Out of Pod Experience

^ Was a rational and well-said response, Black Pedro. I'd just have a couple of things to reply on.

The dual/multi account standard thing is kind of a large issue, I think. Miners aren't justified in complaining about it. They'd just be complaining about somebody doubling-up on the isk extraction per hour. To me, it's more an issue for PVP/more risky stuff. Examples:
-The common practice/reliance on an alt account lighting the cyno, and the main account jump freighting or otherwise jumping. The only alternative to that is to have a friend/group member light the cyno for you, and you jump. Who does that, during daily taking care of business gameplay? About nobody, because the gameplay expectation is you do that grunt work on your own, using your two accounts.
-Safe gank-avoidance travel advice for freighters: "Just have your alt scout ahead, you'll be safe." Again, requires a commitment to run dual accounts, and keep both funded every month. Something a "hooked" player would do, but not someone checking out the game and maybe getting interested in it.
-High sec status alt in an NPC corp running around in high sec (in practice, 100% immune to being shot), stunting around in a high sec system bumping things. Ganker main held in reserve, ready to launch.
-Low sec PVP. Alt is the bait, main is the death dealer. Even if the solo account player correctly smells the stink bait, there's nothing they can do to win the fight. They can go Leeroy and lose, or just be smart, avoid the fight, and hope to find another one, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. They weren't being carebear, they were being the opposite.

Agreed that EVE is designed to award those who can manage to assemble the most force, to be applied in the right place, at the right time. It's a brilliant game for gathering clans, building groups, doing diplomacy, and trying to create an empire. (The history of CFC shows that the sandbox did that pretty much perfectly). The problem is: Say you were a new guy, with ambitions similar to, say, The Mittani. You start out in high sec, learning the ropes. You might through personality form up a band or clan, probably made of other new guys. (After all, you're noob, you can't hope to gather a crew of vets to you). Some of your assortment of crew guys think they're into mining, and get ganked and gang-smacktalked. OK. Your group overall goes from wardecced to wardecced by OP corps. What can you do, except tell them to dock up (i.e. stop playing the game) for days at a time? Or, quit corp, all we can do is ditch this and go join a blob corp, as another anonymous grunt? Or try to get recruited by a smaller vet corp, who've been communicating via voice comms for months or years? Either 0 to blob or 0 to getting into a comms society of friend in 60 seconds.

I don't know, but between the dual accounts imbalance, and stepping into the game as a prey animal in a world where you have to learn the rules by outside study or finding a mentor-- who would want to? Only a "niche" few. When I started in 2008, I wasn't looking for a spaceships game, I was looking for smart, strategic game. But I doubt I'd have hung around as a new player in the current environment for new guys. Too many obscure, mechanics-based surprises and disadvantages for a new guy to spend precious slack time dealing with. "Seems interesting, but WTH, these guys got their own private circle-massage private rules thing going on. And WTH, some of them seem to be on some fekking head games arsewipe trip. Back to Google browsing, let's check out this game...."