First announced back in 2015, EVE Online’s Project Discovery got underway this week. It’s a science collaboration that rewards EVE players in-game for playing a minigame that is actually a clever way to contribute time and brainpower to the Human Protein Atlas – real-world science.
CCP’s partner in the project, Massively Multiplayer Online Science, has announced that even in just one day, the research has been a staggering success:
“First of all 463.936 classifications! Let me put it down again: four hundred sixty-three thousand nine hundred thirty-six classifications. Amazing achievement – congratulations to all. The per minute classification number peaked at around 800!! A number like this was something that only came up in our wildest dreams. And the fact that we couldn’t pass the half-million limit is really on us with almost 4 hours of downtime of the service. 15.154 capsuleers gave a try to Project Discovery and got through the tutorial phase. 6.828 got even through the training phase: it is important, because without completing the training phase you can’t contribute to the actual research.”
In fact, so many people turned out that MMOS says it struggled to keep the servers up, and CCP is planning to boost its infrastructure too:
Thank you so much #eveonline players for embracing Project Discovery! We're stabilizing the backend based on demand! https://t.co/aOXiDO8UAe
— EVE Online (@EveOnline) March 11, 2016
A couple of capsuleers had over 1000 classifications apiece with accuracy ratings over 90%.
Congrats folks, and thank you for participating in this little slice of MMO history.
