No different than what you experience in WoW. If you didn't grind that Shado-Pan rep in 5.1, and RNG didn't play fair, you weren't getting the gear. No gear is like no skills in EvE, and it sucks.

There's really not much difference in these MMOs. In EvE the only RNG you really face is what loot that may drop from a ship, but it won't effect how you play in itself (as you can just buy it...all that faction gear is up for sale). WoW soulbound gear can't be sold, if you didn't get it from a drop, it's not on the market to buy. The game can be a real grind especially for tier pieces for their bonuses.

EvE gates content by making it expensive to PvP or have prime areas controlled by some blob. WoW gates content by instance timers and RNG for loot drops and making the best gear soulbound.

So if someone is complaining that raising their security status in EvE reminds them of the 5.1 faction grind in WoW, they are right, it's very similar (although the better description would be the PvP faction grind, that in WoW hasn't changed. To get that Justicar title takes longer than COSMOs rep...I'll get the COSMOs rep to 5.0 before the WoW BG faction rep to exalted, despite 3 years of grinding).

And it's good to see that CCP is watching the gorilla, and adjusting EvE to not make the same mistakes and keeping up with the trends (loved the Cata barb with the resource changes -- and Cata was h-a-t-e-d in WoW, it's regarded as the worst expansion because it changed so much so fast and literally destroyed the world itself). The whine in MoP has been the long rep grind, EvE is making it easier to gain faction. That's how to shop and market for those 300,000 WoW unsubs (a consistent amount of players who keep unsubbing), too. WoW has so many players, and when so many don't like X, the competition marking Y as a fix, gains. BUT, never try to clone WoW. If a franchise can't be as good as WoW, it will fail (players have their mains in WoW for years, no point leaving it or their friends/family -- why so many MMOs fail, they all return home after 30 days or so). The best EvE can do is when WoW becomes boring is to be the alternative MMO, especially for those who are finished farming between patches. You have to tease them out, and alienating players is not the way to gain them -- and you want them as niche gaming doesn't draw in the cash so needed for development as game design isn't getting any cheaper. It's a snipering game to raise subs...and they won't stay...as the MMO community recycles the same players. This is why you don't alienate them, diss WoW, you diss your own community and vice-versa.