CCP’s MMO role-playing space game EVE Online has been doing really well for some time now, distinguishing itself as a pioneer in internet democracy with its “Council of Stellar Management” in Reykjavik and being praised for its extremely well-designed economic system. EVE has always had a rather small but solid player base, but that has now changed due to their new network technology called StacklessIO. CCP has been working on StacklessIO for the past two years, which is said to greatly reduce latency and improve performance in high-volume player situations. The start of 2009 showed that their work has payed off, with EVE setting a new record of concurrent users.

“What a great way to start out 2009 - a new Peak Concurrent User record of 45,186!” said a statement on the game’s website.

“While we’ve made tremendous serverside changes in the EVE Online infrastructure with the EVE64 and StacklessIO initiatives, it is truly a testament to our loyal fans that five years into EVE’s existence we are still breaking records and more people are flying in New Eden than ever before. We know we’ll be trying to find leftover champagne from New Year’s EVE to celebrate. When we do, we’ll toast to you!”

To give you some perspective, EVE’s record was 17,000 concurrent users in late 2005. Not much compared to figures reaching the millions just in China in WoW’s case, but still a hefty achievement.