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Big changes are bad :) New additions are not. SWG is changing from the ground up... fundamentally. EVE is adding into what they already have going.

CCP is great about communicating what they think is wrong with the game and what they plan to do about it. They understood the new player experience sucked. They added a great tutorial. They understood that the average gamer didn't "get" the whole "0.0 security space corporation political control thingy" and this is their answer.

Also I wouldn't confuse "hardcore" with "veteran"... a casual player can be just as much of a veteran as the hardcore and chances are the hardcore player won't be around in a year (they tend to burn out you know) where as a casual veteran will be around for years. Even more so in EVE because casuals and hardcore are advancing at the same rates :)

So is EVE the holy grail? Not really. It took some time to get to where it is and it still has some lacking areas. One being that it still doesn't have a directed experience for new players. The tutorial is great, but really it basically covers the "how to play" aspects. After that you are left to use outside sources to advance... message boards, corporation websites, fansites, etc. Again this is something the factional is hoping to fix.

The big wall for people to start EVE is the whole corporation political aspect. Some people just don't want to get that involved. Tobold for example loves the economy and market, but the stigma of PvP dominated by well oiled gank squads pushes him away. But for those of us in corporations and in alliance owned 0.0 space we rarely have to worry about pirates.

So what EVE has now is a niche crowd that plays in "pockets". Each corporation really plays differently than the other in their own pocket of space. If I mentioned "the pipe", a section of space that my alliance patrols and OWNZ, to another EVE player chances are they would have no clue what I was talking about. If I told a WoW player I was in Ogrimmar they know exactly where I am. This speaks volumes about the "world" that CCP has created.... maybe the first true world we've seen in any MMORPG.

It is evident that people want to play "next to" and not always "with" other players. So this is a brilliant move on CCPs part. It invites new players in for something that wasn't there before... a guided experience.

While I don't see it really making EVE a HUGE game... I definately see it picking up a lot of players sitting on the proverbial fence that like certain aspects of EVE.