Five months after the launch of EVE Online's latest expansion Uprising, the game's activity has managed to retain most of the player interest generated since November.
At the end of April, the average number of user accounts (ACU) logged in at any one time was 19,000. Before the expansion, that figure hovered under 16,000 accounts. With the hype for the next expansion, Viridian, beginning with this week's announcement, the Uprising expansion did the job of increasing activity, at least on the global Tranquility game shard.
Since the Uprising expansion's main feature involved upgrades to factional warfare, a look at low sec activity is in order.
For the sixth month in a row, the number of player ships destroyed in low security space exceeded 200 thousand. The last time that occurred was in 2018 in the wake of EVE turning to the free-to-play model. In April, the average number of player ships lost each day fell 22.4% from 9155 ships per day in March to 7109 last month. But year-over-year, the number of player ships exploding to the hands of others jumped 31%, from 5396 per day in 2022 to 7109 in 2023.
Since 2019, the only April with more player ship losses in low sec occurred in 2020, but that is attributable to the implementation of the COVID-19 lockdowns initiated at the start of the pandemic.
As we begin looking at Uprising in the rear-view mirror, I would have to declare the expansion a success. We do not have financial information covering the period since November yet, but judging by activity in the expansion's main area of focus, I'd say the expansion began what hopefully is a long recovery of player numbers in New Eden.
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