Main Stay away if you value your sanity.
I gave this game a chance. I really did. The griefers got the best of me. I think of myself as a nice guy. I play fair. THIS GAME DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY. You will be backstabbed, stolen from, and killed over and over again.
In short, this game is not nice. At all. it is evil, and will remove your last amount of sanity. Not to mention your money.
Main EVE Online
EVE Online is a staggeringly deep and complex game. It is also a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but don't let that deter you. I have a lot of fun in EVE, and I don't scam or grief anyone to do it.
Some people say that EVE doesn't work if you play nice and play fair, and that's simply not true. There are two keys to successfully playing nice in EVE; the first is to find a group of friends you can trust. They can be people you know IRL or from other online games or communities; the point is that you can go in and play EVE together and trust each other. The second key is to be very wary about trusting anyone outside your circle. Playing fair in EVE is only a problem if you assume everyone else will play fair too (protip: a lot of them won't).
Some ground rules for a successful career in EVE:
1) Don't fly what you can't afford to lose and replace.
2) By undocking, you consent to PVP.
3) Keep your ships insured and your clone up to date.
4) Read contracts twice before accepting, and don't accept trades from strangers.
5) Don't pay the ransom; chances are he'll blow you up anyway.
Main Eve Online- The Sandbox With Mines
Your first day in Eve online will probably be horrible. You will be confused and alone in a cold unfeeling universe. And then you will meet your fellow players.
At this point you will likely be mocked, killed, robbed, podded, scammed, blackmailed, or any combination of the above. You'll die and everything you had will probably be sifted over for scraps. Such is the nature of Eve's infamous "learning cliff". Needless to say a lot of people never get past their free trial, but for those who are enterprising enough to learn the ropes there's a big payoff. Eve's world is immense, featuring an almost completely free market player run economy and a robust sovereignty system that lets large player alliances form their own competing nations and take part in a giant world wide political drama
. Huge multi-ethnic alliances square off in pitched thousand man battles where tiny interceptors mingle with gigantic super capitals. Meanwhile back in secure space traders and industrialists move trillions in merchandise through eve's constantly shifting market to feed the never ending war effort.
It's easy to feel dwarfed by the immensity of the game. But in reality everybody down to the smallest industrialist or lowliest soldier is affecting the world on some level and has a chance to rise in it. Take for example Goonswarm. Formerly derided as an unskilled rabble of griefers, now a disturbingly organized rabble of griefers that controls about a quarter of the map. Whether you want to lead, follow, or just sit in a station trading on the speculative worth of minerals there's really no limits on how you can play Eve.
In short, if you're looking for simple game to entertain you may want to steer clear of Eve. Try to have it hold your hand and it will just steal your wallet. If you're looking for a deeper MMO experience than endlessly farming pelts off dire wolves then Eve is definitely worth a look.
Main All these other reviews are years old, so a fresh look
Eve online has changed a lot. The tutorials are more accessible, the learning curve is still steep, but climbing it is fun. Eve is a sandbox MMO where you can do anything you want in the vastness of space. Explore, be a pirate, repel invasions, whatever. There is reduced grind in this game, because of the unique skill training system: you dont grind for xp points. Since this is far into the future, your character instead trains skills from skill books in real time. Even if you only have five minutes a day to eve online, you can continually update your skills training. What people do grind for is money, but you dont need a lot to succeed. EVE is not a game where noobs cannot have fun. Within the first fifteen days of game time, I got myself a cruiser and was blasting away in the PvP areas of the game. PvP in the game is possible everywhere, but it is not plausible everywhere. In the empires, you will face npc battleships is you attack without reason. You can invite people to duels though. In lowsec space, you still get tagged a criminal, and npc police will engage you if you go back to highsec. Outside empire space, anything goes, there is no law, and open PvP. Another unique aspect of the game is PLEX. Even though EVE is a subscription, and the only subscription MMO to continually grow in 11 years, there is an in game item to get one month of game time, plex. There are only cosmetic micro transactions. No pay to win. The game is also very pretty and has a good character creation system, a requirement for MM Os.