The folks at CCP seem to continue to grow interest in their long running space-based MMO EVE Online. Earlier today the game's official web site announced that they have reached a new concurrent user number for the game (that is the total number of players at one time)

That new record number, reached sometime in the first few days of 2009, was a whopping 45,186 players online at once. That's impressive for a game that for most of its life has been distributed via download. That will change later this year as Atari plans to distribute a retail version of EVE Online that will contain the original game and all of its extensive free expansion.

{Via Massively]