I think it's telling how the best defense put forth by EVE fans is that Yahtzee was essentially playing the game incorrectly, or at least playing in such a way as to eliminate any possible fun.
I played the EVE trial as well, and in a similar manner as Yahtzee (that is, I played as though I might stop playing shortly rather than assuming I had any real future with the game). I assumed, like anyone playing a trial should, that there was a large portion of the game that would be unavailable to me in the relatively short time I had to play. Still, never during the trial did anything I saw in-game suggest to me that I wasn't playing the game "correctly". I trudged through the boring tutorial, I completed missions, I shot some things and mined others, I flew around an explored; I did everything the game suggested I do and even messed around a bit on my own. Once again, I never got the slightest hint that I wasn't playing like any regular EVE subscriber did.
And it was boring. Terribly so. The game had no hook; nothing to convince me to stick around and wait for things to get better. I'm not talking about "instant gratification", I'm talking about the game not presenting me with any goal or mechanic that I felt would be worth sticking around to watch unfold. If people like Yahtzee and myself are "playing it wrong", why does the game allow us to do that? If we're supposed to create our own fun, don't you think it's a tall order to charge a person for a blank canvas and then expect them to paint their own masterpiece in 14 days?
