I played EVE for about a year before my whole life turned upside down and I could no longer afford luxuries... I'd still be playing now if it wasn't for that.
The interesting thing is that training is done in real time, you select a box and wait for the timer to run down... this can take weeks, even months for the higher level skills... but that's not to say you have to wait years to have a good game.
Even new players can get in on the action, me personally I found combat wasn't my thing in EVE so got into a corp and got mining. Wasn't long before I was in a hulk, and buying my first ORCA still it got pretty hairy in lowsec space when people would drop out looking to kill hulks...
Okay so there is no hand to hand combat, but they did release a FPS game that's linked to the main game... Dust 345 or something?