I like it because you can actually lose your stuff in combat (as in, everything you're flying with). It's the best implementation of risk and reward in an MMO I've ever seen. Also, the "PvP everywhere" concept with safer (but not safe) zones is very complex in that it allows various "stages" of PvP - faction warfare, corp wars and suicide gankers in high-sec empire state, pirates in low-sec and large scale alliance politics in null-sec. As for catching up to the old players...your character's skills really don't matter that much, since most of the old players will probably be skilled to efficiently fly several different ship types, so if you pick your goals and specialise in a single ship type you want to fl, you can get good skills early on, and besides, your skills matter more than your character's skills.
EDIT: Cthulhu, your skills train all the time you've got them set to train, regardless of whether you're playing, or even running the game, thereby eliminating the level grind present in other games (even though you'll likely) still be grinding for money to fund your PvP activities. You should always have a skill training. And the longest skills can take several weeks, depending on your learning skills, attributes and implants. I don't really see it as time-consuming, since you, naturally, do other stuff while your skills are training (which is, all the time).
[ June 10, 2008: Message edited by: Magnus Nordir ]