Started playing it last March (2016).  Skilling up all three toons on the account.  
One headed for battleships and cruisers, with an eye toward Nullsec.
One frigates and Destroyers, tackling gear, cyno, etc.
One freighter alt, for when stuff needs to move.
Belonged to a few Corps, but they get paranoid, and if you don't teamspeak, they assume you're a spy.  Nope, just anti-social.

I don't play personally buy I watched a colleague play for a couple of days when we were traveling. This is what I picked up during the week.

If you don't ally with one of the larger groups you can kiss your ass goodbye. From what I understand, once you hit a certain size, you WILL BE ASKED to join one of the local guilds, who in turn, belong to a much larger guild. You will need to pay tribute to your guild for protection or they will just allow other clans, who might be paying guild members, to target you. They may even help crush you. Basically it becomes a protection racket.

The fun happens when someone powerful from inside the guild decides to try and overtake the leadership and then all war breaks out and you'll have to choose a side.

I also read one time that there was an all out clan war over some weekend that ended up decimating both sides to the tune of near $100k in cash value of capital ships and bases.

been playing for too long, only use a single toon though

comms are a must for fleets, otherwise you dont know whats happening

been in null so long, i cant even fothom going back to empire, too many nuetrals

edit: if you need anything, i use the same name ingame

Started played about a week ago. Badlatitude Arfcom still an Alpha clone just messing around mining, running missions etc

Got a steath bomber in null somewhere I was popping miners with.

Havent been on in a LONG time though. Tempting.

Amarr fo lyfe

CCP created a monument in nullsec for this battle.

Bloodbath of B-R5RB

I played this for many years as a merc in a group called Noir mercenary group. I had fun playing back then but holly shit is the game immense. I have a Tengu parked in some back water 0.0 sec with billions of isk in mods and gear.  Game has a pretty steep learning curve due to the amount of things in the game.

Played off and on from 09 till last year.  Did everything but Faction Warfare.  Last stint in there was in Deklin with a small corp that took Goons old space, as I was an old goon and didnt want to bother moving or selling shit just to join back up with then. They folded when CCP pulled the plug on IwantISK.  Endless billions in hardware sitting around there now.  Carrier ratting to fund dumb shit like the small fleet of smartbombing battleships i would hand out when we heard about destoyer/frig gangs coming.   Also I would take a pair of self and remote repping Dominixs to gate camps just to be cheap triage.  

Old bitter vet.  

yep, been playing off and on since beta (2003), current "on" phase has lasted 2 yrs, 2mos

Currently have 4 omega accounts, 3 in nullsec alliance, one sits in empire to buy stuff in jita