There was much to celebrate at the CCP office in Reykjavik today. In addition to the birthdays of CEO Hellmar's daughter who turned three and producer Oveur, whose "thirty something," shouts of joy rose up at 19:36 GMT as 30,538 EVE Online capsuleers zoomed their way into history by setting a new concurrent user record of over thirty-thousand simultaneous users on the Tranquility server.

" It is with great honor that I see the 30k mark being broken," said EVE player RipLee. "CCP has done an awesome achievement in such a feat. Kudos to CCP."

China Cluster

The opening of the China cluster follows the accelerated growth of EVE Online in the US and Europe during the past six months, and will be the first fully localized and separate game cluster established by CCP. Optic will introduce EVE Online to the Chinese player base with a large scale open beta commencing in Q2 of 2006.

The partnership between CCP Games and Optic Communications will open the industry's largest virtual universe to the world's most dynamic online games market. EVE Online(R) recently set the PCU (Peak Concurrent User) world record at 25,665 users, which is greater than the total capacity offered by any other MMOG in a single persistent universe.