Is 60,000 The New 50,000?

Yesterday saw EVE Online's Tranquility shard hit a peak concurrent user (PCU) mark of 61,580 at 19:01 EVE time.  No events like the 10th anniversary celebration or Alliance Tournament contests were going on.  Just an expansion and some fighting out in Fountain or Delve or some place out in bubble space.

PCU Numbers From Eve-Offline.net

For those wondering, the PCU record for Tranquility is 65,303 set during last month's 10 anniversary celebration.  How frequent of an event is exceeding 60,000?  Yesterday was only the 7th recorded time.

5 May 2013	.....	65,303
23 Jan 2011	.....	63,170
30 Jan 2011	.....	62,333
9 Jun 2013	.....	61,580
6 Feb 2011	.....	60,782
3 Mar 2013	.....	60,476
6 Jun 2010	.....	60,453

Notice the list is getting long?  More importantly, three of the seven times the PCU exceeded 60,000 occurred this year.  Of course, 2011 also saw three days exceed 60,000.  But back in 2011 not only did the numbers decline but the War on Bots began in earnest in February 2011.  The same occurred earlier this year.  The PCU numbers were growing but two days after the number was reached in March Team Security introduced a new bot detection method that knocked the concurrency numbers way down.

So does Team Security have something up their sleeves to keep the numbers down?  If not, I expect we'll continue to see the PCU top 60,000 on Sundays.  Well, at least as long as the fighting continues in null sec anyway.