Eve Online Hits 100K Subscribers

CCP Games' Massive Title, Eve Online, now boasts 100,000 subscribers. Though there are many games with more users Eve Online is a very different title, set inside ships in the depths of space. They currently hold the record for most concurrent users, set at 23,178 simultaneous users on a single server. From the article: "To help accommodate its growing population, CCP will complete a hardware overhaul, allowing the game to handle more users, expand its universe, and run smoother." Ethic, over at Kill Ten Rats, has been writing about Eve a lot lately. His posts cover intergalactic war and courier missions, and might give you a sense of what gameplay is like. If you're interested in that sort of thing.

EVE-Online, not just for everyone

[boog3r]

Hopefully this wonderful community does not succumb to the disease known as 'Poplaritis'

I remember the days before Counter Strike was sold on store shelves... way more mature.

Big Deal?

[Osmosis_Garett]

Its much easier to host 23,000 people when you dont have to render terrain. I know that Anarchy Online initially had hopes that they'd be able to support up to 50,000 people on a single server; their opening day showed them how fruitless that idea was. Had their servers been able to allow everyone who was trying to login and play together, they could have surpassed this. Not to take away from the technical achievement of concurrently serving 23,000 clients in a mmporg, this is simply a measurement which will constantly be increased as technology allows. Way to go Eve Online, for being #1!

Re:No way.

[Anonymous Coward]

still agree with the start of this piece, 23k on one server doesnt mean anything,
how many cpus is that?

sure many MMO games like linage and COH can do 5k per server but they are tiny
inexpensive boxes.

you need to clearly define what this server is so that apple to apple comparisions
can be made.

Re:EVE-Online is mostly time-sinks

[Sir Nickel Deuce]

If you like to play a single-player MMO with other people who coincidentally happen to go by you once in a while, this game is not for you. However, if you are looking for a VERY complex and engaging game which nearly requires a multiplayer mentality, this game is more for you. Of course it's not impossible to go solo, but it will be a lot harder to accomplish anything, and it will be boring without people to help you out and whom with you can do cool things. On the other side, multiplayer end-game content is not nearly as one-tracked as WOW and many other MMO's. You don't have to do PVP or complexes (dungeons) as the main source of your pleasure; EVE has a absolutely monstrous variety of game play.

You have the liberty to choose what ship you want to pilot, what sort of roles you want, and what you want to accomplish. You can get rich in any number of ways such as mining asteroids (and selling the refined minerals), building ships and modules (buying blueprints, minerals, and other resources off the player market or from your own acquisition), hunt NPC's for a living, be a pirate and extort money from people, sell transportation services, and the list goes on. The liberty which CCP gives the players is unparalleled in any other game. Examples of these include the lack of a defining storyline, which makes most of the storyline based on actual player alliances, or written by fan-fiction authors or role-playing characters. Somewhere in this article i'm sure someone will reference the Corp thefts performed by a espionage-oriented corp. On http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/25/3 [escapistmagazine.com], you can read how a corporation actually mimicked a real-life corporate IPO in order to finance a very expensive project, complete with shares and stock value. There are dozens of ships for each class (which can be piloted by other classes, too), hundreds of skills (which certain ships and modules require at varying levels), and many hundreds of modules, possible setups, and tactics.

The game really is what you want to make out of it. If you want to escape the fairies and wizards paradigm, desire developers who play their own game (and are addicted!), capped-shards, simple markets, and (most importantly) the direct plot control of the developers, EVE will definitely take you for a ride. I came from Earth and Beyond, and am kicking myself for not trying it out earlier. There is a fairly sharp learning curve, but if you want something besides a boring grind, rewards come to those who like challenges. I'd recommend to ignore the posts of those who never joined a corp, only played a trial period, or who have only heard from other players, because they don't have the faintest idea what they have missed, or what's changed since they left.

And no, i'm not getting paid. Is your MMO good enough that you would write a long post about it on slashdot? Mine is.

Re:the great eve scam

[HugePedlar]

I've read this before somewhere else. Very entertaining, no argument there. However, there are many doubters as to the truthfulness of this story. Many people have pointed out that such an event would have been recorded and talked about within Eve and other Eve-related communities, yet it is not. Also, none of the characters can be proven to exist or have existed in Eve. Some of the technical details are wrong as well.

I'm not saying it's bollocks or anything, but many Eve veterans do say so. Either way, it's a damn good yarn.