What are you using for your display?
An old samsung DLP, she's almost 2-1/2 yrs old now! Can't believe I've been big screen gaming for so long.
So what, essentially, does the gameplay of Eve Online consist of?
It's pure space sim, no land portions. You do dock in space stations, but you only see your docked ship, no other avatars. The gameplay is pretty open, our corporation (like a guild) does mining every few nights, which means the industrial guys bring out their big mining tubs and the navy types bring their big guns to protect them. There's an active trade economy, too. I'll be going into R&D eventually, setting up the industry guys with cool new toys to build, but for now I'm mostly navy in my little missile boat. There is also a large player vs player combat part of the game that I'm way too young (ingame, heh) to get into just now.
Every now and again you see a huge player convoy heading out for unsecure space with all these battleships and cargo freighters, it's really cool. Even our tiny corp's convoy for mining night is pretty interesting.
Learning curve - some say it's huge, I didn't think it was so bad...but I like reading ;)