In a recent study of EVE Online’s subscriber base by market research company DFC Intelligence, EVE Online was found to have the second largest subscriber base in North America and Europe of any MMORPG, trailing World of Warcraft. EVE Online also has the best subscriber retention of any MMO except World of Warcraft, though there is no information on what metric or length of time was used to determine retention. 

But perhaps even bigger news, is the number of records broken for concurrent users. During the Alliance Tournament Qualifiers on Sunday, CCP smashed their record for the number of players logged into the same universe at the same time, reaching 60,453 pilots in total. The number is several thousand higher than their previous peak concurrent user mark. 

At the same time, nearly 20,000 users were simultaneously logged in to view the live stream of the qualifiers for Alliance Tournament VIII.

The amazing part of these numbers is simply that the game is EVE, a non-traditional MMORPG with a notoriously difficult learning curve and an entirely different play style and progression. Churning out these kinds of numbers should be send some signals to MMO developers everywhere that WoW clones are not the only solution.

(Reposted from front page – thanks SWATJester!)