The Downside of the Single Shard

There is a big live event happening right now as I write this in Eve. An unprecedented event where all four empires are attacking the pirate factions in Syndicate and Curse regions. Part of the lead up to Rubicon, you see. Very exciting.

Except I'm at work. Like almost always during live events put on by CCP. The reason for this is quite simple and can be illustrated by this graph from Eve Offline:

This graph for the past 24 hours is similar to almost every day of Tranquility's logged in numbers: it peaks around early evening for Western Europe and late evening for Eastern Europe, a lower plateau where the handoff to the North American timezones log in, and the lowest point when its prime in the western Pacific region. In order to have the event attract the most participants, and to facilitate the live actors from CCP who are in that Western Euro time frame, the events happen right on that peak of the graph. While most of the North American playerbase is still in work or class.

We've complained about this before and asked for more events to be run out of the Atlanta office but still we get no love. This is another artifact of the single shard and while most of them are positives this one falls into the negative camp.

I guess the only answer is to get more North and South American players and shift that peak on that graph!