[EVE] Current State of the Game?

I tried Eve for a short while about a year and a half ago and found it OK, but slow to start. I tried joining an existing hi-sec Corp but after two weeks of being war-dec'd with my care bear in dock, I left.

I understand they have removed the learning skills and added some new types of game play. What is the current state of the game? Has much changed in the last year? How about for newbs?

i was kinda in the same place, tried it about a year ago, never got into it because it was so slow. i just started back playing about 2 weeks ago and it seems to be alot faster. lots of newbie guides and missions to walkthrough alot more than they had a year ago.
i'm enjoying it, i just found out about 20 minutes ago though, if you attack someone in 0.7 space at a asteroid belt the guards will kick your butt and blow up your ship lol.

I can't say for sure what exactly has changed, but this time around I didn't bother with tutorial missions/agents and just played through the combat missions from the best available agent for the faction I wanted. 2 months into the game, I'm doing Level 4 missions and having a ball at it. It isn't faceroll easy like other MMOs but if you read up on the various guides out there for EVE, it makes things a LOT less painful to get going and quickly get into some much more interesting ships/fits/skills.