It's a steep learning curve certainly, and sometimes as a new player you feel as if the devs just want to kill you...but I've got 16,000 hours+ of game time in it, which says a lot. Also, there are tons of players out there happy to provide guidance on getting started these days, which helps :)
Yes and no. You can turn off the MMO part and just play with bots. The galaxy is too big however for you to be easily targeted. From experience, you sometimes see a player or two every once in a while in busy places.
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If you wanna try, you can absolutely DM me with your questions. I'll help out. 900h in game.