I've been playing for years and I can tell you now that absolutely none of that is true, and it's not because I'm a fanboy or anything like that. All the lotteries are run by third parties who have made their way in the game through hard work and determinationπthey have no affiliation with CCP whatsoever. The GM's are also fairly strict about CCP employees not abusing their position for personal gain in-game. The only instance I could find about an employee abusing their position was a single developer who did it once about 4 years ago; he was soon found out and his "mistake" was swiftly "fixed". The overall impact that his indiscretion caused was found to be pretty much negligible. Heck, even the illegal "gold farmers" had a minimum impact on the in-game economy, despite pumping in trillions of illicitly gotten ISK and game items.
And before you go citing Kugutsuman (the most frequently cited source on this matter), understand that as a hacker who "obtained" most of the "evidence" illicitly, his evidence cannot really be verified or trusted and thus there are no real credible sources on which to base his allegations on this matter, with the exception of that one that I mentioned above. Kugutsuman has been known to spread false information.
As for "real money", I haven't spent a dime to get anything I ever wanted in-game, it was all bought with ISK, the in-game currency. In fact, most players refuse to spend real money just to get in-game items, because they don't need to. Who do you think buys those game time codes (PLEX) that people sell for in-game currency? People who are successful at making ISK of course. After a certain point, it's really not hard at all to make at least 1mil or more a day for a minimum of time or effort. The only reason CCP even allows people to sell game time codes for in-game currency is to offer a legal, safe alternative to essentially buying currency, as opposed to buying from so-called gold farmers based in Asia.
Also, one of the most important rules of EVE is "Don't fly what you can't afford to lose". Basically, you shouldn't be putting all of your eggs (ISK) in one basket (ship). This is true in many things in real life, such as the stock market, or buying a car or house
you don't spend everything you have on something that ultimately can be destroyed or otherwise depreciates. Plus, that's why you buy insurance for your ship.
The learning curve has actually really gone down in recent years. Back in the day, the learning curve was more of a cliff the size of Mount Everest. Nowadays, it's more like the height of the Empire State Building. As far as veteran players having an edge, their only edge is the diverse range of skills they could have trained; there are pretty sharp limitations to how good they can get at any one thing, and this really helps to let newer players gain an equal footing in areas that they focus on. Depending on what you want to do, there are many skills that are not worth training.
I question what sort of PvP action you've seen, because there is a lot of strategy involved in fleet battle; the bigger fleet does not necessarily win unless they can effectively work together. There's even a couple of "schools" run by players that accept in-game currency for tuition that will teach you how to be effective in PvP combat.
One thing I will concede is that EVE can be a major time sink. It can take a long time to get anything done, and it is a complex and highly nuanced game that really requires you to think things through and to pay a lot of attention to the capabilities and limitations of your character and whatever ship you're flying, as well as to the rest of the world around you. EVE is not WoW, and it will not hold your hand the whole way through; but if you really pay attention to the tutorials and Career Agents and what they have to say, there shouldn't be too many surprises as to what you're getting into.
TL;DR: Nergin is misinformed on several levels.
