I’ve been playing this game for a long time, sometimes more, sometimes less. I see 30,000 online in the game loading master. I don’t believe there are that many players online. Is there any proof? I think the real number is 4–9k players.
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That number is signed in accounts, some players have only one account signed in at a time (if you have an Alpha signed in you are forbidden to sign in any other for example while others simply do not or not always multibox) while others have several accounts signed in at the same time. 
I think you’re right.
When server population is questioned on games I play, I attempt to find them on Steam. I don’t play them on Steam when they are offered direct from the publisher. I view Steam as the middle man, just like The Office, they didn’t make paper and they didn’t sell paper, they were the middle man who took paper from the maker and handed it off to the seller. Steam charts is a decent 3rd party tool to give you a rough idea how many are online. But it is up to you to come up with a multiplier.
For example; as I type the Eve launcher reports 27.9 K users online now. Steam reports 5 K are theirs, so IF you trust the launcher 100% the Steam multiplier is about 5.5. You can also bounce the numbers off other game tracker sites, however most just read Steam and give you their numbers.
Next Eve allows us to multi-box multiple omega accounts. Let’s assume the Eve numbers are 100% correct 27.900 accounts running. How many are the same person? Let’s assume a divisor of 2.5 because I have seen up to 6 running at once in You Tube vids and not everyone own multiple omega accounts. We now get 11.16 K for the player count.
This is not a unique question on games, I knew one user in a game telling me they jumped server to server counting heads. Since Eve has only the one server get to flying and start counting those ships!
I use steam for all my games except EvE.
I don’t think I’m that unusual in this regard, so I expect EvE has a larger multiplier than most.
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