Flying Solo In EVE: Beware Of Ghost Sites

Yesterday I mentioned the three-year trend in EVE Online where the average number of concurrent users has increased by approximately 60%. That remarkable statistic is one of the reasons I start each of these posts with what Chribba's Eve-offline.net displays each week. 

The week of January 19-26, 2026

And sure enough, two months after the launch of the Catalyst expansion the ACU is running in a range of 25,500 - 26,500 accounts logged in at any one time according to the site. Next week Jester runs his graphs for the end of the month and I'm really interested to see the results for January.

The entire history of the Global PLEX Market

A factor that influences the number of players in the game is the price of PLEX. The normal price of one month of game time in the New Eden Store is 500 PLEX. That price declined by 100,000 ISK per PLEX last week, making the price of a month's gametime approximately 2.2-2.3 billion ISK. When the global PLEX market launched last July the price was over 3 billion ISK.

My topic today is a quick reminder about ghost sites. While Ray Parker Jr ain't afraid of no ghosts, I received a reminder of why I should be. I was probing down sites on my combat main, saw a data site, and warped in flying a Cheetah. I was in high sec and had nothing to worry about, right? I kind of ignored the warning about the site being a Lesser Angel Covert Research Facility. Usually Covert Research Facility throws up a big red flag, but I didn't have my probing window opened wide enough to see the full site name.

Now, I was still okay up until the time I got greedy. The first can I opened gave me two Ascendency blueprint copies. At that time I should have just scooped up the BPCs and warped off. Instead I tried to hack more cans. Sure enough, the site blew up on me. Not only did I lose my Cheetah but I lost one of the blueprints as well.

The worst part of the story is, I had a Stratios in a neighboring system set up to withstand the blast of an exploding ghost site. Oh well, every few years I have to relearn the lesson that everything potentially can kill me. But don't be like me. Fly safe everyone.