@possum: Even if only 10-15% of those 300,000 *active* accounts are online at any one time, the other 90% still have their skills quietly ticking away, market orders up, mailboxes running - and could show up in the game world at any time. So just because only 10% is 'running hot' at any one time doesn't mean the remainder is forgotten about.

Take the 'city' analogy: maybe you won't have more than 10% of people driving on the roads at any one time, but the city still needs to cope with the needs of the other 90%.

Go read an EVE quarterly economic report - you'll see that CCP's playerbase figures only include active, paid account (and not the extra two characters on most accounts). And so what if some people have more than one account? It's not like people with two accounts require any LESS server power than two accounts owned by different individuals (especially if the multi-account holders are dual-boxing).