Frothers Unite! UK

"If I could go back in time and like tell 11 year old me that like not only do you get to go to Comic Con but you go every year. So much so that you get greeted by Stan Lee when you show up. And 11 year old me would be like - How did we get so fat?" - Kevin Smith

They redid the starter tutorials and missions for players. If you start now the missions do a better job of leading you into the game. As far as I'm concerned "solo" is the single player game!

I'm hoping Elite will still have the single player game at some point in the future. They could, at least, expand on the tutorials a bit more to go towards that. But yeah, I play it every now and again. I've no fucking idea where I am in the galaxy right now. I must be far from the main hub of players, because I haven't seen another for a few weeks now, but that doesn't matter :)

And as for Eve. I think they're showing signs of struggling in the current era of online games. Spreadsheets in space can only go so far, despite all the bells and whistles attached.

Yes you can play without VR. VR is a bit of a gimmick. I have an Oculus Rift but don't use it much now. TrackIR or one of the DIY clones do a fine job if you have one. Getting Voice Attack and a voicepack addon is fun (Tom Baker, Brian Blessed, Paul Darrow, William Shatner etc)
As for play, yes you can easily play for just half an hour and have fun. All sorts of options for play style:- open universe, solo, just with friends or even a kind of arena deathmatch.
The game has come a long way since the start and you can now land on planets and belt around in moonbuggys. Multiplayer crewed ships are due next. It's a game that continues to develop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1JApAqTJBQ

Is Elite worth it without the VR? Is it a game one can just drop in and out off, eg play an hour here and there? I must say it's tempting me, I fancy something different to play.

But why would you want to play anyway? Eve is just a glorified accountancy program with even the excitement of filling in tax returns removed from it.

(Still enjoying Elite btw)

Eve Online seems to now have it as free to play - to a certain extent:

https://www.eveonline.com/alpha-omega/

The Alpha accounts are really just continual versions of their old 14 day trial accounts, with the same limitations on skills and ships. The Omega accounts are the standard full access accounts which have to be subscribed to. Sounds like they're aiming for the Korean grindfest style of gaming with that. It's still a massive time-sink. I stopped playing it a couple of years ago and have no intention of going back to it (can't even remember my account password even if I wanted to).

But they had no choice but to offer a free to play version. That is the current model for online games right now.