Being a player that isn’t new or old,I’ll give you an answer to the OP question from my view.
No,being that answer.
2010 a friend persuaded me to download a 14 day trial to Eve and give it a try. This friend started Eve in 2006 and often talked about the game. I played the 14 days and paid for one month sub. In Eve that’s barely enough to learn even the basics. Maybe 100 hours of game time. When my friend went back to the game where we became acquainted,soon after I stopped playing and returned to that mmo. He taught me far more about Eve than I would have learned on my own.
Change is inevitable,however any change always alienates some person or subgroup. I find the key is to know what premise(expectation) it is that you decide to engage. Ex. Is Eve a HTFU kind game or is it some carebear version of its former self? I was under the premise that it was and is the former. By reading the Eve forums for the last 6 months(That is before even digging out my old account info and actually downloading the current version) I don’t see Eve as the HTFU! kind of game it once was.
Reasons:
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Steam: Steam imo destroys any game that is under its umbrella.
Applying to the masses insures you wont get the player base that will be essential to a given niche type game. Where as Eve previously was “found” by the kind of player who was looking for said niche game. -
Free to Play: Has become and is today’s last bastion of survival for MMO’s. F2P is often hand in hand with micro-transactions type games. These type of games hardly sustain any longevity in the gaming world. I wont list any,but I’m sure someone can find the exception.
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Pay to Win: Eve is a p2w game. Yes I know you don’t want to read that,but if you look at some posts above this one,how could you come to any other conclusion. Skill injectors WTF! Cash=Plex=Isk=Skill Injectors. Need I say more?
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Multi-boxing: It was assumed in Eve if you saw a player,they were paying to multi-box. Each to their own,I guess. Today its assumed that every player has 2 to 50 accounts. Which gives rise to Miners emptying out whole systems in a day. Gankers loading up 3 or more accounts just to kill one Miner. More spies than I can imagine. Here,I thought that Eve was a socially interactive game. Instead it is Miner fleets and Ganker fleets controlled by individual players. So much for social interaction.
Listed above,these 4 are the scourge of all MMO’s. I won’t say they are the death nail but I’ve read many a forum post with numerous claims that a game is healthy. Only to find at the next log on,said game will be going offline(sunset) in a near future date.
As I stated,I am not new yet hardly can say I understand all what Eve is. Nothing in life is static . It’s either moving forward or moving backward. Its either thriving or declining. Think about this. Next time you log on and see the number of players in the launcher currently playing,ask yourself how many actual players make up that number. What? Maybe 20,000 more or less? Take into account multiple F2P accounts. 2010 the average as I recall was between 30k to 40k and all of those were 14 day trials or paid subs.
If CCP really wanted to shake things up they could implement a new feature where any an all founded player corps would have to evacuate High Sec after a one year period. Think of the ramifications and effects that would have in Eve. This cause and effect could be rather large to encompass. Think about it.
Just my 2 Isk