Recently I have been seeing about 30K online at any given time. Maybe 40K for a little while during a weekend peak. I don't want to argue the exact numbers, but there is a realtively huge discrepancy between the number of subs and active online numbers. Why is this?

It shouldn't be this way, should it? I mean, I share a system with a guy who has a personal mining fleet of an Orca and 4 hulks, and he says he is planning on purchasing 10 accounts total. Whenever he is online, ALL of his accounts are active.

Another scenario is a lo/null sec explorer that will almost always take a scouting alt while he works the sites. Again, if this type of player is online, so is his alt account. (This is me.)

What am I missing, and why does this discrepancy exist? Or are there really only 50K active subs and not the 300K that I have heard about via repeated heresay?

Wow.

You know, I live in a city of over 80,000 people, but when I go outside, I only ever see at most 30 or 40. I wonder why that is.

Put this on your other monitor. Now your wish is granted.

Because of Falcon.

It is because you are playing on the European server. The Asian and American servers have roughly the same amount of people on them too. Each of the three servers has around 100k subs at anytime. That is where the 300k number comes from.

Then you can collectively sue the ISP for not delivering the services they promised.

I don't understand why there is so much public concern about subscription numbers lately.

Wow.

You know, I live in a city of over 80,000 people, but when I go outside, I only ever see at most 30 or 40. I wonder why that is.

A city full of anti-social douchebags...yeah, right, like RL=Eve or something...

30K average for 300K is pretty accurate really.
30K x 8 average 3 hr play time is 240K + 60K alts.

If EVE is back down to 300K active, it took a big hit though. It was in the 500K active before the Null Sec signature nerf.

I make no prediction of the effect of Dust 514, except that at worst I don't think it will cost EVE any perceptible number of subscriptions.

If Dust is a success, that population may well dwarf the Eve population.

If Dust is a success, that population may well dwarf the Eve population.

This is exactly what CCP are trying to remove, the high risk on customer churn with large number of accounts a factor of 10 is massive and way too risky as a business, they cannot absorb that, we saw that Incarna time when people quit. That high factor of customer to account ratio is why they nearly ended up bacnkrupt, and could again if dust fails.

They need to add more single player accounts at a higher rate than those with multiple accounts in order to absorb the churn.

That won't ever happen in EVE.

Meta Game is too forced and was built in years ago to grab multiple accounts cash from the base. Look at can mining as an example. It would have been so much simpler to just put a 40K GSC after anchor but they wanted the Alt hauler accounts.