Professional Documents
Culture Documents
EVE Online
November 2007
Editor
Researcher
Kjartan Þ. Halldórsson
Disclaimer
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Ed i t o r i a l
The QEN has three major subjects this time around. The first
subject is demographics, in which we look at population, skill points
and security status. The second subject is the macroeconomics of
EVE Online, where we focus on the monetary supply. The third and
final subject is price levels and measurement of inflation/deflation
in the universe of EVE.
The main finding is that despite a rapid deflation over the past
year, there is underlying inflationary pressure which needs to be
addressed in the coming months. This inflationary pressure comes
from increased purchasing power and increased money supply.
Enjoy!
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Demographics
comes as no surprise that half of the characters have less than one
million skill points. Another 25% of all characters have between
one and ten million skill points, and the last 25% have more than
ten million skill points. There are 191 characters that have more
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than 70 million skill points, and of those only four have 80 million
skill points or more. The character with the highest number of skill
points is just shy of 91 million; a loyal pilot that has been with EVE
since the game began in May 2003.
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A snapshot of the status on October 19th, 2007 was used to find
out which ship players happen to be in at downtime. We found that
Spaceship name No. of ships
78% of all characters were located in high security areas (security Raven 10,722
status at 0.5 or higher), 13% were located in low security areas, Drake 9,156
Kestrel 8,856
and 9% were in 0.0 at the time the snapshot was taken. So, the Rifter 6,738
majority were flying in high sec. But what were they flying then? Hulk 5,854
Iteron Mark V 5,041
Bestower 4,997
The Raven holds top place with 10,722 pilots flying that ship, Badger Mark II 4,853
Caracal 4,831
followed by the Drake, Kestrel and Rifter. This is consistent with Merlin 4,591
findings from the Economic Dev Blog No. 2, which revealed that the Other 172,410
Rookie ships and capsules 151,054
Raven was the most produced (and lost) vessel in EVE.
Shuttles 44,644
Total ships 433,747
It is interesting to note that the top four ships are fighting vessels,
the fifth one is a mining vessel (Hulk), but vessels in sixth through
eighth place are all industrial vessels. This could be interpreted as Table 1: Spaceship that pilots were flying just before downtime.
Raven is in the top seat followed closely by the Drake. Of the top
an indicator about the relative importance of the mining, industry/ 10 vessels six are fighting vessels and four are mining/industrial
vessels
trading, and mission running professions. If that is the case,
then the interesting observation is how many are in non-fighting
professions. However, note that this is a single snapshot which we
cannot draw any strong conclusions from. But this is a statistic that
will be watched closely in the future.
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and streams are identified. The graph will also show the stream
of goods and services floating between these key enablers and a
reversal stream which shows the flow of currency as payments
for these goods and services. The economic system of EVE Online
has been described as a “sink and faucet” system where currency
trickles into the system through various sources and then leaks
out again through several sinks. Both the source and the sinks are
created by CCP, the operator of EVE Online. In Figure 5 to the right,
the standard economic model of a macroeconomic system and the
sink/faucet description of a virtual economy are combined in order
to show a descriptive figure of economic transactions within EVE
Online.
Pilots (Box B) earn their income from two major sources: by providing Figure 5: The macroeconomic system of EVE. The figure shows
services to Non-Player Characters or Corporations (NPC’s) and by the flow of items and ISK between industrialists and pilots. It
also shows how loot and ISK flows in and out through the faucets
trading on the market. Services provided to NPC’s are the faucets and sinks system.
of the virtual economic system and pump new ISK into the EVE
universe. These services include bounties for NPC hunting, mission
rewards, mission bonuses, and net insurance payments. These are
all represented by Box C. Payments for various services to NPC’s
are represented by Box D and include all kinds of fees, taxes, rentals
(from NPC stations), skills (from NPC´s) and other service fees.
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for transactions. The total amount of ISK does NOT reflect the total
value of everything in EVE; that value is considerably higher than
the 90 trillion ISK in the system. Of this 90 trillion, about 65 trillion
are in the hands of active characters, 10 trillion is in corporate
accounts and 15 trillion is in accounts that have been defined as
inactive, but could potentially be activated at any time.
Pilots need ISK in order to purchase starships and fit them with
any combination of the vast numbers and varieties of available ship Figure 6: The macroeconomic system of EVE and daily
transactions of ISK. Daily market trade amounts to 2.1 trillion
modules. They earn that ISK through missions, hunting and trading, ISK; gross faucets are 536 billion and gross sinks are 365 billion
all of which add to the overall value of the EVE economy. Hence, daily. Average number for the third quarter of 2007
when the population of EVE grows, so does the amount of ISK in the
system. As pilots work longer hours mining that extra asteroid belt,
or running after some NPC´s, they also add value to the system
by acquiring new items and/or collecting bounty ISK. Figure 6 on
the right is the same as Figure 5 above, except it has been marked
with daily transaction amounts. In the third quarter the daily
market transactions averaged to 2.1 trillion in more than 700,000
transactions. During the period there has been low but stable
growth in the number and amounts of daily market transactions,
which indicates that the EVE economy is growing. Similarly, about
536 billion is added through various pilot activities (faucets), but
365 billion leaks out again, thus adding an average net number of
171 billion per day, or 394,000 ISK per character each day. This
amount grew from 130 billion per day in July to a max of 212 billion
per day during the first week of September, and then leveled off at Figure 7: Net faucets for ISK into EVE. Daily average net addition
of ISK into EVE increases from 130 billion ISK to 200 ISK by the
just under 200 billion ISK in the last week of September. Since the end of the third quarter.
population is growing at the same time, it is necessary to look at
the growth per subscriber in order to draw any conclusions from
these numbers.
The next figure shows us how the total volume of ISK has grown
over the past twelve months, both in nominal terms as well as in
proportion to population size. The blue line shows how the total ISK
grew from 75 trillion at the end of June 2007 to just over 90 trillion
at the end of the third quarter. The red line shows the growth of the
money supply over the time period, and the green line shows the
population growth at the same time, measured in number of active
subscribers. As evident from the graph, the money supply grew
faster than the population from the second week of July through
the entire 3rd quarter. During this time period, total logon minutes
were relatively stable at around 29 to 30 million per week. At the
same time, the average amount of ISK associated with individual
Figure 8: Total ISK and growth compared to population growth.
accounts increased from 427 million to 474 million ISK, or from 195 Total money supply is increasing faster than total population.
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Figure 9 also shows the distribution of ISK in pilot wallets. Of the
total ISK in EVE, about 60% have 100 million or less, while 40%
have more than 100 million ISK on their account.
Price levels
Mineral prices
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The difference between the chained index and the fixed index is
small due to the fact that the relative quantity of mineral use is
stable over the time period (for more detailed data and discussion
on the mineral market see Economic Dev Blog No. 1).
The red line in Figure 10 shows the fixed basket mineral price index,
the blue line shows the chained index, and the green one shows
the monthly change in the price index (right axis). The monthly
price change shows that overall there has been deflation on the
mineral market, with the exceptions of the fourth quarter in 2006
and June 2007. In both of these cases, the puclication of new
releases (Revelations I and Revelations II) increased the demand
for minerals. The monthly price increase in November 2006 was Figure 10: The mineral price index showing the chained and fixed
basket index. The graph also shows the percentage change in
0.9%, but the increase in December 2006 was 4.4%, which shows the chained mineral price index (green line - right axis).
Primary production
The primary production index contains all the items that are needed
for production at the primary stage, including ore, moon material,
ice etc., but excluding basic minerals. The products from primary
production are used for Tech I and Tech II production. In total, there
are 284 items in the fixed basket index, but about 200 items per
month for the chained index.
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in the beginning. The main reason for this price decrease is the
introduction of invention, which lifted the monopoly on Tech II
blueprints. One of the main requirements of invention is the use of
datacores to make Tech II blueprints. If the datacores are removed
from the fixed basket index, we can see the drastic impact they have
on the index (the green line in Figure 11). Without the datacores,
prices drop by only 20% over the time period. Some datacores
have dropped in price by as much as 99%, while other items that
can be used for invention have increased 20 to 70-fold, such as
installation guides or assembly instructions.
During the third quarter of 2007 the price index is relatively stable,
though prices continue to decline. The index declined 7.5% between
June and July, increased by 2.15% between July and August and
then declined again by 1.6% between August and September. The
primary producer market has stabilized for now, but we will have to
see what happens when new ships become available in Trinity.
The index for items at the secondary production stage includes all
items which players need to produce starships or modules to fit
on starships. Overall there are more than 1,000 items in the fixed
basket index. These items include blueprints and all the various
components needed for production.
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Focusing on the chained price index, the deflation is relatively
stable throughout the period, with prices declining by 1.5% per
month on average.
Though the overall conclusion is that there has been more than
40% deflation in EVE Online from September 2006 through 2007,
it appears that there are underlying inflationary pressures due
to increased purchasing power. The increased purchasing power
comes from two sources; number one is the reduction in Tech II
prices, and number two is increased revenue through the available
faucets in the system (see Figure 7).
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Economic and market snapshots
Figure 16: Veldspar prices increased during the third quarter of Figure 17: Low end minerals show a mix of price changes over the
2007 after a period of stability. Increased prices at the same time period. Tritanium and mexallon increase in price during the
time as volume is increasing is a signal for a change in demand third quarter but pyerite and isogen reduced in prices.
for veldspar, and hence tritanium.
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Economic and market snapshots
Figure 20: With easier access to datacores the price of datacores Figure 21: Price index comparison of the Hyperions and
has plummeted while quantities traded have increased. Dominixes in all regions vs. the Forge. Note how prices are
declining for both vessels and how closely the average price for
all regions follows the price in the Forge. The market for these
battleships can therefore been seen as an efficient one with
symmetric information.
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