man, where to start!?
I played the game on and off for about 5/6 years, so things might've changed.
First thing to realise massively is, this isn't WoW... its ruthless. If you get blown up, your ship is gone. you don't get it back, you don't get the modules back, etc. You can insure the ship, but at best, its worth about 50% of your build.
Also, corps are important, but not neccessary, you can have fun on your own, but if you want to get out into 0.0 space, you'll need a corp, and an alliance most likely.
Eve-mon, its an amazing app, which links to your EVE API (if you don't know about this, just say
) it allows you to plan your skills, which you'll need to do.
So, heres a few questions for you first
1. what do you plan to do? pirate, trade, mining? get into 0.0 with a corp? missions? wormholes? the most common starts are mission's/mining, i get bored of them fast, but for a new starter you'll need to do them for at least a while.
2. Where do you want to be in a few months from now? to get into 0.0 corps you need to be able to use at least a battleship, and depending on where you go, you'll need voice comms and to help out with defence of those area's... granted some alliance/corps are hotter on this than others, I was with 3-I up in the north (Mostly Harmless/NC alliance) and yeah, things were pretty hot up there.
Its up to you really though, EVE can take as much time as you want it to, i know people who live in the game, building ships, moving them with carriers/jump freighters, and going out fighting at night time.
The game is so vast and varied, its hard to give you advice without knowing what you want to do
I spent most of my time in 0.0 space, and so I can help you loads if you ever go there.
Oh, massive tip though, don't get involved in pirating just yet, don't shoot anybody in space, even if you go into anything 0.1 and above by accident, concord wont like you and gate guns wont like you either. You wont beat concord, ever.
If you go to the system map (F10) i think, make sure your autopilot settings are not allowing you to go through systems in 0.4 or lower space. These are basically PK zone's, and the zones where it changes from safe 0.5 space to 0.4 space are usually camped by pirates waiting for unfortunate people to make the mistake of thinking they can get through. Don't ever make a risk unless you can afford to lose your ship
hmm, thats about it for now i think, oh and on the subject of autopilot, only use it if you have to. Manually you can warp to 0km from a gate, autopilot can only do 15km, so you have to wait for it to fly to the gates, manually is nearly twice as fast in a fat slow ship