I think they hired tutors, read books, and attended lectures, and worried about making the monies after.
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What did we do? Well, we trained. It used to take years to get into capitals, for instance, so such a time investment made you a very valuable player. If you were particularly wealthy, there was the character bazaar, where you could buy a character that someone else had trained for a specific purpose. But for the most part, people just trained the skills they wanted. Players in your situation would typically buy the best equipment they could afford/use, although some of them would lose their wealth that way because despite having the skills to use a thing, they were bad at it and someone who was bad at it (even if they had lower character skills) would hand their ass to them. Although yes, a lot of people bought shiny implants to help compensate.
I’d not worry about what to spend your money on, honestly. Train, play the game, enjoy it. ISK and SP are a means to an end, the end being enjoyment of the game. For instance, I explore. It doesn’t require a lot of SP to do, and it doesn’t require a terribly large ISK investment. But my high SP helps me do it better, and the ISK I earn I use to replace ships I lose and to pay for my sub, and thus I can continue exploring which is what I enjoy.
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I know I hired tutors. I know it may sound silly, but I feel like every isk was well spent.
I hired tutors for pvp instruction, though a couple of the guys I contacted once they understood how little I actually understood regarding pvp refused to accept payment.
Hiring tutors meant I could take my time and ask my questions (and give my corpies a little bit of peace and quiet.)
I had so many questions, when I started, I was embarrassed, and felt my incessant questions bordered on pestering my corp…but, those guys, my first corp mates, were real troopers and bore with me (and my questions) with good grace.
But, back to hiring tutors…it was done. I did it, and am glad I did.
If you plan on throwing some ISK at injectors i recommend getting the skills for fitting and tanking first.
Gila is versatile for PVP and PVE so thats a good one to get if you want to try different things.
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Shooting eachother.
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I was thinking the exact same thing.
Sorry but that answer just doesn’t fly. Since you won’t even provide a little hint, we can only surmise that you’re lying.
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We didn’t spend our money back then. We just hoarded it and then made troll threads like this one. Some things never change.
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First of all your character back then barely had any skills available to train right from the start like character’s do now. We had to buy all the ‘Core Fitting Skills’ and ‘Spaceship Command Skills’ that are basically free to new players now.
There also wasn’t any Attribute Remaps available, other than buying Attribute Implants to increase training time players had to buy and train up ‘Learning Skills’.
Also gotta include all the ships and equipment that had to be bought to actually play the game.
So yeah, a lot of time and ISK was invested into characters back then, definitely wasn’t ‘Easy Street’ like it is now.
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Just assume i’m lying then, it doesn’t matter does it 
I know people who **used to make somewhat consistent peaks of around 5bil an hour doing niche stuff that they invented.
What do you do with your isk?
That amount of isk that quick smacks of an exploit or just BS.
Regardless, it seems out of scope for what Dev intends.
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And we did this by using whatever we had available.
Can’t fly an interceptor?
Slap together a speedy frigate and use it to lock down targets until friendlies arrive.
Can’t fly an assault frigate?
Load up a combat frigate with either a lot of tank or a lot of firepower.
Sure, the Tech 1 ships are not as good as the Tech 2 ships, but they are MUCH cheaper and give you an idea on what you can get away with using tactics and target selection alone.
And if you can become even slightly deadly in such a “basic” ship, think of what happens when the “sexy skills” are done and you can fly sexy stuff.
You don’t need to “fly the best” to “be the best.” You just need a good idea on what you can and cannot do and work around it.
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Reminds me of some funny moments when you’re buddy’s under attack, and whilst you are nearby, the only ship you’ve got is a semi-bling pve ship that you have to quickly refit with whatevers in station, meta mods and all.
Balls to the walls pvp. Either a glorious victory or one hell of an embarrassing loss mail.
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Awwww gawd… good times! 
I remember logging in and being called to a battleship brawl on a gate. All I had on hand was a T1 Executioner (or was a ■■■■-fit Crusader?).
I undocked and headed straight into the melee.
Since I wasn’t able to scratch any battleships, I immediately went out to warp disrupt the Logis just off the gate.
I must have caused someone to scream because as soon as I did that a CLOUD of drones from the battleships started to chase me.
I ended up leading the drones 50+km away from the battle, kept aggressing them so they would continue to chase me, and eventually forced the battleships to abandon their drones (so they could quickly deploy a new wave of drones to damage on the targets in front of them).
That was a very lucrative day! 
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This feels like a stealth “look at me and how much isk I made” thread.
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Yeah, except for the “stealth” part.
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Having a plan for whatever your end goal is, buy the skill books for it and have fun while skilling up.
Just keeping in spirit, I made a whole wagon full of ISK way back,…
Then the game became less fun or even interesting. 
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What did people do before skill injectors?
We had a lot more fun as the player avg at the time showed. 
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We toughed it out. Which is what Eve used to be all about. And not in a “hurrr durr everybody has to play my way” sort of way either. It didn’t matter what you did. Heck, it was one of those things that loaned a sense of kinship among Eve players, even with a proclivity to blow each other up. We all had to do it: wake up at 2AM to get that skill training started, try a logon from work, etc.
Now it’s just “hey somebody had money to buy some ISK la dee dah browser game”.
All three of my unsubbed accounts have lots of unused skill points that were rewarded and multiple free remaps too. Feck it all.
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