With the Ariana Grande concert in the rearview, it’s time to look back at all of the major live events and see how they stack up.
Obviously, the more recent events were more impressive than those in Chapter 1.
With that in mind, I’m going to consider how these events hit at the time, rather than judging them against everything we’ve seen over the years. Let’s get into it.
Epic Games
This event makes a strong case for the worst event in Fortnite history.
The whole thing was boring when you compare it to the field.
It had no lore implications, and mostly consisted of players jumping around while a short scene from a bad Star Wars movie played.
The Ice Storm was another forgettable live event.
In Chapter 1 Season 7, the Ice King doused the whole map in snow. That’s all that happened.
Well, not quite. We also had zombie husks ruining games all across the island for the better part of a month.
Boring event + zombies = low rank.
The Zero Crisis Finale wasn’t technically a live event. It kicked-off Chapter 2 Season 6, and players went through it whenever they logged in for the first time.
Despite having some decent lore implications, the whole event seemed a bit too staged
This was likely do to the fact that it was the only single-player event in Fortnite. To me, it felt a lot more like a cinematic than a true live event.
While impressive, the event that conlcuded the Fortnite Marvel season seemed to have nothing to do with the overall story.
Sure, it was cool to fly through the air on a Battle Bus with Tony Stark, but everything went back to normal once it was over.
You could easily argue that this event was better than, say, The Device event in terms of scale.
It may have been more impressive, but I’ll take the revelations from The Device event any day.
Kevin was the centerpiece of the entire plot of Fortnite Chapter 1, and his introduction may have been one of the defining moments of the game.
For those who don’t remember or didn’t play Fortnite at the time, Kevin (unnamed at this time) spawned on the map in the middle of a major Fortnite tournament.
What happened after that is now Fortnite history. Each season expanded the role of Kevin until the eventual Butterfly event.
When you look back on all of the events in Fortnite history, the Rocket Event may be the least impressive of them all.
It was, however, the very first. It set the stage for all other events that followed.
The Butterfly event was, at its time, the best event Fortnite had ever introduced.
It seemed to be the climax of Kevin’s story, but we didn’t know what was to come in the future.
This was the first hint we got of Fortnite being deeper than just the island. Transporting to another dimension – the Zero Point – blew everyone’s mind.
We’ll follow one earth-shattering event with another. The Butterfly Event might be the single most important lore event in Fortnite history.
Just like in The Butterfly Event, we got a glimpse behind the curtain and learned that there’s a world outside of the Fortnite island.
We’re still waiting for this storyline to be paid off, and can only imagine what Epic have in store for us.
The Unvaulting was another in a long line of events that one-upped the coolest thing Fortnite has ever done.
If you exclude the result of The Unvaulting – the Drum Gun – this was one of the best in-game events in all of gaming.
Not only did we revisit the Zero Point and vote for a weapon, but we saw the volcano explode, finally destroy Tilted Towers, and set the stage for The Final Showdown.
The epic battle between The Monster and The Mech was, again, the best thing Fortnite had ever done at the time.
Players bounced around the map as the two giants battled it out for possession of the Zero Point.
Of course, the eventual result of this battle was the complete reset of The Loop in The End event – the best lore-based event in all of Fortnite.
The Rift tour was, in my opinion, the first Fortnite event that didn’t one-up all of the previous ones.
For my money, the Travis Scott concert was far more impressive than The Rift Tour – likely because we already knew what this new engine was capable of.
Ariana Grande fans probably loved it, and it does make the top three, but The Rift Tour can’t hold a candle to these last two.
Do I even need to explain this one? The End was the best lore-based event in all of gaming.
Fortnite did something that no other game has ever done: shut off the servers for three days.
Shockingly, Fortnite was more popular while it was offline than it ever has been before or since.
This is the gold standard of live Fortnite events and has yet to be topped – at least, by an event that ties into the Fortnite story.
I saw Astronomical at every showing – even forcing some of my lost Fortnite friends to reinstall the game and watch with me.
This was a technical flex from Epic – showing players exactly why they changed the engine and went to a new map.
The reason this is my favorite event probably has something to do with expectations.
We were all expecting to see another Marshmello-style concert, and instead got the most insane cinematic that gaming has ever seen.
Disagree? Well, you’re wrong.
Let us know what you’d change on Twitter, @JaxonMVP.
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