Funnily enough, it was a focus on improved PvE that led to the first major downturn in player activity in EVE, breaking an almost decade-long trend of ever-increasing growth.

In that respect, EVE proved to be very much like WoW: it turned out that in both instances, once consumed, this type of content doesn't create much in the way of player retention.

88 Pages of comments and I cant see any from CCP / Devs.

For a long time my friends and I ran a small high sec industry corp, we had been in game for many years and had seen it all, alliances before alliances existed, null sec before jump bridges, and even mining before barges.

The politics that is rife within most alliances pissed us off so we formed our own little corp. High Sec industry with supply chains stretching in all directions we also had a low sec capital build operation going with a little support from the locals who would protect the freighters for a cut of the profits. We had probably 30 accounts between us all, funded by the corp. Sure we had characters out of corp still doing PVP and PVE and still had a presence in a few alliances.

Sadly the game changed. High Sec industry became a chore, gankers made freighting more challenging and CCP wanted to take the game into a direction that we could not follow.

Asset wise maybe we have 2-3 trillion ISK between us probably more and we still have those assets. Gradually we tore down the POS's and mothballed the accounts.

We lost interest, we didn't want eve to become a job, we all had jobs in our real life. Eve is a fine game but with 99% of the ISK and power in the hands of maybe 20 people its lost its way. I don't see a future for Eve as new players are at a huge disadvantage. Plex prices are so high people can not make the in game ISK to fund them, they have to work twice as hard as a year ago and Eve should not be a job.

Once the plex on this alt character is out it will be mothballed with the others. We still get the begging letters from CCP asking us to come back. They never replied to my emails / forum posts so the emails get binned.

The decline for eve is terminal and it can not be saved there will come a point when CCP can no longer fund the game and further development. Skins alone can not save Eve. I give it another year. This year will be the final fan fest I suspect, I remember the 1st fan fest for I was there and I have still to see planetary flight in game.

Yep.

And yet with players with far less resilience than you dropping more accounts in ever larger numbers:

Why is the price perpetually rising?

Remove incursions. Raw isk is no longer being dropped into everyone's wallet. Isk is worth more. Plex prices drop. Missions are completed, markets are formed, loot and salvage is stolen and most importantly; Content is created.

after reading that ccp dude's tongue lashing of a blogger about the state of the game and how the dev's are working to better the game.. I still say.. eve online and ccp still just do not get it..

well they better catch on.. cause its eve vs everyone in 2016.

you better come out of the corner swinging hits cause if you miss ccp games.. someone is going to land a TKO on you.

hope you enjoy boxing..cause the numbers keep on falling and your getting close to a 10 count out.

You can have your own opinion. You can't have your own facts. They are stubborn things, no?

So this basically means we need to gank new players for our future. I think I have a new calling.

At least I have analytical data to support my argument. You have... an opinion.

No, the data clearly supports my argument. Your only argument is that you think it's wrong, without having the data to counter it.

Concerning CCP's financials, 2014 was an atypical year since they derecognized WoD and that made a -22 million $ hit in their financials. As for 2015, we know that they spent an estimate of 16 million dollars to buy back their bonds, which has removed the need to reelase their financial statements. Also we know that CCP has obtained 30 million dollars to develop VR projects of which we know very little beyond some prototypes shown at Fanfest and Vegas.

Depending on how VR pans out, CCP's prospects in the short and middle term look in a range going from "fine enough" to "oh my God".

But that's because of VR products, not EVE; and so far, EVE still is the cash cow for everything else. I don't think that DUST 514 has paid itself back, no matter if 3,000 guys online pay for the operational cost so it is not losing money.

Micro-transactions door were opened years ago and have been embraced with open arms. You don't know our playerbase anymore.

I am as guilty as any, I have hundreds of ship skins. I paid for them in-game but it still supported someone paying to get ahead with real money.

We slowly let CCP introduce things toxic to this game, Plex, Skins, Multi-Train. Now we are numb to SP swapping, SP buying, ship and module purchasing, all things coming in the future I promise.

So whether we keep the sub model or go f2p, micro-transactions are going to make this game look like Farmville over the next couple years. And we did it to ourselves.

Sorry meant 60k, hit the wrong number :)

Voice chat is what keeps these games alive.

Text chat is for anti-social people who want to limit their interaction.

The only reason I am playing EVE again this month is that my org leader wanted to play it while waiting on Star Citizen to release more features.

We use teamspeak mostly.

The problem with EVE no is that it lacks voice communication across a broad spectrum.