Why people have quit?
People have written a lot of reasons but missed the main point.
The main point is… in such a mature MMO, you don’t have just an ever changing game to deal with.
You have epocal shifts in your playerbase as well.
Content creators gone?
Ancient 0.0 alliances gone?
It’s not (just) because CCP love to nerf stuff and cause them to leave. It’s because what in 2005 was the apex of cool (PvP content creating, huge logistic trains and so on) nowadays is appreciated only by the elders, not by the turnover of newer players.
Newer players are usually busier, with far more alternatives to use their free time, have less and less the profile of a “computer enthusiast” of 10 years ago and more and more the profile of the general “sci-fi movie” spectator.
Spectator and busy are the two keywords here.
You can like this or not and the vast majority of today’s players won’t read your disagreement anyway. Because another of their characteristics is that they don’t read the forum.
Here, we are talking about elder people who used to have 8 hours a day (I include myself here) to play THE MMO 10 years ago, who today have 2 hours a day tops (due to family, work…) and share those 2 hours between EvE and other games + social networks.
We are talking about younger people who live with the concept of “selfie” (the most “solo” thing ever) instead of reaching out to a community. People who have grown playing Assassin’s Creed and other, incredibly graphic rich theme park games. Not playing sandbox games.
This new era of EvE players is incompatible with traditional EvE content. EvE content that remained so stagnant anyway.
When I stopped having time to play in large 0.0 organizations and later on, even stopped having time to play in a WH organization, I did not want to leave EvE.
I turned into “playing the markets” and PvE + small scale PVP. I really wanted to keep in touch with my beloved EvE (I am describing my story because it’s a blueprint of many others), even if it meant “scaling down” the involvement.
But each of these features has remained stagnant for a decade, small scale PvP took me too much time too.
Once I had acquired hundreds of billions (I am talking of a time when they were big stuff) and put all PvE content on farm, and got tired by the tiresome task of finding small scale PvP, I did what many others have done: quit EvE and play something else that I can afford to enjoy in my now limited time.
I have just returned to write this and now I’ll go again for perhaps 6 months - 1 year, until I see EvE adapting to the new world of 2020. If it can do that.