Eve Online Players Destroyed 1,142,260,784,813,930 Isk Worth Of...

EVE Online developer CCP Games just released its end-of-year statistics for its ruthless space sandbox, in celebration of what has been a big year for the veteran Icelandic MMO. The game received two new expansions which introduced player-created freelance missions and an overhauled mining experience, as five new ships.

CCP's stats suggest these expansions went down well. Players created 9,130 missions for chancing mercenaries to take up, while the most popular new ship, the Pioneer, was manufactured 71,873 times, and destroyed 4,513 times. Players across the game also destroyed 12,406 player-made 'upwell' structures, which presumably led to a helluva lot of insurance claims.

The number that really stood out to me, however, is how much ISK—EVE's in-game currency—was incinerated in the course of all this destruction. According to CCP, that number totals 1,142,260,784,813,930 ISK. That's more than one quadrillion ISK that went up in flames over the last twelve months. More than 10 to the power 15, or, as I prefer to think of it, an absolute shedload.

I was curious what the real-dollar value of this massive amount of ISK might be, so I had a go at figuring it out. I need to make several caveats here though. The first is that I have all the numerical skill of a caveman who skipped maths class, so take my calculations with a truckload of salt.

The second is that ISK's real-world value is not set. It fluctuates relative to the value of PLEX, EVE Online's paid currency players can use to buy various things including ISK. PLEX can be bought in various amounts, with higher amounts giving you a bulk discount. This is partly because CCP forbids selling ISK for real-money so it actively tries to separate the currency from any firm real-world value.

With all that said, let's whip out our calculators and hash this out. Currently, the most PLEX you buy in one go is 20,000 PLEX, which costs $650 in the EVE Online store. Hence, 1 PLEX purchased in this pack is worth roughly 0.0325 cents (you also get six ship skins in this pack, but let's discount those for the sake of simplicity).

According to various sources the ISK value of 1 PLEX is around 6 million, which would mean 6 million ISK is worth roughly 0.0325 cents if you bought the 20,000 PLEX pack.

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In turn, that would mean that 1 ISK equals 5.41666667e-9 cents, or 5.416 recurring to the power of minus 9. 5.41666667e

Source: PC Gamer