A more appropriate name for this game would be "Lost in Space with nothing to do". The graphics and effects are stunning but there's no clear objectives to achieve provided for by the game. You pretty much make up what you want to do on your own. There are several rookie agent-missions to get you started on how to fly your ship and shoot space pirates but after that you're on your own. You can mine asteroids but starring at your screen for 30 minutes while lasers fill up your ships' hold with ore gets tedious and dull after a few hours.
The Eve online currency (ISK) is massively inflated compared to (US$). In my four days of play on the trial account I've already made 30 billion (ISK) from selling ore and mission rewards. This puts the value of the eve economy more into perspective.
Advancing your skill training is most important to increasing your ships efficiency, performance and shield resistance and is required to fly bigger ships and the ability equip it with the appropriate weapons and accessories. But skill training is nothing more than a waiting game. You pick a skill from a list and add it to your training que where you wait for up to 20 hours or more for the training to complete. The training for each skill comes in five levels so Level 1 takes(16-38 mins) Level 2 takes(1-4 hours) Level 3 takes (6-7 hours) Level 4 takes(18-20 hours) Level 5 (I'll let you know on this). I'm hearing that there is upwards of 15 years in training in order to complete them all. Your best strategy for skill training is to add a bunch of skills to your que then let them tick away while you go mine some asteroids and wait for your ore hold to fill up. While you are sitting dozing at your computer mining an asteroid a random NPC pirate may show up and start shooting at you so you best keep a keen eye out for them or your ship will be lost and you'll have to start over.
Other than that there's not a lot to do in Eve to make me want to sign up for a monthly $10 fee.
If you're in to PVP you should join a corporation. There are dozens of corps to choose from but beware of greedy corps. They'll tax you on your mission rewards anywhere from 5-12 percent so be sure to check the rate before joining. After you join you are required to do all of the missions at their station Each mission has some kind of reward, usually ISK and a bonus if completed within a time frame. So if your reward is 100,000 ISK, the corporation takes 5,000-10,000 ISK depending on the tax rate.
The station missions are nothing more than shooting at NPC space pirates or flying around delivering cargo from station to station. Completing a mission not only rewards ISK it also increases your standing with the corporation and you'll earn Loyalty points which you can use in the LP store. But they don't advance your character or ship level in any way..
For PVP, corporations may organize attacks on other corporations but this is entirely random and can only be done with the approval of the corp CEO. Once you learn your way around, you could start your own corporation and declare war yourself but that's entirely up to you
In all, the game leaves a lot to be desired. It takes too long to fly from station to station even at warp speed, and if you want to get to the other side of the universe it would take hours. There is also a human element missing from the game. You'll only see your ship most of the time and you can't land on planets or moons either. After a few hours of seeing nothing but stars and space stations I needed a change of scenery but there's nothing else to look at.
The best comparison to this game might be 'Second Life' but even in SL you can build, make and sell stuff and it has that human element missing in Eve. You won't be building anything in Eve either..
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