EVE Evolved: Competition for EVE Online
by Brendan Drain 
May 25th 2009 at 6:00PM
Filed under: At a glance, Sci-fi, EVE Online, Jumpgate Evolution, Launches, MMO industry, New titles, Vendetta Online, Opinion, Star Trek Online, Virtual worlds, EVE Evolved, Black Prophecy, Star Wars: The Old Republic
In this speculative opinion piece, I examine how EVE reacted to competition in the past and suggest how it may react to the next wave of sci-fi MMOs to hit the market.
Past competition:
Although EVE has had relatively little competition over the past few years, it hasn't always been that way. Aside from small titles such as Vendetta Online pitching to the same audience, EVE has directly faced off with at least two major competitors in the field. The first game to hit the market was Earth and Beyond, which was actually released before EVE in September of 2002. When EVE was first officially released in May 2003, E&B was considered by many to be the superior game of the two. It grabbed 40,000 subscribers at launch while EVE Online struggled below this number until 2004. When the shut-down of E&B was announced, CCP ran a special deal for previous E&B players and successfully absorbed thousands of new players.
Released only a few months after EVE In June 2003, Star Wars Galaxies provided significant competition in the sci-fi market. Achieving a total of around 300,000 subscribers shortly after launch when EVE was floating around the 30,000 mark, it was clear that the Star Wars name had brought a lot of new people into the market. Due to mismanagement of the game, subscriptions fell dramatically from 2005 onward. This prompted even more radical game changes, with the controversial "New Game Enhancements" overhaul at the end of 2005 causing even more players to quit. As with the shut-down of E&B, EVE Online saw a higher than usual increase in subscriptions during this period as thousands of players went looking for an alternative sci-fi MMO to play.
Future competition:
The sci-fi MMO scene has been growing steadily over the past several years. EVE Online has been leading this expansion and their success has caught the attention of some fairly big game studios with some fairly big ideas. Four major sci-fi MMOs are currently under construction and slated for release in the near future:
Black prophecy:
Newcomers to the MMO market, "Reakktor media" began development of this impressive-looking MMO in late 2006. Black Prophecy sounds like it offers a very different game style to EVE Online, favouring first-person viewpoints, level-based skill progression and casual gameplay. If the screenshots are anything to go by, this game is going to be visually stunning, with an art style that favours a realistic, gritty nature that looks eerily like EVE. BP is sure to attract the kind of player that loves EVE's graphical quality but isn't too keen on its gameplay. Since EVE's gameplay and single sandbox universe are its main selling points, there may not be much overlap in the target market of the two games. It's hard to judge just how much impact BP's release into the market will have on EVE but this is one game that I'll be keeping my eye on and trying out at release.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Graill said on 7:43PM 5-25-2009
300k "paying" subscribers is not correct. I have called the CCP offices, they refuse to release or confirm (create your own "who are you to ask" answer to save time) the numbers due to subscription fluctuation, so where does massively get its numbers? (300k) that has been thrown around for the last year on this and other sites, it seems that number is the yearly average for any company unwilling to release true numbers an wants a palusible deniability cushion.
If EVE had close to that, then at peak times the customer base online would show it, it NEVER does, nor does it even come close. To my knowledge EVE has never broken the 100k online barrier, your going to tell me that nearly a quarter million folks, whom are paying for a game wont log on at some point to have that online number show this? Even by chance?
Call an apple an apple or an orange an orange, they are both fruit, no mater how you try describe otherwise.
As for competition, if jumpgate or any new space genre mmo leaves the combat and flight models like EVE (on the rails) then EVE will have no worries as it is established and still has excellent eye candy, right now looking at jumpgate, other than it being "new" EVE wont suffer much because they will offer nothing new other than looks.
EVE, as i have said time after time, could morph into a giant if CCP did what they should to the game.
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Brendan Drain said on 8:12PM 5-25-2009
Must you troll every post about EVE?
CCP does not refuse to release numbers, they send out press releases every now and then in which they post official numbers and further clarify that those are the numbers of active, paid accounts. See here: http://www.ccpgames.com/press/press_releases.asp?pressReleaseID=57 (That took me about 30 seconds to find on google by the way).
The peak concurrent user record is over 50k out of 300k subscribers, which represents 1/6th of the entire userbase being online at the same time by chance at global peak play time, which is sunday evening. That's about average for an MMO, no MMO gets the majority of its accounts logged in at the same time. Did you really expect it to be above 100k? That's over a third of the total number of accounts. Name me a single global MMO that has had over a third of their total subscribed accounts logged in at the same time.
EVE is not played by robots, it's played by people from around the world who all have jobs, committments and the need to sleep. They play an average of a few hours a day and, due to timezones, that means people will be playing at different times based on geographical location. EVE has a huge userbase with the largest segments in the UK, America and Russia as well as smaller percentages of players in other parts of the world (this information obtained from CCP's financial reports).
Dblade said on 8:59PM 5-25-2009
To be fair brendan, I myself distrust a lot of official figures for games, they don't tell a lot of the story. Chalk it up to being a FFXI player, who by their own account has stayed at 500k subscribers for years.
With EVE or even any MMO you have to ask how many of those accounts are multi-boxed to the same player, and aren't really indicative of population. In FFXI sometimes it seems everyone has a multi-boxed pl with them.
Ezhar Fairlight said on 8:05PM 5-25-2009
Reakktor aren't newcomers to the MMO market - they've published Neocron in 2002 and have been running it ever since. Neocron was one of the first MMO FPS/RPG hybrid games, if not the first.
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Brendan Drain said on 8:13PM 5-25-2009
Interesting, I didn't know about that. I'm a little more optimistic about BP now knowing that the studio has a previous MMO under their belt. BP looks amazing but the gameplay is what will make or break it.
Benjamin Grant said on 8:23PM 5-25-2009
Could we have a SINGLE day when we don't get a bazillion posts about frickin' EVE on this site? OMG, please either get more people posting non EVE stuff, get the 87 posts about EVE down to ONE (GASP!) per day (which is more than *I* would like), or just rename the damn site to massivelyEVE.com already.
holy GOD.
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Brendan Drain said on 8:24PM 5-25-2009
No offence but this is a weekly column I write about EVE Online. To expect something other than EVE on it is lunacy.
The Claw said on 9:02PM 5-25-2009
Not to mention that Massively covers both released and in-development MMOs. Of the released ones, Eve is one of the most established and successful (arguably #2 in the world of Western subscription MMOs), so of course it's going to get a fair bit of coverage.
SgtBaker said on 12:16AM 5-26-2009
Benjamin, you should come and play EVE, we do enjoy the public show of bitter carebear tears.
Obvious reply troll is obvious. :-)
Chris said on 3:11AM 5-26-2009
This may come as a huge shock but, you see, the thing is, CCP and EVE have something to report. Unlike some games where you can go weeks without something new or interesting happening in this or that game EVE always has something to report.
Sometimes its a new Chronicle. On occasion it's a patch. Once in a while it's some ridiculous game changing bit of drama brought on by player interaction. Now and again it's the release of some insane machinima like Clear Skies and its sequel.
And, as Brendan has explained every time a troll complains that Massively publishes too much about EVE (really? too much? there's such a thing as too much news about a game?) this is a weekly column. It really can't be helped if in between these weekly posts there's other great EVE news (maybe not great to you but, to someone).
Would I like news about something else as well? Yes. It's just poor luck for other games that they don't have as involved a community as EVE does or that they haven't as yet elicited enough interest to get someone fired up to write a post, weekly, for Massively.
Is there a game that you're passionate about the way Brendan is with regards to EVE? Want to see weekly posts about that game? I suggest you write them.
pkshdk said on 2:38AM 5-26-2009
And I still don't see how hard it is *NOT* to click the link, but oh well.
Keep up the good work Brendan - I'm the other way, I only ever read the EVE posts ;)
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Chai said on 4:41AM 5-26-2009
I play Eve and i do think the numbers are a total lie of 300k paid subs. At any given time you login in at a peak Euro, Asia time slot there will be between 30k-52k players but mostly on weekends. The average i have seen during US time slots to be about 25k-33k. So if you are a math wiz and calculate the numbers of 300k its a small percentage i could never understand.
About CCP/Eve having competition to other new sci-fi games, the only thing i see would be a small intrest of subscribers to Jumgate Evolution and Star Trek Online. Jumpgate i think will be an epic fail due to FPS type fighters of different sizes and roles. If i wanted to play Jumpgate i could just install X-Wing or Tie Fighter from back in the day. Now Star Trek looks very intresting to me. If it is like Eve without the PvP i would switch over in a second. Im pretty sure a massive amount of Star Trek gamer fans would drop all their RTS games to play online with others.
The Star Wars MMO looks really what i would be more into, Most of my games have been fantasy mmo's, but the graphics and professions of SW look great and more up my ally. Till a new type of game comes out ill still be playing Eve although its getting boring to play.
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CMaster said on 6:05AM 5-26-2009
Calling Reakktor newcomers to MMOs is an odd thing for a company that has been in the business since 2001 or so. Neocron was their previous (and still running) release. Opinion is split on it, but regardless they do claim to have learned a lot from both their errors and successes there.
Also, while there will inevitably be some comparisons with EvE as they have the same setting, expect Black Prophecy to in reality be a very different game to EvE. Planetside in space or MechWarrior:Mercenaries MMO are probably better comparisons: http://www.prophecy-network.com/thoughts-and-speculation/41-gameplay-speculation
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