For the non-EVE players: EVE has a system called Time Dilation, TiDi in short, that slows down the gameplay to give the server more time to process. It gets as slow as 10% of normal speed, which doesn't sound all that bad at first, except that stuff tends to no longer work as expected when the server load increases beyond what is manageable on that level. New commands are thrown on a stack and get worked down in order, which causes massive lags between giving a command and the game executing it, if it doesn't get lost somewhere along the way.
Those massive battles with thousands of players sound awesome in writing. They're very boring in reality.