Recs.
Updated
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Pros
Pro After entering Null-Sec you always feels like you're in a center of big drama
The real game begins after joining any alliance. You starting to see industrial, economic, war conflicts, espionage, massive events (created by the players), corporate life and all of this is one mechanism, it's a real Eve Online.
Pro Real freedom
You can do anything. Literally anything. You can become a massive entrepreneur and deal with billions of ISK, set up a pirate base in wormhole space, explore anomalies, build massive ships, become CEO of a player-run industrial corporation. There's tons and tons and tons of stuff. This is likely the most sandboxy of MMO sandboxes.
Pro This game allows everything
It's about player-player relations.
This game allows betrayals, hating, espionage, stealing and everything you can imagine.
Of course developers deny to carry over all of these to real life and you can submit a complaint to player if something like this happened IRL because of EVE.
Cons
Con Requires lots of time invested
Because of the open market thing even going out on a quick mission may require you to gear up your ship first, which takes ages as you jump across multiple stations to get the two dozen different modules required to outfit your ship.
EVE feels a lot like a second job sometimes.
Con Spreadsheets in space
At the very core, that's what it is. You'll be looking at tons of stats, calculating % resistances and DPS. It's a paradise for math savants and economics geeks, but not so much if you just want to blow things up quickly.
The graphics are there, but combat takes place at a few kilometers at least, so you won't be ever seeing your ship and the enemys' at the same time (unless as tiny silhouettes). Which only enhances the feeling that combat is a set of dynamic spreadsheets rather than a real visceral thing.
Recommendations
Comments
Flagged Pros + Cons
Pro Amazing freedom of play
You can do almost anything in the game. You can become a massive entrepreneur and deal with billions of ISK, set up a pirate base in wormhole space, explore anomalies, build massive ships, become CEO of a player-run industrial corporation. There's tons and tons and tons of stuff. This is likely the most sandboxy of MMO sandboxes.