The Croop article is essentially a prolonged puff piece about his digital addiction, and doesn't actually key in on the problems that new players have.

The fact that there's no defined newbie zone is not very relevant - in fact Croop seems to misunderstand how newbie zones and tutorials work in other MMORPGs. (Name a mainstream MMO that prevents you from exiting the newbie zone until level X, for example?)

EVE's issue is that the massively complex interface and unintuitive controls are poorly explained by a badly designed tutorial. I started playing EVE because my buddy has raved about it for years, and he was APPALLED at the misinformation in the EVE tutorial, along with the outright omissions and bad advice it gave.

EVE has a lot of really amazing concepts and game play mechanics.... don't get me wrong.... but Croop's article manages to completely miss the mark.