Eve is one of the best and worst games ever made. I joined Eve years ago as a newbie from a friend invite, within months I had mastered small gang combat. My mentor put me into tackling ships at day 1 and I was a pirate -10 by 5 days into it with over 100 kills.
This whole idea that you can't play unless you have invested years is complete nonsense the most important role in the game is tackling and scouting, which you can do on a day old character.
Eve is a game where you make your own game goals. If you want to be a billionare and give away stuff and be e-famous you can do that. If you want to be one of the best solo pilots out there you can do that. If you want to be a spy and steal massive amounts of information or take down an alliance through meta gaming you can do that. Eve is basically a softer version of real life because you can change who you are within a few clicks of a button by buying and selling characters.
If you wanted to learn how to manipulate people and companies, then Eve is your training ground. It is basically the best sandbox game in the world. The spaceship part has nothing to do with it. If you want something to express every part of yourself you can do that in Eve.
I played for 3 years as a 10 man pirate corp. We set our goal to be the best PvPers in our area, we would constantly fight gangs 2-3 times our size and loose nothing and kill most of them using cunning tactics and game mechanics that most didn't know. It was fantastic, but also terrible, because once you become known, people only bring stuff to kill you, and being smart and scouting 8 systems out you know your not going to fight that. So at times there would be months with no good fights.
Eve is wonderful, I miss her, but I dont.