EVE Online is an extremly innovative title that sucks you into it's huge open universe.
When you load this game for the first time, you will be impressed with the opening cut scene and it's jaw dropping visuals. After about 20 seconds of playing you will realize this is easily the most complicated MMO to date. With it's economy almost completly player run, and completly open world you will have trouble figuring out what you want to do with your charecter, fourtanetly you are not constrained with a class system like most other MMO's. If you start your charecter as a miner, you can easily train him/her to be a competent fighter. Because of how the game determines experince (You train skills, and those skills determine what items/ships you can and cannot use, and how well you can use them) you don't need to grind to "level up." The amount of SP (Skill points) you have is almost like your level, it is measuered in the millions, (New charecters start with roughly 1 million SP, and if you are constantly training which isn't difficult, you can get about 1 million SP per month. )
The hardest part about EVE is starting you feel like there is just too much to do, you don't know where to start. The easiest way to do this is to find a Corporation (guild) that focus on what you want to do. Wether that be mining, industrial operations (manufactring ships/items) running missions (PvE) or getting into some PvP combat.
You can fly several different types of ships. Frigates are small fast and hard to hit, but they don't hit very hard. Cruisers are medium sized ships that are moderatly fast and moderatly hard to hit, but hit a lot harder than firgates. Battlecruisers are more powerful cruisers with more weapon hardpoints and more health.Battleships are big slow and extremly powerful. There are also more variations of all non capital ships that are designed to fill more tactical niches. Such as covert ops frigates which can easily travel unseen through enemy territory and scout out enimes. Then there are capital ships, carriers can deploy 15 unmaned cruiser sized drones and deystroy almost anything. Motherships can deploy 25 of these drones. Dreadnaughts are seige ships designed to destroy player owned structures and then finaly there is the titan, the biggest and baddest ship in the game, there are only 10 or so of thsese in service now, because of the offensivly expensive price tag. These ships float in space provide in game bonus's and a morale boost, also they can use a doomsday device which can obliterate an entire fleet instantly.
The PvP is really what sets this game apart from others. From small gangs of pirates blowing up unwary miners or new players, to HUGE fleet battles with anywhere from100-200 people on each side. Also the death system is much different from that of the traditional mmo for instance in World of Warcraft or Guild Wars, if you die, nothing bad happens, you don't lose anything and there is almost no drawback exept that you need to wait. In EVE if your ship gets blown up, it's gone. And you will be floating out in space in a nice and vunerable escape pod. You can purchase insurance to help redeem some of your losses if this happens, but you stil need to buy a new ship and buy new items to put on it. Because of this people are less likely to just rush into battles unprepared, You need to have friends near by for backup, or good inteligence on your target. If you are flying solo, pray your enemy doesn't have friends.
EVE currently has 200,000 active subscritons, now this may not seem like a lot compared to World of Warcrafts 8 million or so. But EVE is a persistent universe, when you connect to the server you are playing with anywhere from 20,000 people to the record high 37,000 people. Unlike WoW where you are playing with 10,000 people on one server. This makes the community even stronger because everyone is talking about events or things that player owned alliances have done.
EVE is divided into 3 types of space. High security Empire, Low Security Empire, and 0.0 or unlawed space. In Empire space there is what's called the security status. It ranges from .1 to 1. The security status of the space you are in determines whether or not you can attack other players freely. in .5 and up If you engage someone, the police will blow you up. In .4 and below you can attack players with out being blown up by NPC police, but sentry guns around stargates and stations will attack you. In 0.0 space you can do anything, even claim it as your own, assumng you have the forces to back you up in that endavor.
EVE Online is a solid game that breaks many of the sterotypes of MMO's. CCP (the makers of EVE) have made great improvments over the last 4 years to the gameplay of EVE and I think if Gamespot re-reviewed it now,it would receive a much higher score.