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.