EVE is a space MMO set in a sci-fi universe of New Eden. The back story consists of colonists from Earth travel through a wormhole and get cut off, centuries later factions have formed and are now fighting for domination of the space they once colonized. EVE itself is a standard click-to-hit style MMO where you control a ship in space.

One of EVE's selling points is the real “sandbox” environment. While other games can be expressed as sandbox games EVE attempts to allow the players free reign in space. Want to be a pirate picking off haulers as they go through gates? Sure. Want to be part of a large alliance holding space? Why not, Want to pull off large scams? Hell yes. Want to make millions on the trading market? You can.

EVE is a PvP game with PvE elements, every action in the game can be considered a precursor to the PvP game in EVE. The trading market itself can be almost classed as PvP where you fight against several players on the large markets to make yourself a quick fortune.

The biggest pull of the game isn't the in-game mechanics, the “sandbox” environment, or the PvP, its the meta-game that surrounds EVE Online. A lot of the large actions that happened in EVE Online have been reported across the gaming press, from the $5000 USD scam or the open warfare where over 4000 people are fighting in a single system. EVE's meta game is rich with intrigue and betrayal, with the large PvP alliances being the centre point.

Yes and no, In EVE you have numerous paths, careers and niches you can go into. Most people associate the sheer number of choices as the steep learning curve, as people think you need to know them all.

Thankfully, the in-game tutorials are a lot better than when the original learning curve image was made. The tutorials will cover you for the basics for fighting and piloting your ship, and will also expand down into some of the smaller career paths such as mission running and salvaging.

Just remember this, you'll never know everything about everything in EVE, even veteran players will still pickup new things from time to time.

Yes, usually by 2-3 days in you should have enough actual gameplay knowledge to get a feel for how the game plays from there on, after that you'll be flying bigger ships and hopefully getting involved in some PvP.

When in doubt, rightclick.

EVE is a classless MMO, you train up skill areas to gain access to new ships and tools. So for example if you wanted to be a Ninja Salvager you would train up a probing skills, a fast ship, salvaging skills, and maybe some cloaking skills.

In the same way this means you can become a jack-of-all trades, and you can't “gimp” your character like you can on other MMOs. If you make a mistake and are not interested in a certain area of gameplay you can retrain to something else.

Its very simple:

• Player 1 offers a Buddy Invite to Player 2
• Player 2 gets 21 days of free play time.
• If Player 2 subscribes, Player 1 gets 30 days of free playtime.

The usual routine for public buddy invites is to offer some sweeteners to make the newbie's first days a bit easier. As the original person gets some free game time (which is worth about 300mil ISK in-game as a PLEX) its usually customary for the subscribing new play to get 100mil ISK+.

Always check with the person who invited you.

Yes, you can buy game time (known as PLEX) with ISK in-game. The market price fluctuates during the year but it usually sticks around the price of 300mil ISK per PLEX and a PLEX will give you a month of game time. As of June 2012 this was around 500 million though, so don't expect to be able to pay for the game with PLEX during your first few months of play. In October 2012 the price is closer to 650 million.

Very doubtful, 500mil ISK for a new account is a lot of work. It is possible that within 60 days and access to nullsec space you could be earning enough ISK to pay for a account if you train directly for ratting skills. A T1 fitted Drake pilot can expect a income of around 3-4mil ISK per tick (20 minute period) in nullsec space.