Over the next month we find out if EVE gets a new lease on life or faces the reality of a terminal decline.
Despite a year so far of extreme changes, future promises, vibrant lore, new ships, and continued balancing, 2015 looks abysmal from the 50,000 feet view.
 |
| From Eve Offine |
As I’ve said before, players logged in is the best measure of health of the game and right now it has a very disturbing trend. CCP is trying everything to get the excitement in the playerbase and for certain segments like high sec and low sec I think they have succeeded. I suspect a lot of the decline is coming mostly from null sec and a little from wormhole space, the former wither holding its breath in wait for Fozzie Sov coming next week or giving up altogether and the latter really languishing from inattention over the past year (last I heard, no new Down the Pipe podcast lately to update me).
The question of whether those null sec players are merely waiting for the changes before logging back in or have left the game entirely will be answered when Fozzie Sov lands next week. We will either see a significant uptick in logged in player numbers which doesn’t have to be large but merely sustained to allow null sec vibrancy to recover, or we will see an uptick as people check it out followed by a return to low numbers (or worse, increasing decline) soon thereafter signalling that EVE is entering its twilight years.
To end the post on a positive note, even if EVE is entering the twilight years it does not mean that the game will not continue to be fun and engaging for years, if not decades to come. There might be more ghost towns out in null sec space but people looking for action will move to where the action is, a kind of natural server consolidation. There can be decades of PvP and exploration left in the game for current and future players, just not at the concentration and locations of the past.
So don’t despair, just prepare.
We are proud to bring you the stories, opinions and musings of a long time pilot who has dabbled in everything New Eden has to offer, he writes and podcasts about his opinions and adventures at Ninveah.com
