I consider what you can spend regularly and what you use to determine if your poor or rich.
I remember making my first million ISK, made feel amazing until I realized that destroyers where about a flat 1M. At the time 8M was my total wallet so buying a destroyer was a big investment. Playing it safe, it bought what I could and was still making ISK. I wasn’t exactly wealthy but I could “exist” in EVE.
Now I’m flying 5 different class of ships and have 400M ISK in my wallet and spending 10-30M like its nothing. In my opinion I am rich, but knowing other players having 100B ISK and spending millions like its nothing. But they do that because they are probably in the null sec alliance running a couple citadels, building and distributing a ton of weapons, munition and vessels to the other members.
To the newbean, 10M makes them rich while the old veterans 10M is breakfast.
Isk, for some, is a score card and the goal of the game. For thoers? It is just a tool to allow you to do things or limit your actions. When you are rich there are no such limits and you buy what you need when you need it. If you no longer really lok at the price you are rich, If you look then shrug? well off. If you look then make do with something cheaper and start saving for the shiny in the window? poor but working to change that state.
Just imagine a big home-party with a big pool, parked Ferrari, and late-night fireworks. Got it? If you are owner of that home, then you can consider yourself Earth rich.
Just imagine a Keepstar under the siege of multiple alliances, including all fireworks, and how it explodes at midnight. If you are owner of the station, then you are space rich. Moreover, you should be able to load your Victorieux Luxury Yacht with titan blueprints, PLEXEs, exotic dancers and other models just to fly to other your Keepstar, situated in some “green zone”. People who stays to clean the garbage, for constructions and reparations are space poor.
The phrase “space rich vs. space poor” is not correct, because between them is situated a huge army with “goons”. For example, just watch the movie Snowpiercer, where relations between rich and poor are screened in a simple and superb way. You’ll learn a lot about it without reading dozens of books. Just imagine a long train. First wagons are for rich while last wagons are for poor. The middle wagons are populated by a huge army with “goons”, which like to use resources of rich and to smash poor at the same time.
Space-rich is someone who can easily fund his accounts with PLEX bought on the market, fly any kind of bling ships he wants, including capitals and supercapitals, and can easily replace those when lost, can do this for at least a year and still does not have to spend a minute on PvE to earn ISK.
Everyone who cannot do all that is not space-rich. Middle-class maybe.
As space-poor I would consider a player who cannot afford to fly/replace a middle-value ship like a 1-2 billion T3 cruiser.
By this definition I am lower middle-class. Mostly because the only thing that motivates me enough to do PvE is when my wallet drops so low that I’m sinking into the space-poor category. As soon as I have 5 billion or so again, I always lose the drive to make more.
I don’t think anyone ever got space rich by not looking at the price and I’m fairly certain they won’t stay that way if they did
Having said that, the rich in EVE are very rich. They fly what they want when they want, they PLEX their accounts and most importantly they do not waste their time on ‘trivialities’ such as PvE to earn their daily billions.
Space rich is when you can afford to donate prizes to player-run events and other good stuff. Of course, by that definition some people without much ISK are already space rich.
People with the wrong attitude for EVE shouldn’t be playing EVE. I’m only doing what’s best for both the game, and the person with the bad attitude. I don’t really give one seventeenth of a fig what you think of me for that. Who even are you that I should?
