Don't take this the wrong way but that would have been a price I would have been willing to play. I played (and paid) this game for over 12 years now and most of that time was without pay-2-SP mode enabled (and was also without having you as a fellow player).

Totally acceptable trade-off if you ask me.

I'd rather have EVE with 5000 active players that love the game the way it was "intended" (at least the previous 11,5 years) then EVE with 50000 players that all injector-whore and basically want WOW-in-space.

Also, when I started playing in 2005 there were never more then 5000 people online and the game wasn't any less fun (and development was also not any slower and communication with CCP was great compared to the shit-for-brains PR bullshit they puke out nowadays).

The only ones that stand to benefit from a huge number of players are the investors at CCP and the more profit-oriented they are the more dangerous it is for the game. If you give scum like them any say then it'll take 3 weeks and we'll have gold ammo for nuPLEX, mark my words.