at least 500b

After you make your first billion, it's a lot easier to jump up to 10B then to 100B.)

And then after 100b it's a pain in the ass again :P

Then again, I'm infinitely more lazy now than when I had much less.

It's all relevant. For example, Entity, who is one of the wealthiest guys in eve, has around 4 trillion isk, but I doubt he keeps more than 200b of it liquid. And he owns stuff that's very hard to convert into ISK. Then we have another guy, who has 500b ISK in his/her wallet, but not much of solid ISK. Which one would you define to be richer?

Yep I have to agree..........once you pass the 100b mark , you generally become a little more laid back and look for ways to make isk without having to log on for 10 hours a day or play 0.1isk games in stations

Speaking for myself form the 100B on you start loosing the urge/will to make more isk.Every few months i start a good isksink -usually comes down to pirating with 2 accs in WAY too expensive pvp ships and loosing them every other day- after that i find the will again to make isk.Last time i done this i lost approx 35% of my isk in a timeframe of 1 to 2 months.Sucking at pvp and trying to avoid blue blobbing really helps with this btw.That and failing to see/not caring about the red blob coming in.

Rince and repeat to keep the game attractive

That is if you actually undock and shoot people.

Aye at LEAST

<100 million ISK: Lower class (Can really only afford to regularly fly T1 ships)
100 million - 1 billion ISK: Upper lower class (Can afford to regularly fly T2 ships)
1 billion - 100 billion ISK: Middle class (Can afford to regularly fly capitals)
100 billion - 1 trillion ISK: Upper class (Can afford to regularly fly super caps)
1+ trillion ISK: The "elite" (You actually have to work hard at losing this much ISK legitimately)

Out of curiosity, if a player were to make isk without the use of any exploits (botting), how much isk would you consider to be very rich?

richer then most alliances.

I don't think it's that hard to be richer than most alliances if you are only considering the assets owned by the alliance itself as opposed to the aggregated assets of all alliance members.

I am richer than both of my alliances in the first case. But I doubt I account for even 2% of Pandemic Legion's aggregate wealth and I would guestimate that I account for maybe 10% of HYDRA RELOADED's aggregate wealth (with Garmon accounting for maybe 50%).

<100 million ISK: Lower class (Can really only afford to regularly fly T1 ships)
100 million - 1 billion ISK: Upper lower class (Can afford to regularly fly T2 ships)
1 billion - 100 billion ISK: Middle class (Can afford to regularly fly capitals)
100 billion - 1 trillion ISK: Upper class (Can afford to regularly fly super caps)
1+ trillion ISK: The "elite" (You actually have to work hard at losing this much ISK legitimately)

Hmm. By that standard, I'm middle class; I don't ever have a billion ISK liquid, since I'm constantly reinvesting, but at any given time I've got a net worth nicely exceeding a billion. Heck, I don't like to logoff with over 100 mil in-wallet... after all, if my ISK isn't working for me, it's just sitting there collecting dust.

Hmm. By that standard, I'm middle class; I don't ever have a billion ISK liquid, since I'm constantly reinvesting, but at any given time I've got a net worth nicely exceeding a billion. Heck, I don't like to logoff with over 100 mil in-wallet... after all, if my ISK isn't working for me, it's just sitting there collecting dust.

The infamous "lots of assets, but not a lot of ISK". I too suffer from that disease.

1-100B is a pretty big range though. There's a definite difference between someone in the 1B-10B category and someone in the 10-100B category. The first still thinks battleships are expensive, the latter range regularly flies the larger T2 ships and doesn't really care much about stuff worth less then a few million ISK.

Once you get past 10B ISK in hi-sec, giving away a few million here or there to the younger pilots doesn't hurt the wallet much.

It's kind of true, I had a much harder time going from 10m to 10b than I did going from 10b to 100b. I think I spent most of my eve time from 10b to 100b completely drunk, before that I had to think a bit.

1 billion - 100 billion ISK: Veteran carebears, casual traders/industrialist, market aware PvPer. Veteran carebears in this category are stuck here. They are risk averse and compulsive savers. Because they generally run missions, they will probably never cross the 100 billion ISK barrier. Casual traders/industrialists stay in this category simply because they do not want to work hard. Successful traders/industrialists will inevitably pass this category.

100 billion - 1 trillion ISK: Traders, industrial tycoons( and small alliance leaders?). Players in this category didn't earn this much money on their own merit. Instead they profit off of the laziness and foolishness of others. Traders and industrial tycoons in this category have "done their homework". However, only the most successful traders and industrialists will surpass this level, as it becomes difficult to efficiently invest this much ISK.