As you can see, the 2018 max PCU is maintaining parity with 2017 so far for the most part, but these numbers don't reflect overall activity of those pilots. I'm noticing a definitely downward trend of activity in low sec so I went to Zkillboard and scraped the number of kills from Black Rise region, one of the bloodiest battlegrounds between Gallente and Caldari Militias in years past.
As you can see, the spring of 2018 was the worst in the past 3 years for the Black Rise region as GalMil moved to null sec for all intents and purposes.It improved over the summer months (as Gal Mil came back and reasserted dominance over Cal Mil) but has dropped back to the sub 25K kills per month for both September and October.
Plotted differently while showing the percent change compared to the previous year, we see a dramatic shift.
This October represents a -42% drop in number of kills compared to 2017 October. No month in 2018 was higher than 2017. Black Rise is slowly drying up. I'm willing to bet the same can be said of other low sec areas overall.
I believe the active playerbase is contracting and PvPer's will have to roam farther afield from low sec to find content. Maybe Gal Mil and FEDUP had the right idea investing into null sec and I'm the one with my head in the sand wanting low sec to be what I remember.
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