I wasn't expecting much out of Perpetuum, installed it with the full anticipation of it sitting in my pile of installed MMOs that I never play (STO, Champions, EQ, DCUO, Rift, WoW, etc.) amid some Betas that I had high expectations for, but ended up disappointed very quickly. 

But so far it's quite good. The best way to describe it is that it is EVE-light. I find it not nearly as complex as EVE, but similar enough to be compared to EVE. Really has been the only alternative to EVE that I have played. I would definately recommend this for anyone who is familiar with EVE, but never really got into the game for whatever reason (myself included).

I've started down my mining/indus path, although thinking about checking out the plant harvesting as well. I tried a bit of the combat, although not much.

I might try to convince my friends to get a trial account, but they are serious PvPers... does anyone have anything to say about the PvP in Perpetuum? It is difficult from the videos to tell if its mostly 2 robots circle-straffing eachother and what is pretty much a RNG or pre-determined winner. Or is it more like EVE where you travel in numbers and have more large-scale battles?

+1 for Perpetuum

Technically, PVP in Perpetuum is very good. It scales from solo to large battles well and the balance between races and bots is great.
Unfortunately this goodness is somewhat wasted due to low population. Typical combat squads are 3 to 10 people atm, altho some historical battles boasted 50 vs 50.

The killboard hosts complete kill data starting from Nov 2010, it should give you an idea of frequency and scale of Perpetuum's PVP (use "Related kills" link on any killmail to see battle's overview). Note: ewar interactions are not recorded in killmails. Note2: a few well-known asshats make a sport of posting bs in killboard's comments. They are not representative of the whole community.

Many (former) EVE players I know (myself included), say that PVP is better in Perpetuum, and EVE is the 1st thing to compare to because of the similar module fitting system, targeting mechanics etc. EVE has module/ship variety on it's side, Perpetuum has less stuff, but more logic and balance to it. And terrain awareness/line of sight issues add a dimension of combat that makes a real difference.

This topic has links to many PVP videos, altho without commentary it may be difficult to make sense of them. (Also, watch the dates, older videos do not reflect some changes made over the past year).

Thanks for the pvp links! Very helpful, and pretty awesome :) I also enjoy the "Lonley Sequer" video that is in that thread too... poor Sequer lol

How many players are in this game?  Kill boards seemed pretty sparse so it can't be many, unless PVP is relatively rare.  I meant to check this game out but haven't gotten around to it yet.  Is it worth trying?  I really don't want to bother if it is going to be a vast empty space with no economy or meaningful activities.  Is the user base growing or shrinking?  If it is small but at least growing slightly that would be better than larger and falling.  EVE has made a living off of slow but steady growth...

From everything I can tell it is also going for slow and steady growth, the lack of any real marketing or advertising is slow it down considerably though. It has been suggested on their forums to increase awareness of the game, but the developers had said they would rather spend the time/money working on the game than advertising/marketing.

There is a decent length free trial to the game, so I'm not sure what obstacle you would really have to at least trying it. I cannot speak to the actual population of the game cause I have only been playing for about a week and still milking the starting area for cash. 

One of the biggest pitfalls I've seen with people who dislike the game so far is that people who come from a long time playing EVE and dislike how it is similar to EVE, but not EVE. So if you were huge into EVE it might end up just annoying you with slight differences.

A truly amazing game. And I don´t get the "it´s to similar to EVE"-complaints. I rather see games that are similar to EVE then games that are similar to WoW. If they keep this up this is going to be a sleeper hit. Once PBS comes into play things should heat up alot.