EVE Markets has been online since May 2008, keeping track of price trends in the virtual market of EVE Online - a market complex enough that the game's developers, CCP, have a full-time economist performing analysis and producing quarterly reports with plenty of charts to keep traders informed. It was those charts that gave me the inspiration to start EVE Markets - what if we didn't have to wait for CCP EyjoG (the in-game name of Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson) to release the economic newsletter, but could have up-to-the-minute data displayed in real time, with customisable indices and lists?
So was EVE Markets born, and when I review the figures I'm always shocked at how popular the site is with users. At last count, the site has nearly 3,800 registered users; and over the course of the year the number of daily visitors has doubled, to about 400 a day. Unsurprisingly, the items most viewed are Tritanium and the 30-day PLEX; the most-viewed market group is the fullerenes.
For a site that I work on in my spare time and that started as a hobby, and which (thanks to NearlyFreeSpeech who host it) costs pennies to run, I don't think that's bad at all. During 2010, it even spawned a sister site, EVE Monitor, which tracks various public EVE APIs - sovereignty and outposts, for example - and as well as letting you view the history of a system, region or alliance, also tweets changes via @EVEMonitor. Prime focus of development remains the EVE Markets site though - in fact, some of the technology developed for Monitor is due to be ported back to EVE Markets in the coming year.
In 2010 most of the changes to EVE Markets were behind the scenes. Finally, there is database support for multiple data sources, though it's not currently live; and the underlying refactoring meant that the oldest areas of the codebase received some love and attention. The introduction into the game of Planetary RSI - sorry, Planetary Interaction - led to the addition of PI industry information alongside manufacturing and reprocessing data. The API was expanded to include a JSON-format option. And, of course, with each new expansion there were random breaking changes to the CCP data dump needing to be taken into account!
What lies ahead for EVE Markets in 2011, then?
Multiple data sources
It's been a long time coming! Sadly this will not include EVE Metrics data, since that site was closed last week. However, I'm keeping an eye on both Jitonomic and Eve-MarketData (though the former seems to be struggling at the moment). A side effect of multi-source support is that it will also be possible to track regional or even system prices - for example, comparing Jita local prices to global ones.
API improvements
It's been bugging me for a while that the API is pretty limited in what you can get from it. I'm hoping to stick to the principle that any of the data you see on the site will also be available over the API. I'd also like to be able to collect figures on API usage, since I don't have any idea how many people this affects!
UI improvements
Someone rightly pointed out that it's a pain to add a load of individual items to a list. It could be a lot easier to choose which of your lists are displayed on your summary screen, as well. These things, and other UI improvements, are on the cards for this year.
Oh - and just like so many other third-party developers, I don't actually play EVE all that much any more ;-)
