I started my EVE character in 2004.
Let me tell you my experience.
First 5 months: No clue what the hell was going on, all I could do was mine and mine and bore my skull off. Combat consisted and STILL IS, against NPC opponents that have zero AI and zero challenge other than sheer numbers or sheer defensive/offensive stats (shield/armor resists, their weapon damage is multiplied X factor of times to make them look 'harder'). By this I mean the NPCs will never do anything different. They will stay there and shoot at you until you blow them up.
You finally get enough money to afford higher skills and a somewhat better ship (T1 cruisers) only to find out that ... the 'next level' of the game is pretty much the same as the newbie level. You just have a lil' more money and can fly a ship that looks different but overall it's the same thing.
So... I left the game for half a year.
I came back to the game because of a new expansion that was allegedly 'fixing' many of the player issues to which CCP had been losing a lot of accounts to.
What I came back to was the same bullcrap but with prettier graphics (I will admit CCP does do great graphic artwork). Oh, and the massive horde of chinese 'gold farmers' (isk-farmers in eve) that had flooded the spacelanes. Endless..endless masses of mining ships and transport vessels making the nonexistent AI NPC's look bad compared to those guys. They just kept at it ..like AI's.
But that aside, worked on more skills, got more money, got into the 'third' level of the game which literally means getting to 0.0 space (aka 'pvp' areas). Died a lot, learnt how kiddies can become the leaders of massive alliances and how a few people could pull of mega-scams.
So it came to the point where I was participating in PVP and realized that unless you have a significant source of income (in-game) you really would never have a snowball's chance in hell of achieving something.
Literally, if you cannot afford to lose many ships a day you cannot participate in pvp. Hence, After a few months of having returned I left the game once more. There simply was no point to it.
You are forced to spend countless hours performing drone-like tasks (mining or killing the idiot npc's called 'rats') to get the money you need...then its a matter of trying to find a player in the market that is not scamming you (and there be lots..both outside and inside your alliance) to buy said ships and the gear for the ships...
well, in any case, it was a ratio of like 10 hours 'farm' , 2 hours 'play'.
Disclaimer: this does not apply to the mega-rich people that acquired their money by scamming or by receiving favors from the developers early on in the game which allowed them to amass insane amounts of money because they were the only people in the game with the blueprints to make the best gear in the game. A few in this thread my dispute this but the truth remains that the bulk of all money in the market was acquired during this period and it is what allows those players to keep dominating the market and the spacelanes merely because they have infinite amounts of ships.
about a year later a new expansion came out and being the sucker I am I resubbed to try it...
meh. same crap, better graphics. I suffered a couple of months and saw nothing had really changed. left.
And so and so for a few more years until we come to late 2008.
New expansion came out. I tried it. Same steaming pile of turd except that...
...that the devs of that game royally, completely and absolutely nerfed the skillsets my character had spent almost 1.5 years building up.
it was so bad it was like a chihuahua being porked by a st bernard. really, really bad.
Almost inmediately, CCP releases in a fanfest that the next expansion coming march 2009 has a completely new set of custumizable ships. Whoopee doo.
... and also said, in very discreetely hushed up, burrowed under a lot of hype and technicalities... that this new feature would once again be given first and foremost to the players who already dominate the market and the spacelanes.
In conclusion, the game is nothing more than a well designed time-sink that you pay dearly for and get almost nothing in return. The end-combat has nothing to do with player skill or even with your character's skill; it has to do with how much money you have to keep buying and losing ships.
For the time and effort the fun factor is not worth it in my opinion. Go subscribe to WW2OL where at least your efforts and time make a difference and the end game is available to you without skilling up or farming or nothing of the sort.
