New EVE quarterly economic newsletter

Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson from CCP has released another quarterly EVE Online economic newsletters, this time for the 1st quarter of 2009. Despite the quarterly name this is the first report since the one for Q1 2008. This time the PDF weighs in at 48 pages of editorial, graphs and images. The first graph in the document show the number of active paying accounts that the game has had from launch up until March 2009, ending shortly before the point at which CCP announced they have passed 300,000 subscribers. Interestingly although the graph shows strong growth from November 2008 onwards, which is when CCP released the Quantum Rise expansion, the actual numbers before that showed a slight decline in subscriptions that is not addressed in the commentary.

There is also an extensive analysis of skill points, with the difference in the number of points in each skill point group for each race showing correlation between the race of the character and the skills trained. Interestingly Gallente characters tend to have more points in drone skills, while Caldari characters have the highest missile skills. This seems to indicate that players are following their racial ship choices for their skill training, which is not something that the game enforces. There's a lot more information in the report itself, including detail on ship prices over time, Tech 3 production for the first month and mineral trading.

You can read the full document at the dev blog, and follow the comments from players on the EVE Online forums.