Ever since China banned trading virtual currency for ‘real currency’ it’s been a lot less crowded in some mission hubs. The one I am the most familiar with, Sivala, has seen a drop of over 100 pilots in local. No more bumping into a dozen Navy Ravens when you undock !
It will be interesting to see what impact this will have on the economy. Navy Ravens have already gone up in price quite a bit. Raising from 300mil (or less) to 500 – 600mil at the moment. I am sure other modules will follow. So your hard earned Loyalty Points will be worth a lot more. But on the other hand there is a smaller market for t2 shields and other mission related modules. Although judging from the ganked mission runners ship’s killboard kills, their mission ships were very oddly fitted, so I am not sure we’ll be missing them much as customers.
There have also been reports of less Ice Macro miners, so the price of Ice Products might go up as well. Haven’t seen that yet, but maybe people are still selling their old stash and the price raise might be coming soon.
There doesn’t seem to be any noticable drop in people online, are you sure thats the case, or have some people moved to the new lvl 4 agents.
Well there is http://eve.coldfront.net/status/tranquility, but that can also be explained because of the summer.
You can also see this phenomenon on other mission hubs.
The people running these shops just need to find another poor country with semi-descent power and internet lines… This is a speed bump for them, not a brick wall.