While I was scanning through an EVE related forum the other day, I saw someone ranting on about how some new changes to the game would affect "my EVE". Now, as much as seeing this kind of perceived ownership in regard to games usually has me reaching for the nearest sharp object to jam through my skull, it actually got me thinking, what is "my EVE"?

This year has been very successful for EVE Online, thanks in large part to our latest free expansion EVE Online: Apocrypha and a return to retail. We started out the year with around 244,000 subscribers and in five short months we've had a 22% growth in subscribers PLAYNC time card. In the past couple days we surpassed the impressive milestone of 300,000 active subscribers. That doesn't include trial accounts. We've broken our peak concurrent user record 3 times this year alone, standing now at an impressive 53,850 in the same universe. That is exponential growth. We couldn't think of a better birthday present than having more people playing EVE time code than ever before. It is another sweet reminder of EVE's boundless potential.

EVE Online celebrates its 6th year of existence today--May 6th. That's six strong years of continuous growth thanks to tireless integration of user feedback into game design and pushing to Lineage2 cdkey release around two major free expansions per year. Our single-shard world, where everyone plays on the same shared server, plaync game card has seen tremendous benefit from having each player able to interact and affect each other player in a persistent manner. From massive fleet battles to individual bonds of trust, every pilot in EVE has the potential to rock the ship of hundreds of thousands of others by their actions.

At one population milestone we saw agreements form between alliances. At another we were able to fully turn over the economy to the players. As the population of GW cdkey New Eden has grown, so have the instances of emergent behaviors of its pilots. A 6 year persistant history. A living history where truly brilliant strategies have unfolded. Truly terrible betrayals unveiled. We are excited to see what will happen next.

Games are very much a subjective medium, but with MMOs in particular there is such a wide range of content that it's possible for players to have radically different experiences. EVE time card is very similar to the age old Elite series of games, or the more recent X series- space-sims with massive, open universes, where you can fight, trade, and explore to your heart's content. Now, with the addition of other human players to the universe, the possibility for dramatic events suddenly becomes quite ridiculous. EVE runs on player interaction, with people that will either help you out, shoot you, or a combination of the two. These interactions define our experiences in the game, and this is what separates the MMO from any other genre.