EVE Online passes the 200k subscription mark
CCP announced earlier that EVE Online has surpassed the 200,000 subscription count, (a number CCP has been flirting with for many months now) which does not include more than 45,000 trial accounts in effect. I'm not sure how many trial accounts were active six months ago, but given the release of the Mac and Linux clients there a lot of new capsules floating out there in space.
Not to diminish this accomplishment, it's important to note that these are subscriptions and not unique subscribers. CCP has been pushing "The Power of 2" heavily on their current playerbase and hundreds if not thousands have several subscriptions. I also believe CCP could have already hit their ultimate goal to have a bigger subscription base than Iceland's population, 300k, if they had retuned the newbie experience. Free game client; free expansions; decent rookie help channel; all this ease-to -accessibility is fantastic, but it still isn't enough, and I'm sure CCP has some telling numbers on how many players didn't get past the tutorial. CCP is addressing a small part of this problem in 2008 and beyond with a planned in-game EVE-pedia, but I am a bit surprised they haven't emphasized more focus on improving the newbie experience aside from the newbie tutorial revamp, which could be a lot better.
EVE may not be the behemoth WoW is, but EVE has proven to keep a slow steady growth since it launched in 2003, which normally isn't the case for most MMOGs. The last true pinnacle point in overall subscriptions occurred in early 2006 when EVE reached 100,000 subscriptions. The players drive this game. The players are the content. I'm looking forward to the day when EVE actually breaks 300k unique subscribers.
