Hmm. It looks kinda boring, but below you can see the biggest battle ever to have happened in EVE online. Within 8 hours players burned ships worth 200.000 €uros.
In order to be a top player, you'll probably have to spend 8 days peer week online, accordingly the amount of time spent here to create goods worth 200.000€ without paying is just insane.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCK-E5AopVI
http://themittani.com/news/b-r5rb-biggest-battle-all-eve
You have to remember these were the biggest entities in Eve, and there is a lot more happening than you can see in this video. Due to thousands of pilots being involved, time is also slowed down so the server, which is comparable to military hardware, doesn't crash. The ordinary person seeing this and joining Eve, 90% will not make it, let alone ever fly a Titan or something along those lines. This was pretty much the big honsho's fighting.
Also, most of this '$' was made ingame, so it isn't like people drop their salaries to buy Titans. That's just for the headlines so people can grasp more or less what happened. Eve cannot be explained easily, it's far too complicated for that. That's why I like it, very few console kiddies or neanderthals. Plenty of psychopaths, that's certainly true. But it has consquences, and can be highly rewarding if you DO get through the learning curve. I also like that it has people from all over the planet, and I thrive in sandboxes. Most people don't, and rather have a scripted game, which is fine, but don't come to Eve and ask: What should I do next? You won't make it.
The battle actually lasted for 21 hours, with about 70 dead Titans and (tens of) thousands of other ships, and all timezones working together. Eve is not for the quick draw, it's takes planning, coordination and a lot of effort. Not necessarily, not always, but with these battles? Definitely. I'd say watch a good sci-fi movie maybe
