Not really, but it can take time to get to grips with it (I've been playing since August and I'm still learning new stuff). The community are supportive as long as you're willing to learn the game. Others will want to scam you as you're new (just keep your wits about you).

The best thing to do is get a trail account and give it ago. If you do start playing drop me an in-game message (EVE-mail) to this user name:

Arcturus Canton

and I should be able to give you some pointers.

The basic mechanics of EVE are not very difficult. But as you get into more advanced ship fittings, there is considerable number crunching if you want to maximize your fit, and tons and tons of different equipment choices which can be daunting to newer players.

The tutorials have been revamped and improved several times, and they should do a good job introducing you to the game. Don't try to go too fast, and you'll do okay.

I would avoid a lot of specific skill training advice, as well, with the exception of: train learning skills as soon as you can. The rest, there are ways to get cruisers on a few-day old characters and things of that nature. It sounds good, but EVE is designed to be a bit more of a progression, with frigates to get you cheaply familiar with how the game and combat works. Cruisers you actually have to start thinking of how to fit, and most will require good secondary and tertiary skills to get good fits on - so don't rush, take your time.

There are several ingame channels to get help. There's a beginner NPC corp you'll start in, which do contain a good number of knowledgeable and longtime players who just didn't want to join a player corp. As long as you ask nicely, you can generally get good answers. There's also a specific newbie help channel, which should still be semi-moderated.

It really depends on what you want to do in eve. Do you want to mine, and trade? Do you want to run PvE missions? Do you want to join a corp/alliance, and PvP?

When i first started playing back in 2004 it really wasnt that hard to pick up on things. The max skill levels i could get for my starter toon was lvl 3. That changed a bit, and now you can get some lvl 5 skills on your starter toon. Do the aura tutorials despite how boring they are. It has important information you need to know.

I havnt played eve since '07 so i really dont know what has changed.

I focused primarily on combat skills (was a caldari toon). I done mostly PvE security missions till i got the hang of the game. Make sure you find high quality agents. The better quality the more isk you make. Within a month i had 3 million in skill points, Battleship skills, Tech II skills. Then joined the late Acendant Frontier. I started PvP with 3 mil in SP, and a caracal of all ships! My 1st pvp kill was in a T1 fitted caracal vs a T2 fitted ceptor. Ill never forget it. Try to warp scram in a ceptor a ship fitted with 5 arbalest missile launchers (1st, and last time i fitted a caracal with expensive arby's for pvp).

The important thing is to have fun in whatever you decide to do. Its your 15 bucks a month. Do what you want to do. Not what someone else tells you to do.

I tried it for the 14 day trial, and yeah it is rather hard it is the hardest mmo to learn (of those I played) but you can count on two things.

1. The people in EVE are the exact opposite of the average WOW 12 year old flamer, they will halp you with anything you would need.

2. They have upgraded the tutorial as well as the character creation process since I played so I assume it is much easier than the one before (which was still decent)

The only thing that I could not understand was how to fire on two targets with two guns on your ship (1 per target) despite being told how lol. Anyhow it is livablly easy to learn easier; than biology 20 atleast.

P.S. From what I've heard join a corp ASAP

Its not hard, it's simply time consuming. If you wanna do some starter/newbie pvp fairly effectively you need to get into at least T2 frigates and that will take about a month give or take a week to get off the ground, skill training wise.

Another Cool thing about Eve is if you have more important stuff to do ie work, school or whatever you can just log on once every while and set up new skills to learn.

Try to join a good corp for newbies, like Eve Uni, they will help you a lot

Well they do train alot of PVP pilots since it'S the largest activaty in EVE. If you don't have a strong PVP pilot base your empire is scrwed. But they also train miners and traders and builders. But those courses are shorter since you only need to learnt he theory. While as pvp knowing the theory isn't enought you need to aquirer the combat skillz to. Something I have not yet mastered. I am an OK pvp pilot but nothign extraordinary.

Most of my PVPing was done in large fleets before Apocrypha and its server overhauls, when it was just a coin toss of which side loads grid first and wins while everyone else is either lagged to death or staring at blank space while really getting shot at and 40 minutes later cloning at a station..

Haven't tried it since the expansion, though I hear it's gotten much better.

There are always wars. People go to live in 0.0 space specifically for it, there's never not a war to fight!

Yeah and recently the great EVE war has came to an end witht he disbanding of BOB (Band Of Brothers). But now a great evil rules on 0.0 in EVE and that is Goonswarm. I like BOB better over Goons.

I'm based freaking in the middle of nowhere so BOB, Goon, and the wars don't really affect me much. Seems no one wants to take over derelik or anything near it (not that I would blame them).

All in all, EVE isn't too hard to get into, just make sure to not rush yourself along to much and remember don't fly a ship until you can fly it well.

Haha. Well, at least I wasn't in Goonfleet That's where most of the trouble is, their horse is a bit too high in general.

Goons were on good terms with TCF for a while in Curse while I was playing, we'd use their stations and jump bridges  while we were locking BoB into their home region..

I was gone by then