Eve Market Doldrums

If your a new player or new to market trading you might be asking yourself why is my market volume slowing down? Is Eve Online dying? What exactly is going on? I offer a few opinions as to why you might be seeing low market volume.

Summer Doldrums

Historically in-game populations trend down in the summer. If we take a look at Eve Offline Stats the player count will decline from June until September then it picks back up once school starts again and winter sets in, in the northern hemisphere. Lower player counts correlate often times with slow market volume. Think of it as a double edge sword less players means less items being destroyed as well as less players purchasing your goods.

SOV Revamp

The SOV revamp has players holding their cards close. It feels like everyone is holding their breath waiting for shit to hit the fan. Player numbers and market volumes will pick up some once this patch hits mid July. Although July is typically still a down trend for player counts as the summer doldrums continues, lots of people are on vacation. Did CCP plan the SOV roll out when player counts are typically low on purpose? The tinfoil hat sure doesn't breath well during the summer. 

Burn Amarr

Burn Amarr is icing on the cake. Again several factors to slow market volume. Less players logging in. People tend to just avoid logging in altogether during that weekend. So less movement on the markets. Goods and services aren't being moved around as rapidly it slows the whole market. Expect business to be back to usual next week, still the impact is felt.

Cheap Materials

Another outlier I was thinking about is cheap materials. Producers(that aren't on vacation) are easily over producing as tech 2 materials and to a lesser extent minerals prices slump. Though I am not sure this has as much effect as the previous points. You run some calculations and see how much you could be making on a few items and you have some run away over production on your hands during the summer months.

Keep a watch on the news, devblogs, and Eve Propser's Market Show to anticipate your market volume.