After an initial spike, concurrent users are back down to what they were prior to the Alpha change. CCP’s continual chase of the causal users seems to have fallen off a cliff. CCP’s changes to make eve more causal friendly have seemingly done little to actually bring causals to the game while simultaneously angering and driving away many of its traditional core players who came to Eve for a hard core game and prefer a hard core gaming experience.
CCP has seemingly shot its wad - it has gone micro transaction, sells sp, and went limited ftp with alphas, all were scared cows that nobody ever thought ccp would touch, yet none of this has goosed user numbers. There is seemingly no more low hanging fruit for ccp to grab at. The introduction of daily missions - an overt attempt to bribe people to log in everyday seems to reinforce the notion that CCP is out of big ideas to fix their user numbers. Maybe selling skins and sp balance out the loss of subscriptions but maybe its time to go back to basics. Maybe its time to remember what made eve great to begin with. Maybe CCP should forget about its losing battle trying to win over the causals and go back to making a better game for its hardcore users?
As an aside when I first started playing, I was told by an older player (who has since stopped playing) that you would know the end was near for eve when 3 things happened - 1) ftp; 2) microtransactions; and 3) they open jove space for players. Well 2 of those signs have occurred. the end is nigh?