Ransom Adventure #3

It's not all the time you flutter about your system and see a Stratios on scan several times.  Deciding to try my luck I pull out some combat probes, mark the Stratios' location and hope he missed my quick scan.  I decided to for-go my Legion in favor of my Vengeance because I though a legion would be a little overkill.  I also thought this was the Astero and not the Stratios XD

Landing close I begin targeting only to have him cloak, thinking fast I start clicking frantically at his last known location.  Getting lucky I de-cloak him and start my target lock once again.

[ 2014.01.20 21:44:21 ] (notify) For initiating combat your security status has been adjusted by -0.0085.
[ 2014.01.20 21:44:22 ] (combat) Warp scramble attempt from you to Stratios.

*Shooting commences*

*His ECM drones break my lock and he warps out*

Mostly Deleted Ramblings

I think Sugar brings up a subject which is interesting in it's own aspect.  Even more so when specific parts are analyzed and brought to the forefront.  Her post and the comments section got me to thinking and writing which ended in the following post...

I'd like to first start out my response by separating a few distinct words.  My goal with this is to separate some common misconceptions that have oft been presented as fact or as a reason to do something.  Depending on which or combination of these words are used, causes great confusion and leads to horribly bad decisions being made.  Some of the examples I present will probably not be well received...meh.

BB#52 Steady As She Goes

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 52nd edition! For more details about what the blog banters are visit the Blog Banter page.

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Go to the always useful EVE-Offline.net and take a look at the All Time (weekly average) graph for concurrent accounts logged in.

For the past four and a half years, the graph has hovered around that 30,000 mark; it is, for all intents and purposes, a plateau. But everything must come to an end sooner or later and that is what this blog banter is about.

What's on the other side of that plateau? 

Is there any path for CCP to follow to raise those numbers upwards for a sustained period, or is EVE going to enter a decline to lower logged in numbers from this point? How soon will we see an end to this plateau? Months? Years? Or will you argue that 'never' is a possibility? Or you can look at the root causes of the plateau and tackle the question if it could have been avoided or shortened if CCP had taken different actions in the past.

I see this plateau in a couple different ways.  I see it as stagnating in terms of expansion, the question of how many of those accounts are unique to one owner, and I even see it as a good investment.  For a video game like Eve, which has a niche type play-base.  It's amazing to see that it's stuck around for 10 years, four and a half of those years have it hovering around 30k concurrent accounts logged in as a weekly average.  While it may seem somewhat disconcerting that it hasn't gained in popularity; on the flip side it hasn't really lost either.