Jita Park Speakers Corner

Using this as a rough baseline - http://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility

I have had this question for a while, and have never been sure where to ask. My apologies if this is the wrong spot, but I thought to myself that if the CSM itself had not come across this point before, there's probably no good answer.

Now, as far as I know, the physical size - in number of systems? - has always been the same.
Players have been able to fragment through space more when wormhole space was added, as that allowed people to "move" there, even though I have read that CCP did not actually think people would.

Now, purely from a numbers point of view, the EVE user base seems to be gradually increasing, although that's probably from a large number of factors, like alts, etc, while users logged on seem to flatten at the 25K mark with a spike at around 45k-48k at certain parts of the day.

Let's say that CCP keeps on course and brings out interesting expansions that convince people that are now playing other weird MMO's to come here, so we end up with a 20% to 40% larger player base, has there any metric ever been calculated regarding the result of a spike like that?

Most other MMO's just move people between shards, what would be the effect here? Would current mechanics scale with that effect, and have ideas popped up to help it along? It would change everything from the market to general level of PvP everywhere ... has there ever even been a "magic" number of players that EVE aimed at?

I am under the understanding that Serenity is the China server, and it runs with a _much_ smaller player base. It would be interesting how the EVE universe ticks there, I have read that the universe seems really empty there, and it has very different social interactions then Tranquility.

Anyway, thanks for any feedback.

This might help you with a little incite into the Serenity server.

http://themittani.com/features/eve-behind-great-firewall-inside-null-bloc