Speaking as someone that's been there from day 1 (before actually. I've been playing since closed beta back in 2002), EVE is absolutely not the same ruthless universe anymore that it once was. It's increasingly become a fancy pile of garbage, where complexity is removed and the game streamlined to "make it more accessible".
In other words: It's on the best way of becoming yet another World of Warcraft clone and that's mightily showing in the community these days. EVE lives and dies by its community and frankly the community has pretty much degraded to a bunch of screaming children crying for instant gratification and the removal of the last essence of what made EVE be EVE.
So yeah, the only reason EVE is still around is because it's a niche game and it's literally the only available choice in that niche. If CCP had even the slightest sliver of competition, EVE would have already gone the same way as so many other MMOs that lost their aim, spirit and essence before it.
But well, people have given me the title "Epitome of Bittervetism", so maybe take this with a grain of salt. But in all honesty, you're not missing out on much anymore.
Edit: No, you can't have my stuff.
It's been five or six years since I played though, no idea what kind of hot garbage it's turned into since then.
I was a scrounger for my corp (Oberon). I was the guy who went out and bought 100x of some rare bit of gear. Wanted stuff would just appear in our hangars. Quiet cargo swaps in disused systems were my thing. Now corps are so big, the travel system so alterable, that such meetups require days of offline negotiation. That isn't fun.
Plus I think the newer generation of gamers are less patient and the older generations have less time to spend on games.
re: "Bittervetism", I could be accused of the same. If I try to look at it objectively, I think it's a symptom of just being around anything for a long time. Change is, after all, inevitable.
Perhaps nostalgia has ingrained the "holy wtf" UI/spreadsheet experience of yesteryear into my mind without any updates. I (mistakenly) thought that the game hadn't really strayed from the complexity that made it so niche.
I'm disappointed that something you clearly enjoy has morphed into something else before your eyes (I know the feels). I appreciate your correction because I don't miss MMOs (too much) these days for this specific reason.
1. The massive time/money suck and complexity. Playing Eve started feeling like its own career. Having to log in constantly to skill, having to be available at all hours for missions (getting texts at work that we were jumping into WH space where are you???), having to maintain vast excel spreadsheets to optimize ISK income. It was too much, stopped being fun.
2. At its heart Eve was(is?) a PvP game. Sure, you can stay safely in hisec, mining and trading, and getting called a carebear, but if you did, you were experiencing at most 25% of the game. I always found PvP unpleasant and wasteful, and wished the devs made hisec-only play better. But if you wanted to get your money’s worth that meant living in nullsec or WH space, and having to deal with the griefers. Also, if you wanted to make enough ISK needed to fund your accounts through PLEX you had to be in WH space and live with the slugfest. So much was geared towards PvP, and if you didn’t like PvP, the game was ultimately not for you.
That was a big blow to many of the early players. We wanted WC:Privateer. EVE was pitched as a trading/economy game, which it was in the early days. There is still a huge market for a Privateer-style game. Star Citizen is proof that the money is out there. I'd play an EVE online where strong NPCs were the predominant enemy, with PvP being an exception. That was early Eve, back when corps were still struggling to push outwards.
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.
What are they valuable for? (Honest question)
Is it even worth it to join Eve now as a newbie? Or is this one of those games like CS where it's impossible to play because everyone's been at it for a decade and has 100x more experience at that game than you.
Disney movies like Cinderella, and Snow White can always be remade with newer technology because there core story is worth adapting to the new mediums.
World of Warcraft started with some very good lore. I remember enjoying the huge back stories that came in the instruction manuals before the game even became an MMO. So I think it has a chance to hit that 100 year mark.
That doesn't mean it will have a continuous virtual world for the entire 100 years though. But I think through a couple revivals it could make it. I also worry the IP is not really unique enough to guarantee it will be here, but I do think they are working that.