Play as Alpha for a while to see if you want to subscribe or not. As to your 3 points:
- The interface is clunky and awkward, but a fair bit of that is because EVE is designed in a clunky and awkward fashion. The mechanics of ship combat, scanning, etc. would be pretty hard to re-do in a “console controller friendly” fashion which is what most games seem to be looking for these days.
The other issue is that CCP has a history of messing up any large-ish changes pretty badly, so trying to re-do the interface is a disaster waiting to happen. Look at the changes to the chat system, or even the recent Skill/Character page re-write. It would be far more likely to alienate existing players than attract new ones, unfortunately. So we’re likely stuck with it.
- A few hundred people bitching in Reddit/Twitter/forums is less than 1% of the player base. The tiny portion of the EVE community that bothers to post publicly is far more used to tossing pitchforks than praise. No matter what CCP proposes it will see more public negative response than positive. Not saying I think Dr. Who crossover is a good idea, but an event will come and go within a short time, and it will at least create some buzz outside the EVE community by using a well-known IP.
Yes, EVE can do a lot with its’ own lore, but that’s basically preaching to the choir. You’re not going to lure in fresh meat with an event based on Sleeper lore.
- The economy isn’t that messed up, and wasn’t that messed up even before CCP decided they needed to starting “fixing” it by breaking things. Some things are more expensive, some cheaper, some about the same. It’s possible to earn ISK at significantly higher rates than in the past, depending what your EVE career bases are.
When deciding to get back into the game, just go cheap with FW or exploration or mining or whatever you’re doing and get some ISK built up before you decide to take a risk on more expensive stuff.
In the final analysis, CCP stopped trying to really “improve” the game about a decade ago. Since then they’ve mostly been focused on turning the game into a giant sheep dip for funneling herds of multi-account subscribers through to strip maximum income from the remaining player base.
Up to you if that’s something you want to support or not.