Jul 30th 2013, 14:16:00
I have played Eve off and on for the last 6 years. It is quite fun, and if you play right, you can play for free.
There are bots in Eve, but not ones that can destroy your stuff. More like mining bots, and shipping bots.
Eve costs about $8 a month to play. The difference with Eve is that if you want to buy newer, fancier stuff, you can buy "game time" and then sell it in the game for eve credits. The way they have set up the system, you can buy and sell these "PLEX" cards in game, so that someone industrious enough could buy your game time cards, for Eve money. He gets a month of play, you get a few hundred million credits in game. You end up paying real life dollars if you choose to, and the other guy pays $0 real life dollars to play the game. Its actually a pretty good system.
What's more interesting is that when you buy these game time cards in game, they become a real item. You transport them, store them, and sell them on the eve market. So if you are travelling in your ship with one, and you get blown up, it gets blown up too. They can also be looted. One player a few years ago had 75 of these blown up on his ship, which equated to about $2500 worth of game time...You can't however spend money to level up your character, that is strictly time based.
If you are thinking of exploring Eve, just know that it isn't WoW. It is cut throat, and war heavy. There is nothing in the game that is without risk.