Did that happen? 80k pcu I mean. I thought the record was somewhere right around 65k during the alliance tournament 2 years ago??

TBH, many of the vets that have left, that I know, aren't even bothered enough to see what is happening to/in EVE...they are too busy kerploding tanks.

That's only because they (CCP/EVETV) got every man and his dog to log in alts...hardly indicative of a normal days player participation

If you code it (and it rocks)... they will come...

Personally I'd like to see space games become cool again and play EVE with a couple of million other subscribers.

If having the better product was drove customer usage we'd be using:

Betamax instead of VHS
HD-DVD instead of bluray
Component instead of HDMI
*more that I can't think of but would be interested to see a list*

In fact, many technologies that we DO use were invented 50+ years before they were "invented" yet not adopted.

"better" is relative.

Betamax was a better technology, but Sears wanted too much for the licencing so sony and panasonic went VHS. Consumers therefor went VHS (cheaper) and broadcast networks went beta (for quality). They just diverged into different markets.

HD-DVD was in fact inferior quality despite the lower price point to consumers (blu-ray higher capacity and ability to write and playback at same time). It nevertheless had some licencing problems with manufacturers.

I do use component instead of HDMI.

The EvE experience has always been buggy imho. Yet here we are... still flying CCP spaceships

It's a combination of the ambition of the game and the promise. This summer people just got sick of empty promises.

Betamax was a better technology, but Sony would not licence it to other manufacturers. JVC let everyone licence VHS and the difference in quality was only relevant for about 18 months. VHS soon caught up and surpassed Beta in quality. So all the other manufacturers went VHS. Consumers therefore went VHS (cheaper) and broadcast networks went beta (for quality) ((only at first)). They just diverged into different markets. Beta was just another lame attempt by Sony to control the medium. By the time Sony let others manufacture Beta machines, it was too late.

Perhaps I'm overly optimistic, but with the recent change in game direction, EVE Online may be well on its way to the stated numbers online at the same time. Will the server handle it? Will space seem too crowded? Will the empires discover new systems for null, low and high sec space?

And on a 'not my business, but really wishing' note, will there be a place for those former CCP folks to become current CCP folks again if they so desire, if things continue to go well enough for these numbers to be seen?

50360 on Sunday, not bad at all.

Daily average is climbing back above 30k, which is still down from the 35-36k average that we had back in Jan 2011 and Jan 2010. So down, but definitely improving.

http://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility

Edit : partial ninja'd ! Heh.

There was a dev reply not that long ago (can't find it, but it's there on the old forums) where this exact issue was discussed.
If memory serves right, the current architecture can support somewhere up to 190k (or was it 192k? 196k?) simultaneous users (although the performance won't be pretty) as far as the "interface" nodes are concerned, and if for some reason they get enough subscribers to make that a somewhat less than freak occurrence, they can easily upgrade the hardware to handle more.
The problem right now is users per node, or better said, users per single CPU core (at the extreme, one node handles just one solar system, like, say, the Jita node), and increasing that is an ongoing concern, achievable both via software upgrades/tweaks (plenty of data about that in various blogs) and occasional hardware upgrades.
The long-term goal is to have a node be able to use more than just a single CPU core...

P.S. Found it : http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1446750