community sources.

Aftermath

The Legacy Coalition dissolved within weeks. TEST relocated to Outer Passage. Brave shuffled corp leadership. Pandemic Horde retrenched in the north. The Imperium retained Delve and rebuilt sov over the next month - by 8 August 2021 there were no PAPI iHubs left in the region.

Returning player note

If your last memory of EVE was "the Imperium is being kicked out of Delve any day now," that storyline ended on 2 August 2021 with the opposite outcome.

The next era of EVE politics began with this campaign - and the TTT economy adjustment is why.

Battle stats

The Imperium held the field

System: 1DQ1-A · Delve
Sides: Goonswarm Federation

Anchor

On side: The Imperium (Goonswarm Federation + allies)

The Initiative.

Partner

On side: The Imperium (Goonswarm Federation + allies)

The Bastion

Partner

On side: The Imperium (Goonswarm Federation + allies)

Test Alliance Please Ignore

Anchor

On side: PAPI (Legacy Coalition + PandaFAM - TEST, Brave, Pandemic Horde, NCdot, Pandemic Legion, FRT, Winter Coalition)

Brave Collective

Partner

On side: PAPI (Legacy Coalition + PandaFAM - TEST, Brave, Pandemic Horde, NCdot, Pandemic Legion, FRT, Winter Coalition)

Pandemic Horde

Partner

On side: PAPI (Legacy Coalition + PandaFAM - TEST, Brave, Pandemic Horde, NCdot, Pandemic Legion, FRT, Winter Coalition)

Fraternity.

Partner

On side: PAPI (Legacy Coalition + PandaFAM - TEST, Brave, Pandemic Horde, NCdot, Pandemic Legion, FRT, Winter Coalition)
ISK destroyed: 200 T
Decisive doctrine: Imperium supercap + Titan umbrella over the 1DQ1-A bubble field; PAPI assault stalled as Legacy alliances began unanchoring their own structures mid-fight

What does “held the field” mean?

The badge marks the side that held the field at the end of this engagement — who was still on grid, who walked away with the objective on the day. It is not a verdict on the wider war or campaign, which often turned on logistics, attrition, or political fallout in the weeks after. The full strategic arc lives in the deep-dive above.

Caveats & contested numbers

The numeric figures here anchor on the 2 August 2021 push at 1DQ1-A, the day PAPI's retreat order followed: roughly 4,000 Imperium pilots in 1DQ1-A at peak (the system hit 10% TiDi), and roughly 3,000 PAPI ships lost in that push alone. A concurrent-user record was set the same day, with 27,350 accounts logged into EVE simultaneously at peak.

The ISK figure shown is the campaign-aggregate (~200 trillion ISK destroyed across both sides) for the full 57-week conflict from 4 July 2020 to 2 August 2021, cited by Massively OP, PC Gamer, PCGamesN, and the TEST Wiki. The 1DQ1-A push of 2 August was never separately disaggregated from the campaign total in any source. Other campaign-wide community aggregates: 30+ Keepstars lost and ~580 supercapitals destroyed across both sides. The comparison bar against M2-XFE is suppressed here because comparing a multi-week campaign total against M2-XFE's 14-hour single-battle peak is apples-to-oranges; the tilde prefix on the figure marks it as approximate.

Three converging factors broke PAPI: insufficient recruitment uplift, Imperium morale and numbers growing through the siege, and CCP's mid-2021 Tranquility Trading Tower economy adjustment that cut PAPI's wartime income stream. The Imperium never accepted a peace treaty; The Mittani publicly disputed PAPI's "right to declare the war over." In practice, the war ended.

Context at this date

Total ISK destroyed ~200 T

Campaign aggregate — not single-battle peak

Killmails: - total ships destroyed game-wide that month, from CCP's killmail feed (aggregated by EVE Ref).
PLEX: - Jita market price of one PLEX (30 days of game time), in ISK.
Maps: - quarterly sovereignty / coalition / faction-warfare snapshots from verite.space (Verite Rendition).