Time Dilation (TiDi) helped make it much more playable than it would have been a couple years ago, but also helped make it worse:  since time was operating at a mere 10% of normal time inside the system, it gave hours of time for everyone else and their brother to travel from the far ends of the universe to be a part of it.

http://themittani.com/news/asakai-aftermath-all-over-cobalt-moon explains it pretty well.

As for the learning curve of EVE, this image is old but still quite apt.  If you can make it to the top, you can finally “win @ EVE” by not logging in.  http://cdn.overclock.net/1/12/127a2824_eve-online-learning-curve.jpeg  

*sigh* I miss City of Heroes.

“These two superpowers have been somewhat friends for three years, but relationships are getting strained. They’ve been arguing with each other for a few days now, and the guy controlling Paris (a single EVE ship, but one of the most powerful ones) last night hit the wrong button. He teleported the city of Paris into Canada (Pandemic in my example) but forgot to teleport all the suburbs (ships) around the city, stranding it. Canada ganged up on Paris instantly and called in the US to help. So basically the US and Canada obliterated Paris. Europe sent in reinforcements but without a good strategy against an already prepared North America they were also crushed.”
“Europe is now without three major cities and ten or so minor ones. They still have plenty of resources left, but it was a great first strike. Especially since North America pretty much lost nothing.”

If it still seems like a lot of fuss over a game, put it in the context that there’s some real money trading going on, to the tune of thousands of dollars, lost because someone made a simple mistake.

In addition to being a screensaver and more fun to read about than to play, EVE truly is the most beautiful spreadsheet ever created.

I spent a few months setting up my character’s revenue stream, so that I could have the money I needed to get the higher level ships and equipment I wanted without having to use up every weekend to get there.  While it was certainly an interesting exercise, I wouldn’t classify this work under what society or even the BoingBoing community traditionally refers to as “fun”.

So if you don’t think mastery of revenue streams and market opportunism as fun, then don’t bother playing EVE.  That is, unless you have friends that can just give you the things you need to have fun in EVE, or you want to dish out real cash to purchase things in-game via PLEX.

http://www.eve-wiki.net/index.php?title=PLEX

Wonderful.