EVE: Viridian Received A Lukewarm Reception

On 13 June, CCP released the Viridian expansion for EVE Online. Expansions in MMORPGs are designed to boost interest in a game and, at the very least, encourage lapsed players to log back in to try the game again. Did CCP succeed with Viridian? Let's take a look at some preliminary numbers to find out.

The average number of concurrent users from Jester

After an initial spike to over 20,000 players logged on at any one time, the 7-day average settled back down to follow the 30-day average. The number of players stayed the same over the course of June. While down slightly compared to May, the year-over-year increase of around 12% from June 2022 is still encouraging. Hopefully the increase translates to increased YoY sales on the next Pearl Abyss investors call.

The same trend is visible when looking at the ship explosion numbers on Dotlan. In high security space, the daily number of NPCs destroyed by players decreased 8.1% from May to June, but increased 6.4% compared to June 2022. In null sec, the number of NPCs destroyed rose 9.7% month-over-month, while compared to June 2022, the number increased 44.1% up to 4,875,341 per day. Higher numbers of NPCs exploding at the hands of players often results in increased profits for CCP and Pearl Abyss.

What about low sec? The Uprising expansion looked to strengthen that area of space and to a large degree succeeded. Did Viridian continue the momentum?

The number of player-owned ships exploding in low security spaced dropped from 7,198 per day in May down to 6,834 in June, a 5.1% decrease. But compared to June 2022, the number of ships exploding still increased by 34.1%. The 205,021 player ships lost in low sec represents the 8th consecutive month at least 200,000 player-owned ships exploded in the security band.

With only two weeks of data, long term trends are hard to predict. An observer might expect, however, better numbers than players posted in June. One of the reasons for a late May/early June expansion is to hold off the traditional summer slump for a month or maybe even two. By doing so, more players are hopefully playing as the winter expansion approaches and the number of players increases in the long run. We'll have to see how the strategy plays out throughout the rest of the year.