As Aisha said, typically when CCP discusses these things, they are referring to “new accounts” and not “unique players”. They’re also usually referring to “active accounts” which varies, but typically means something like “has logged in during the past X months” or “has played at least X hours during the past N months”.
So think of this as “out of all the recently active accounts, almost half of them are new accounts created in the past 5+ months”. This is in line with some other data CCP has published showing that there’s a high turnover of new accounts, but not many of them stay for the long term.
The thread Arthur is referring to is here, recapping the Data Team discussion from Fanfest 2025:
Reddit - Fanfest 2025 Data Team Panel Summary