I have received a lot of great advice since joining Eve, and almost all of it can be boiled down to one core concept…Â you MUST plan ahead.
In World of Warcraft, or nearly every other theme park MMO, you can basically stumble blindly through the world, make mistake after mistake and your character will progress towards endgame, no matter how badly you play. Eve is much less forgiving. It is theoretically possible to play the game for months and be in the same or worse shape at the end than you were. Sure, you have more Skill Points, but skills without direction are meaningless, and a plan without ISK is worthless. Sure, after six months you can fly a Battleship, but you have no ISK to buy one, and you don’t have the support skills to fit one.
I mentioned before that I have two accounts now. My first Pilot is skilling directly to a beginner Incursion Fit Hurricane.  The Hurricane is a Minmatar Battlecruiser, with enough firepower and resist/ shield support skills to survive in the Incursion fleet.  If you are unfamiliar with Eve and Incursions, think PvE Raid encounter.  This is a good beginner plan for me, since each encounter will net me around 10,000,000 ISK, allow me to fly with my Corp Mates in fleet and give me invaluable experience that will be necessary to survive and contribute to the Sleeper sites in Wormhole Space.  Our Corp is doing Incursion sites roughly 2-3 times per week and finishing 5-10 sites per night, so that is 100-300,000,000 ISK per week right there. Not too shabby for a total Eve noob after just a three-week skill plan.
My second account is a miner. In Eve, the entire economy is rooted in two primary factors… PvP and Mining.  Null Sec Alliances (Guild Conglomerates) war with each other constantly, and have a massive appetite for new ships.   This drives demand for goods at the very core. There are other significant factors, but none so significant.  On the other end, Miners harvest all of the materials necessary to feed the PvP beast.  Of course, there are refiners, manufacturing chains and traders involved in the process, but the fundamental building block, is the Miner.
In the economic meta-game I prefer to pick roles that are consistent and predictable, rather than exploit niche roles that fluctuate or change on regular basis.  I also live by a very simple principle… find your niche, and master it.  The smaller your focus, the better.
Thus my Miner is on a very strict plan that first allows me to fly the Caldari Osprey, an intro Cruiser with strong Mining Laser bonuses.   Next I will get the Retriever mining barge, the Hulk and finally the Orca, picking up all the “Perfect Miner” skills along the way.  I have seen reports that suggest a skilled and efficient miner in the safety of Empire Space can earn 30-50,000,000 ISK/hour…  After we move into Wormhole Space, it is a surefire plan to earn billions with a capital B.
So my advice to you, should you decide to try Eve?  You need two things right away… Â
1) A noob friendly Corp, that wants to help you develop. INQ-E has given me more advice and knowledge in five days than I could have learned on my own in five months. In Eve, knowledge is money, and money is power.
2) You need a plan.
~Cyndre
Don’t forget, between the miner and fighter is the crafter.
3) Kill yourself.
@Eric I mentioned that in paragraph 4, but for a beginner mining is a fairly simple skill plan and low risk activity.
@SynCaine Rest assured, I don’t require a plan to get myself podded. I am quite proficient at it, already.
As happens every time I read something about EvE, this article fills me with the dual urges “MUST PLAY” and “OH GOD WHY”.
In the end, I think EvE is an incredibly unique and fascinating game, but one I could probably never play seriously due to time and attention limitations. I really wish there was a way to play it casually, but it just seems like a waste of time from my position.
Perhaps the real takeaway of your article is that with enough knowledge, it would be possible to make progress even with small time investments? Is that your feeling, or do you think that multiple accounts and hardcore commitment is a requirement at this point?
Anyway, nice article! I always love to read about EvE…
Brise, let me preface these comments by saying I am a complete Eve noob, so take what I say with a grain of salt…
BUT… In my opinion you can play Eve however you want and your success will be proportional to your drive and time. If you have grandious plans to rule a large chunk of null-sec as a noob pilot with limited time, forget it, but if you set reasonable goals and just want to experience the world, explore and carve out a healthy living, Eve supports that very well. There is a lot of charachter growth that occurs while you are offline, so the grinding in Eve is less damaging to a casual player than a game that requires you to active skill.
What I mean by that is say you want 300 mining in wow… You need to physically hit the nodes X number of times. A hardcore player might do it in a few days, but you as a casual might take 6 months. In Eve, you and the hardcore player will see your skills progress at the same rate, regardless of ingame time invested.
Try the game out, you won’t be disappointed. They even offer a 21 day free trial if you get a referral from a current player. Thats how I got suckered in ;-)
Thanks for the feedback. :)
I should have specified that I have tried trials a couple times, but just never stuck with it. More to the point, I do understand the skill system well enough to know that it is pretty friendly to more casual players.
I guess I’m used to MMOs being very greedy of your time in other ways, and I assume but am not certain if that’s the case with EvE. For example, if you’ve started goofing around with some corp mates, are you now committed to that for the next several hours, or can you log out when it’s time to go make dinner.
Anyway, don’t feel compelled to try to answer, I can find this information already written out on other forums, I’m sure.
Thanks again for your words on the topic!
Just so you know, the ‘B’ in mining stands for “boredom”, not “billions”. That said, I hear WH gas is pretty lucrative.
Incursions will pull more ISKies and more fun that mining, at least until everyone realises this and supply of tritanium drops as a result. :)
As for “casual” EVE play, the single most important thing in EVE is to be part of a corporation. I’m sure there are some people out there who play the game entirely solo (mining, missioning or trading), but that misses out on most of the game. The critical “casual” threshold is “can I play often enough that my corpies remember who I am and what I can do?” If you can do that, you’re fine.
Mining is a passive activity if you have 2 accounts. I mission on my main while my alt is mining, and periodically hop into my indy on the main, empty the can and go back to missioning.
So… unless missioning, pvp or whatever is borning, mining is fun!