Out of Pod Experience

At the risk of starting one of those cliche threads......

What do you suppose is the average, TQ minimum user count, that is financially sustainable for CCP? Particularly when you consider multiple theoretical development projects currently underway.

Eve offline's average, long term records seem to suggest something of a year -> year regression in avg online, player count numbers.

Optimistically, just how niche & therefore really cool do you suppose eve can get?

Isn't this kind of over done in GD already? On a daily basis? And what really does that mean I quoted?

But for the question, it can go very low and still operate. Examples would be such as Vendetta Online, Anarchy Online, Ultima Online, a bunch of others that remain in operation with far less paying accounts than EVE has, and they still update. btw which was just three years ago 500,000 paying accounts in EVE. Now is that quote speaking of actual accounts or just peak login numbers at some time in a 24hr period? Yeah that's what I thought.

Now, are there roughly 500,000 paying accounts right now? No, at least not from that number unless it increased with more players to take the place of all those accounts that closed after Multi-Character account training began, but that's my guess being less. This means, I don't need two or three accounts active, but also I don't get to (multi-box) boost the only numbers people seem looking at which is online peak numbers. But CCP still gets the money out of me for the extra training slots, and so how does that hurt anyone?

Sadly, all these threads usually start with intention to soapbox a platform of theirs that no one wants. EVE is dying thus we must make this drastic change before it's too late. And honestly, it's hysteria quite likely turned some people off from even trying the game. I take it by your thread you want all other game projects wiped.

Edit: Bummer, I do like actual zombie topics expected that as this is OOPE *left disappointed*

No. I'm not suggesting any wild crazy change or remotely intending to. I'm -at worst- & indirectly lamenting that i never got to play eve when average player count was no more than several thousand for eg. 10k average online or even peak online. I can only imagine it'd have felt much different in so many ways. (for better or worse)

As a result, in the course of idly flipping through the graphs available on the eve offline site, the thought occured, - just how low could eve remain sustainable in terms of active population? At peak & average users logged in.

How niche could it go? At what point would it become unsustainable, given eve's complexity and necessary server computing resources / costs.

I can only presume in GD'd it'd get trolled into oblivion as yetanothereveisdying thread! ;) So figured i'd pop the inquiry here instead :) My regrets and apologies for baiting with mention of zombies ;)

There is no other way to take it *shrugs*

In GD people post EVE is dying threads with peak online numbers then give their list of demands, blatantly or subtly, just a matter of tact. And you see what happens to those threads usually? get locked. So in OOPE maybe survive longer? hmmm...

As for GD trolls, if you've looked around forums, it's easy to notice that some of the most active GD "trolls" spend a good deal of time in the new player Q&A forums seriously answering questions. Not all, but often the same ones that help to send EVE is dying threads to their doom

But I answered your question, then pointed out some obvious problems with the post. At least it's an honest reply to it.
Sure, I was around EVE in/around 2003, looked up my first trial character recently. Wasn't in long due to bugs and being in SWG (until they smashed it with the NGE upgrade), but I remember the activity back then. I've seen actual crash and burn in MMO's

omg UO zombies were so damn cool. Especially the first few years of the game, like 98-2001 or so. Too bad about that whole "we want to become like EQ" thing
bah luck suits

Edit: reading the above post again. Problem with EQ and UO (I played both from launch for years) they changed their games. Got the whole "we need newbies, lets make it easy" and just sucked the fun out of the games (yes I followed dev stuff then as I still do now). Seriously. But UO had the best zombies. ah good times.

SWG did the same thing, they said they wanted the game to grow and wanted newbies. But they burned their vets bad, jita riots x10. That game did die then, bustling server turned ghost town over night. You can see it's drop and slide in that chart. Devs chasing after newbies is what kills games. Newbies they don't even have, nor could ever get, as often the happy vets bring the newbies.

These types of games don't just grow old and everyone forgets about them. They are modeled upon muds. There are muds still charging subscriptions and quite active after 20 years now. There is no reason for such games to die, other than from developer and even player abuse. Well... not speaking of f2p's of course.

I can't tell you why most games die out, but I have a good idea about the games I have played and followed. I don't even know exactly why WoW is sliding, only something about "wah we can't use our flying mounts" or some such. Clearly player abuse there, and the rage quit hype along with it. Now I see games flooded with "this game is dddying" more often than the usual, and "there needs to be change" "think of the newbies" etc etc. End of edit heh

Rreally? Such as? Is there a site that lists these kind of mud-like games? I am loosely aware of the existence of extremely grindy korean mmo's (eg. Silk Road, Perfect world, etc.. ) of years past, but i don't believe those are 20yrs++ old...

Are you kinda referring to net trek, nethack, and similar old school X 11, unixy terminal & shell muds?

dp

Talking about zombies...

Compuserve.com

Not for the faint of heart. Kids, bear in mind: that's how ALL of Internet looked in 1995... plus lots of animated GIFs.

And then there was

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEnie

There is no healthy minimal user count on TQ, same as there is no healthy level of PLEX price in ISK.