New Blood

Yesterday with the Sansha incursion in my low sec constellation still raging I decided to look into reports from a reliable source that the belts are going dry by the time the North American prime time hits.  Since the reports came from Genesis I thought the problem might be the New Order driving miners from their interdiction systems forcing miners into over-mining other systems in Gallente high sec.  But after reading the report I then checked with Chribba's web site Eve Offline and saw Tranquility had hit a peak concurrent user (PCU) number of 59,320.  If this is not a record number for a non-Alliance Tournament day on TQ it is probably amongst the top 5 of all-time.  So instead of scanning the asteroid belts looking for ore depletion I headed over to the system of Embod in Metropolis to check out another theory I had read: new players are stripping the belts in their Ventures.


Another reason that heading to my old stomping grounds was more attractive than flying around asteroid belts was that Wandering Rose had not done the career agent paths there so could also pick up a Venture.  So fly off to high sec, switched into a Rifter at the high sec station I use to store all my big ships I don't use in low, and headed off to visit the career agent.

What I saw in local was a shock, and not just because I am used to the solitude of low sec.  Embod contained 126 pilots.  I am not kidding.  At 2300 on a Sunday night in game a newbie system had 126 pilots.  Scrolling through local I saw that over 25% of the pilots were so new their portraits still did not appear next to their names.  When I needed to manufacture items for the missions I flew to a neighboring system because all of the manufacturing slots in Embod were full.  That is something else I never saw before.  By the time I finished doing the 10 missions for the career agent local was down to 90, but having lived in the area grinding Republic Parliament courier missions I can say I never saw Embod with populations that high.

Sure, this is anecdotal evidence but gives the "hordes of newbies in Ventures" theory a boost.  Let's take a look at the Venture to see its capabilities.  The first fitting is for a new miner who is fresh from doing all of the career mission agents.  He has over 2 million ISK in his wallet and a few skills trained and a few modules lying around with which to fit a ship.  Oh, and don't forget the Venture.

A day one Venture fit

With the first fit our fearless new pilot can fill up the 5,000m³ ore hold in a little less than 30 minutes.  Based on the prices for veldspar in Metropolis yesterday a new player could easily make 700,000 ISK after taxes and fees for 1 fill-up.  Sure, the poor pilot doesn't have a hauler big enough to carry two loads of ore (unless CCP changed the career mission agents to give out a Hoarder), but for a new player that is a lot of cash. 

A possible Venture fit 5 days into playing Eve

Given the price of two ore holds of veldspar and a little over four days of training time a new player can afford buy the modules and skill books to fly the above fit.  While not great, a new player can mine 5,000m³ of ore in less than 20 minutes.  Mining ore in a newbie zone is boring so these new pilots are venturing out to other systems with even more valuable ore.  Our intrepid young pilots still need to worry about transporting the ore to market so are probably buying transport ships, and then combat ships like the new cruisers.  At least, that's how I thought when I first started playing.

Perhaps someone needs to check with training organizations like Eve University about new recruitment rates, but I would gather that we are seeing a burst of new players into New Eden and not just old pilots purchasing their fourth, fifth and sixth accounts.  I don't think even CCP knows for sure.

Update:  Here are some tweets from CCP Fozzie.  Apparently he read the post.

@noizygamer No doubt about it, we're seeing what you are and it makes us happy. I've been hanging out in new player help a fair bit lately.
— CCP Fozzie (@CCP_Fozzie) February 11, 2013

@noizygamer The Venture is amazing for new players, but its output is not unbalanced compared to other mining options.
— CCP Fozzie (@CCP_Fozzie) February 11, 2013