Also, it's hard to convey the great quantities of skills. You might get discouraged because you, starting now, will have a number of disadvantages compared to someone who started a year ago.
You'll never surpass the person who started a year ago in all areas of skill, unless that person quits for a while. Players are judged on the age of their character and on the skill points (SP) that character has accumulated. A certain age of character implies a certain number of skill points, and many corporations have a specific age or number of SP they require their applicants to have.
You can focus on a specific set of skills -- gunnery, for instance, and be better than 75% of the players in that specific area. After a while, most players round their skillsets out a little.
Also, EVERYthing is for sale inside the game. If you can find where it's sold, that is. You have to buy the skills you want. This means you won't be able to afford some skills for a while. This also means that if your focus is on pvp in gallente ships with a certain kind of turret and a certain kind of ammo, there's nothing stopping you from training up anchoring or industrial ship (hauler) use or another race's ship. Your character is really as free-form as you want him to be.
If you get killed, you respawn at the station where your clone is. You have to buy one of those too. They are sold in levels of quality, where the more expensive ones will hold more SP. If you don't have one when you get killed, they issue you one that can only hold very few SP, so you will probably lose a great deal of your training. If you haven't kept your clone up-to-date, then you'll lose SP down to what your clone can hold, taking out your highest skills first.
SP is actually way, way more important than anything you own or any amount of isk. The ability to do something, or do it well, is extremely, extremely valuble.
There are jump clones too, which basically enable you to respawn yourself across the galaxy and give you a way back to where you were. You don't have to worry about that at first. They're more of a convenience than anything.
Something else you actually can buy: Game time. Yep, you can use your ingame funds to buy a timecard from someone who spent IRL money to buy it. Thus, there is a legal and GM-sanctioned method for converting ISK to Dollars.
And don't forget about security status. Each system has a security level, from the high 1.0 to the low 0.0, decreasing by tenths. Security from 1.0 to 0.5 means the space police, Concord, is active in the system. If you're flying about anywhere in the system and someone goes and shoots you, they come by and blow him up real fast. There are also a large number of turrets around stations and gates which will shoot at people who do that too. In 0.4 to 0.1, there is no Concord, and the number of turrets around stations and gates decreases from 8 down to 2. In 0.0, there aren't even turrets around the gates.
Ok, I've told you way too much and prolly put you in over your head. Just remember: This game is only as complex as you want it to be. You can live a simple life as a miner in high-security, or you can be a pirate living on the edge out in 0.0. You can be a gate-camping pirate with a huge ship that can take the pounding from sentry turrets in lower security systems, or you can be a mission runner that flies all over the place, doing missions for the NPC corporations. You can even be a trader, someone who finds people selling something for a low price in one area, and buying for a high price in another, and shipping stuff from A to B.
Also, if you want to, you can join the Tribalwar chat channel ingame. A lot of us are in there, and we'll help you out and you can hang out with us. Having ppl you know ingame really makes it funner.
See you ingame.
