EVE: Strengths and Weaknesses

At the risk of posting too much about EVE, I decided I was tired of typing this. So now I can just point people to this post. :)

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EVE's weaknesses:

Poorly documented (being worked on).
Interface bugs (though these are slowly being cleaned up).
Tech II Blueprint Originals (I'd have to do some explaining on this one).

EVE's strengths:
Not sharded; all players are in the same world.
Robust player-driven economy and political system.
Expansions are always free, and there are two major ones per year.

Things you may or may not like, depending on your preferences:
Steep learning curve.
Skills train offline with real time.
PvP can happen anywhere, though they REALLY have to want you to go after you in high-security space.
Death incurs loss of equipment (not skills, if clone is kept up-to-date).
Classless: choose any skill to train, provided you have the pre-reqs and the cash.
You can train for years and still not top out the skill system.

For me, the game's inherent harshness makes it rewarding since you have to earn your way through the game; it doesn't give you anything.

One thing that worries new players is that if skills train with time, you can't ever catch up with the veterans in skill. They mitigate that by making the training time for levels exponential. Skills top out at level 5. Training times for a skill might be

L1: 15 minutes
L2: 2 hours
L3: 15 hours
L4: 2 days
L5: 30 days

It doesn't really take very long to get a lot of L4 skills, and skills usually add % bonuses. So you get get within 80% effectiveness on many things quite quickly.