A Look Back At Activity In EVE Online in 2023

Another year is in the books for CCP and EVE Online. The game has more lives than a cat, which is ironic as the developers still refuse to add cat ears to the game. Instead of user interest sliding into oblivion, metrics observable to players indicates EVE experienced a bit of a renaissance. in 2023.

According to Jester's average concurrent user graph, EVE maintained its gains from the Uprising expansion, even during the summer. As CCP pumped up the in-game activity related to the Havoc expansion, players came back, The dip in December is attributable to players who fell off when the bargins did, the holiday dip, and the first Vanguard playtest drawing players away from the spaceship game.

Data from Dotlan Maps

Looking at explosions across security bands in known space shows growth in all categories. Two categories stand out. The first is player-owned ships killed in low security space. The numbers showed a 30% increase in the ships killed in the security band compared to 2022. The below graph shows the month-by-month totals of player ships lost for each full year since the purchase of CCP by Pearl Abyss in 2019.

Except for the pandemic months of April-June 2020, the year 2023 saw the most kills in each month of the remaining 9 months of the year.

The other significant statistic was the 36.8% year-over-year increase in the number of NPCs players killed in null security space in 2023.

While the number of NPCs dying each month still is not at the levels seen before CCP imposed the Scarcity Era, at least the developers are allowing income generation to increase, if not thrive. At least as far as ratting is concerned.

The year 2023 picked up from where 2022 left off with the launch of the Uprising expansion. Thoughout the year the number of people playing EVE stayed consistently higher than the year before. Eventually the lead-up to Havoc resulted in a rise in average concurrent users of over 20% from the first day of the year to the last. And the future? I'm just hoping CCP can maintain their work from 2023.