I just couldn't get the hang of it. It wasn't so much a steep learning curve for me as it was a cliff.

Which sucks, because I spent countless hours playing Elite and Freelancer, too. I love the interplanetary space-trading genre. So when I saw EVE on sale on Steam, I snatched it up.

And then I got into it and was A: wowed by the graphics and B: totally lost as what to do.

CCP talks about their sandbox as being EVE's greatest strength. I think it's a bit of an obstacle for them. They have an amazing graphics engine with marvelous effects, and they do boast 400k subscribers as of March 2012. But it's a hurdle that many players why try EVE (like myself) can't seem to get past.

Pretty game, though.

Maybe I'll try it again sometime.

I definitely had a couple of setbacks early on based on my previous experiences with space trading games... one time I saw a bunch of mining lasers that I thought were on sale at a much lower price somewhere else, bought like 150 of them, and then realized that I'd totally got it wrong and they were now all worth a fraction of what I'd paid for them. Oops! There goes all my money.

I also expected to be able to get in my ship and fly around manually, until I found out that you couldn't do that -- ship navigation appears to be done entirely through targeting objects and then flying towards them. Took me a while to get my head around that.

However, after my initial rush of enthusiasm banged up against my frustration at not knowing what I was doing, I stopped trying to experiment by myself and started doing the tutorial missions. It was all a bit foggy to begin with but as I proceeded through the tutorials I could feel it starting to make sense.

Having not played an MMO before I started to realize that there are differences with the "traditional" games I'd played before -- for example, since it is a persistent universe, you can't reload a save if you screw something up. This creates a sensation of "playing for keeps" which I think really adds a lot to the game. You actually do have to be careful before you make decisions, and have a fallback plan in case you screw up. For example, on a number of occasions I've gotten halfway through missions and then realized I'd left something vital at the station. I only had to do that a few times before I started really paying attention to my ship loadout before I launched. After a while you start to figure out what you need to take with you and what you should leave behind.

I've been playing it for ten days now and I'm still working through the tutorial missions. I haven't traveled more than about four jumps from my starting system, I haven't been in any PVP combat, and I haven't visited any low security areas. It seems that the key (so far) is to have ambitions, but not to get too ambitious too quickly -- you have to play slow and steady, then once you get comfortable with the basics you can start to branch out in whatever direction you choose. As a wise space pilot once said, "Don't get cocky!"

I feel like I'm in a good place with the game at the moment -- starting to feel comfortable with the mechanics, and starting to see pathways opening up for what I can try next after the tutorials. But at the same time I know I am only scratching the surface of what can be accomplished. I'm looking forward to finding out more.

I have been ingame for more than a year and a half, I was very lucky to join due to my son, an active duty Marine, telling me about the game so I had friends I could really trust right off the bat. This plus my age, 51, made a world of difference in that I was willing to take the long view immediately.

EVE is not a game of instant gratification… it is a true virtual REALITY. Bypass the tutorials and you will be lost, the controls, how the gameplay mechanics work are so very different from the ‘norm’ I cannot imagine how hard it would be. I ran every tutorial and still found getting settled in to be a challenge… but what a challenge! And FYI… if you wanted to try and skill a character up to L5 in EVERY skill available in game… it would take 28 REAL years of YOUR real life… in EVE, like in life, you have to choose and specialize.

As far as solo play goes... yes, initially you can solo EVE... but in order to really get anywhere you simply will have to accept that group play is vastly more erffective than solo play rever can be. It is much like real life in that regards also...

A taste of EVE…
My small corp lives full time in a Wormhole… we have our OWN station… we have over 2 billion ISK (InterStellar Kredits) invested in the POS )Planetary Orbital Station) alone and, if we bought, instead of making our own fuel, it would cost us approx 500 million ISK a month to run… and we are a very profitable corp… The time, dedication and effort we put in to get here was ALL worth every minute spent and every ship lost on the way… but it aint for everyone.

Once again, EVE is not a game of instant gratification… EVE is a game with no end in sight, no ‘final quest’, no ‘win’… if you stay in EVE, you are in because you prefer the long haul.

The learning curve can be steep but the tutorials will get you into the groove and give you some relatively risk free credits.

A few things to keep in mind:
- There is no such thing as "safe" in EVE.
- PvP is non-consensual, so you can be hit anytime, anywhere (even in Clellinon).

I'm enjoying it so far. There's lots of ISK to be made if you pay attention.
The best thing about the game to me is the economy. It's almost entirely controlled by the players.

A few links to help you out.
Evemon - EVEMon is a lightweight, easy-to-use standalone Windows application designed to assist you in keeping track of your EVE Online character progression. You can view your current skills and attributes, what you're currently training, and your ISK balance. EVEMon can track multiple characters across multiple accounts, so all your alts can be monitored through the same, simple interface.

http://evemon.battleclinic.com/

Eve-Central.com - If you like trading or looking for the best price for an item, this is one of the better sites I've found.
http://eve-central.com

The EVE community has created many programs to assist you.

I found most of them in this forum post: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=6310&find=unread

Enjoy! Hope to see you out in Verge Vendor sometime.

...the risks can be minimized. Stick to hi-sec space and never autopilot, and you may, like me, get through an entire year of playing without any PvP. I've lost only two ships, and those in missions so I didn't get podded.

My low-sec runs I did with scouts, in covert ops/blockade runners, or in uncloaked ships right up against the daily downtime. Those gates we occasionally camped, but I never ran into any griefers/gankers. I feel fairly safe, but that may be because I force myself to act paranoid.

So I haven't been playing much. I've kept skills training the entire time, so the time wasn't wasted.
In that time, my whole corp just disappeared.

I did get podded once in my short time playing, but I knew it was going to happen eventually. I routed a 100+ jump trip through some of the lesser travelled areas to see what I could see. I made it through 37 jumps before I fell victim to a gate camp in Goon territory. In my regular travels I follow your "paranoid" philosophy, because someone out there IS out to get you.

I'll be a mining carebear for a bit longer.

After watching the back of my wife's head for six months, I gave it a try. I'd never played an MMO before, and expected to lose interest within a few days or weeks, as always happens with computer games.

EVE's...different. Hooking up with the right crew may be important, as the learning curve is steep and the tutorials incomplete.

It's SO PRETTY. I'm a ship-spinner first and foremost, and enjoy capturing swank images like those in the OP. I dig battleships with all those slots to fill. I like fleeting up for missioning or just mining. Tonight we'll gather in an ice belt and carve out huge glacial masses to sell or to convert to fuel blocks for our control tower.

We think we'll fight in more incursions in the new alliance we just formed, and may spend a lot o time in a "pocket" of hi-sec space surrounded by low, where a lot of anomalies can be found and farmed.

I dig EVE. See y'all in Iceland for Fanfest '13!

I want to resubscribe, but a little voice says you'll quit again inside 3 months in frustration. I just don't have a burning desire to DO or BE something in EvE strong enough to keep me there. Come to think of it there comes a point in most modern games where I sit back and say "What the hell am I doing here?" Oh well.

I couldn't help myself. I have a little plan at this stage to build up from nothing with no help from my other character. See how it goes.

I've been playing Eve for almost four months now. After tooling around by myself for three and a half months I just joined my first corporation a couple of weeks ago. I was recruited randomly by a guy who, it turns out, played Eve for seven years, took a break, then came back and decided to create a new corporation from scratch. So far it's him running the show with me and and two other noobs in tow.

Anyway, the other day the boss gets an in-game message from some random dude who represents a corp that "protects" other corporations for a one-time "donation". Apparently our "donation" has been set at 250,000,000 ISK. If we pay, they'll help us if anyone declares war on us. If we don't pay, they'll declare war on us! The dude signs off with, "Take care and make the right choise."

Our boss has offered them 150,000,000 ISK -- provided they can give us proof that they are actually powerful enough to "protect" us. Seems like he knows what he's doing

And now some more eye-candy:

heh, is this actual blackmail or would they fight along side you if needed?

That said, the boss said that according to their info it looks like they do actually help people who pay them. He ended up negotiating down to 150,000,000 ISK so I guess they're open to doing business...