I look at ep as your agent learning. You log in and your agent has learned more. Some extension being harder to learn obviously take longer time, just like real life. Op's way of doing it is like dropping out of university then 6 month later expecting A's on everything because they paid. Pay, play, Learn.

You guys covered the xp and gear pretty good,but I got to mention about chat. This game has one of the best community I have seen in a while. Those vets who talk in chat also answer questions and love doing it. It's like having personal mentors. Also joining a corp helps a ton.

I was on when the OP started. If I remember his first question was "how long till I pvp?". I do understand that pvping is fun but go play call of duty if you just want to log in and pvp. Mmo,s are not like that. Have to keep in mind that most mmo's made these days are a hand holding session. I found you learn the basics on the tutorial and if he made it to the forums to rant he was only a click away to the resources and guide section. It took me 2 different times to play eve, but I just sat down and said, damn it I'm going to learn this and was reading every guide I could find. A week later I was like damn this is actually easy. Then you start learning about the more indepth parts of the game, which is the best part of sandbox games.