Dust is dead, Valkyrie is dead. The graphics card thing was "walking in stations", which they were going to adapt to make the World of Darkness MMO, but that too is dead and White Wolf has been sold back off.

EVE right now is worse and better than ever.

The game meta is essentially bifurcated. At the small group level, the game has never been better. Between abyssal deadspace, pochven, and various changes to lowsec and wormholes, if you can get a few doods together to do a thing, you'll have a great time.

But nullwar is in a bad spot. Beeitnam illustrated the problems, that once again it's a defender's game and that the N+1 problem is still very much alive.

But to answer your specific question about why I'm not harder on CCP...

It's because frankly this game and company have gone so far out there in terms of offending its own playerbase that normal reasoning no longer applies. Nobody plays EVE because they like EVE, they play EVE because they hate themselves. It's a game for people who already have their own shit in order so much that they look around for more self-flagelatory activities to pile onto their daily routine.

It's mere existence is a tacit admission that business in western democracies is over-regulated, for otherwise these people would be out there 1099'ing real bux instead of space bux.