I recently re subed my 2 accounts about 2 weeks ago to see what was happening in game after being away for something like 10 months. One is a fighter and the other a miner/indy char. I think since resubing i have been in game about 20 minutes. I prefer the pve eliment but don't mind pvp. I have beem playing eve since 2004 with breaks along the way, and i am back there now. I have all the shiny toys the nightmares the rattlesnakes and the machs and many more and its what keeps me there plus a great corp.
The reason i havent been on here, is there is none of that is here, no shiney things to play with i have the t2 bots here in fact i have all of them combat and industrial i have my own 2 man corp with 700 million nic in it and about 30 million on each char. Plus each one has around 150k ep to spend but i find no skills to use them on that would benifit me greatly in what i do. If there were more bots for pve that needed extra skills ect then i would use them but alas there really is nothing here for me.
I see that over the last year or so the game has given most of its development to pvp and beta islands ect, the problem is and you can dismiss it all you want but its true that the pve players are the ones that will give you the most accounts and the money to expand the game, but it looks like you listened to the vocal majority. You only have to look at eve and the amount of players that live in empire to see its true. To make this game work you need to put alot into pve and soon or the game will fail.
When i loged on i saw 74 people in game channel, i know people drop out of it to go into corp channels but new player might not and they see that there is hardley anyone on. Maybe you need to make it so you can't leave the main channel, so people can see how many are really on.
I am not sure what you need to bring more people in, but more mechs and better pve missions etc are a good start, you don't need more islands you need to make whats there better, i sat at the base of a truehold main terminal for 15 minutes and never saw another player, so land really isn't what is needed content is.
My 2 accounts will expire in 2 weeks and i doubt i will log back in, i will return in a year if the game is still here which i hope it is as it has so much potential, i still read the forums every now and then.
Fly safe all.