No theories, just facts.
Knowledge about this is laid out on this and the old forums.

In short:

CCP ****** up bigtime, people rioted (Google: Jita riots) and unsubbed,
CCP got their ass kicked, Crucible came to make it better.

The End.

And yet were still at 50k players despite this crappy CSM endorsed circle jerking expansion.

Give us WiS without touching/changing FiS and see the player base grow.

Most new players get suckered into joining small corps that dont really do anything. They have a bad/boring experience there and eventually quit.

A lot of players want to "get in on the ground floor" which is admirable but it leads to lots and lots of boredom usually.

I've run a highsec corp and i know my corp's lack of activity was the direct reason for at least 2 people quitting. Since then, i've closed my corp and recommend to newbies to join only large alliances.

I recommend increasing Corp/Alliance creation fees to discourage small corps that almost never survive.
Or
place a limit on how often a player can create a corporation AND require standings to create a corp.

Word of mouth about EVE has been bad for the last few years.

I am on some forums that are not primarily gaming forums and the consensus opinion on these is that EVE is a game that is going downhill. No one is enthusiastic about EVE and no one says you must try it or it is a great game and at best you say EVE is ok.

Until we grow bored and leave the game as there is no endgame for hisec, no endgame for soloers, and no endgame for people with a life

Theories?

Until we grow bored and leave the game as there is no endgame for hisec, no endgame for soloers, and no endgame for people with a life

Then of course, if a player got a life, or don't feel like making new friends who can stab his back for free, or think that losing his means to have fun is not fun at all, then such player should not be playing EVE... and they aren't, actually. They are leaving the game almost as fast as new players subscribe, thus EVE doesn't grows.

Until we grow bored and leave the game as there is no endgame for hisec, no endgame for soloers, and no endgame for people with a life

For example, when I first looked at Ishtar, and saw it would take me 57 days JUST to be able to fly it, without any supporting or weapons still training at all? That's crazy. Show me an MMO where you have to wait 57 days real time for anything. Most other MMOs you hit "endgame" with 6-10 days played - that is have access, at least theoretically, to the best gear in the game.

Yes, I know, there's a general view that everyone these days is looking for instant gratification, and that's what killed WoW (no it wasn't, it was killed by Activision just like Bioware was killed by EA) and blah blah blah. But you have to remember that it was supposed to be a GAME, and people play games for FUN. And honestly, for whom is it fun to wait 30+ days real time to get access to new stuff? I get the whole "EVE is a hobby" thing though, but that's also partially what keeps this game's population from taking off.

Now I don't entirely agree with that. Can you really go, in World of Warcraft as an example, from 1 to 85 in less than 57 days as a new player and be raiding the top-end content?

Yes. Easily. The barriers for getting into endgame content have drastically dropped over the years in WoW. You can level to 85 in a couple weeks, run some five mans, run the "Looking for Raid" tier, and bam you are geared for top end content.

Wow. I last played actively with Burning Crusade, dabbled a bit with Lich King but had no idea that it was so easy now to get to the top tier hardmodes! So what do people do when they are fully geared out and max level within a couple of weeks? They're basically out of content. Or do they just sit there in their pretty gear doing the same things over and over and over?

The EvE model with no defined endgame has a lot going for it...but the ruthless PvP style will make it so that we never see the big numbers here. That's fine with me, personally.

Then over that time you should have noticed the average player count has steadily increased. Details available at eve-offline.

I logged on on Wednesday to a server with 10k on (it was shortly after patch after all), which used to be the actual daily average back in 05-ish.

The only hiccup recently was Incarna, where no growth happened and some people left, Crucible has seen people return and slow growth.

You do realize that Eve-offlines graphs go right to left?

Eve still has not recovered from the stupidity of last year....and personally, spiffing up noob ships really shouldn't even be on the radar....

It does. You have to decide what your endgame is. That is the nature of the game.

I don't want a new ride. I want to be able to set long term goals that can be achieved on my own (solo endgame), one hour at a time (casual endgame), without it all being fukked by the first ******** blob passing by (hisec endgame), or being stolen by the first moderfuker I entrust (solo endgame again).

Or, if none of the above, i want to be able to realize my first goal and be able to hit back griefers as hard and as impunely as they do to innocent players, so they shed a lot of tears and leave the game with a lesson that actions have got consequences.

(We were ganked, so this may be a double post)

I've been getting that a lot today, 1st time I've been getting that over the last two months.

Same.

I don't get it... Thousands of players knew thousands of potential players whom would join just if they got rid of learning skills...

They did get rid of learning skills so where are thos thousands of newsubs?

Oh wait... there was another motive..................

Now I don't entirely agree with that. Can you really go, in World of Warcraft as an example, from 1 to 85 in less than 57 days as a new player and be raiding the top-end content?

It is a slower paced game; that is just the way it is. The key is to set yourself intermediary goals and to not only focus on "ZOMG I iz getting more powerful !11!!". You can do a lot with other ships that you are trained to fly and you can accomplish a lot in-game.

But that is the design difference - EVE is aimed at people who can set goals for themselves in-game. It is not intended for people who need to see skill / power / gear levels increase.

Sorry about the gloomy post, but that's the main reason EVE was so hard to get into. For me, anyway. Very few MMOs do such a fantastic job of totally depressing a player as EVE. Especially now that time to train shows up in the info window. Nothing beats looking at a module and seeing 42 days, 68 days, etc. Yeah, not depressing at all...