The game has evolved somewhat from that era. 1) In the past, you couldn't enqueue skills beyond 24h, basically forcing you to log in frequently. Now, paid acco

The game has evolved somewhat from that era. 1) In the past, you couldn't enqueue skills beyond 24h, basically forcing you to log in frequently. Now, paid accounts ("Omega") can load up their skill queue indefinitely. There are a lot more casual corps in the game these days, and the player base has finally figured out that newbies are really valuable, rather than seeing them as easy marks for scamming. I only have time to play a few hours per week, and being in one of the big corps makes it okay for me to not show up at 3am for a stratop. Optimizing ISK income is something you can do if you enjoy that sort of thing- and a lot of people do. For the rest of us, we convert cash into PLEX, and sell those in the market for ISK. My time is worth too much to spent it trying to figure out how to set up an optimal production system or to mine rocks all day. 2) This is pretty much true. The "heart and soul" of Eve is in its player-run corporations, particularly ones that engage in PVP. Funding accounts by making enough ISK to buy game time (PLEX) is a bad decision for anyone who has a real-life job. A month of game time is roughly $15. It takes lots and lots of hours of grinding or market trading to generate enough ISK to buy a PLEX in game. Unless you enjoy the grind, and if you make more than minimum wage, it's cheaper to buy PLEX with cash and sell them for ISK than it is to buy PLEX with ISK.