CCP and TiangCity partner to bring Chinese players back to New Eden

Today, CCP announced that the re-launch of EVE Online in China with new partner TianCity is complete. This marks the first time since April of this year that Chinese players will be able to log into the Serenity server, which powers New Eden in China.

The game originally launched in China back in 2006, coming strong out of the gate with over 1,000,000 registered players and nearly 40,000 concurrently online at a given time. But the success was limited, with numbers dropping quickly:

"On July 17th (2006) we started the commercial launch, and soon after that we saw a frightening drop in player numbers, mainly due to the immature ingame social structure: the social/corporation structure in the Serenity universe was way too weak to welcome a massive number of new players."

With the relaunch in China, EVE has now broken the 450,000 subscriber mark, confirming an overall period of growth since launch - and validating the move east, as if any more was needed. The new server technology being deployed in Shanghai doesn't exactly sound slouchy, either:

"The new Serenity server is located in Shanghai, China, and is a powerhouse.  While its structure is very similar with Tranquility’s, it is designed to allow many more players to fly in that version of New Eden simultaneously, and is much more powerful than the old Serenity server."

This should make the many anxious Chinese capsuleers happy.

Congratulations to CCP for reaching this milestone in making EVE Online a truly global game.