Dids,

I am glad I could provide some cringe-inducingingly nerdy entertainment.



Everyone else,

I will try to dig up some suggested corporations for various styles of play (pirate, anti-pirate PVP, industry (mining/production), trading, etc) that are recruiting. Will post in about an hour, then I'm headed to bed.

Also, I did my first complex run today (Eve's versions of raid dungeons -- good money) with about 9 other corpmates. My computer is incapable of handling the load of 10 players + 20-30 NPCs. Managed to help out picking off the ships of my size and smaller and cleaning up loot but it looked like a freaking slide-show when I'd jump into each area. Probably won't do much of that until I get a new comp.

Also hit the 50 mil mark in the wallet for the first time today. Promptly spent it on hookers and coke (aka a set of +3 implants so skills will train faster). If you get podded (killed after your ship's been destroyed) you lose your implants, so I gotta be extra careful for awhile. :-p

I lost my frigate today on a mission called Worlds Collide. The story is that you have to rescue some people stranded in a war zone.

Most of the encounters in the mission are optional so you can bypass them if you want. At one point there are two accelerator gates to choose between. I took the 'wrong' one that led to a Guristas base and got swarmed at the other end. I tried warping out but didn't make it in time.

Hopefully I'll get the mission again when I upgrade to a cruiser, so I can go back there and kick some pirate ass.

Corps to look at -- keep in mind, I haven't been in any corps except the one I'm currently in, so this is mostly based on what I've heard and read elsewhere. If you join one and they suck, there are no refunds from me.


PIRACY

Privateers - They just recently changed their policy so that new members must be 3 months old to join. But that was JUST changed yesterday, so it still might be worth looking into. If nothing else, keep them in mind if you keep playing. My opinion on the Privateers: many of them are annoying as hell. However, the concept of the corp is kind of cool. There's no central command, no power figures. They declare war on 30-40 alliances at a time -- which means that they can gank those alliances even in high-sec without getting crushed by the police. Basically, it's a growing anarchist piracy group. Easy to find people to group with for pirating, and I hear that many of them are actually good fighters and not idiots. The few idiots just happen to be the few that post a lot on the forums.

SniggWaffe - A piracy training ground that seems pretty well regarded by former members. They require a few specific skills that are not too hard to train up quickly, depending on your starting build. They also require a microphone, presumably for Teamspeak/Vent.



ANTI-PIRACY PVP

Ushra'Kahn [RP] - U'K is a roleplay corp that is primarily about anti-piracy PVP. They defend their area of space from known pirates, and operate on a NRDS (not red [hostile], don't shoot) policy, meaning neutrals will not be fired on in U'K space (at least not by U'K). They have a corp for new players (Kinda’Shujaa) where you go through a training program, at the end of which you can join other U'K corps.

The required RP is light -- it just means that any talk in the Local channel must be in character. However, their wars are sometimes RP based. U'K is a Minmatar alliance fighting against Amarr slavers. That means that ANY ship carrying slaves, even neutrals, is kill on sight. Even neutrals associating with slave-carrying corps/alliances are open game. MerchI (the corp I'm in) is currently associated with one such alliance. After attempting to maintain neutrality, our pilots kept getting shot down by U'K, so we're currently set to negative standings on them (meaning we're not in official "war", but if we see U'K, we start shooting).


PIE Inc. & Auctoritan Syndicate (starter corp for CVA alliance) [RP] - PIE Inc. is a former CVA corp I believe, while AS is CVA's starter corp. Both accept young pilots, but due to roleplay restrictions accept only Amarr pilots (this may have been relaxed -- if interested, it's worth asking their recruiters). CVA is the primary opponent of U'K (Amarr slavers vs Minmatar freedom fighters) and they've been in a constant fight for quite awhile now. CVA is also anti-piracy, and they defend most of the region (Domain) that MerchI (corp I'm in) operates out of. If you'd interested in joining a corporation that belongs to an alliance, but not one that is so huge where you'll just be a meat-shield, joining CVA or U'K are both fine options. They're established alliances that hold their own space, but they aren't huge by any means. You're also going to find plenty of fights, both with the opposing alliance and with pirates.


GENERAL BEGINNER

Eve University - Frankly, I'd suggest this route if you're having trouble finding a corp you like. Aside from those listed above and the one to follow, which I have at least a little experience with, I'm about as lost as your are when it comes to specific corporations.

Eve's a big place. I can suggest the major alliances to you that might have starter corps (D2, IAC, LV, AAA, IRON, FIX -- also GoonSwarm if you're a poster at SomethingAwful.com's forums) but it'd take some effort to actually track down the info on which specific corp you should contact. Most alliance websites have recruiting areas, but it's recruiting for CORPORATIONS for the larger alliance, not for players to join existing corporations. So if you want to join one of the big powers of Eve, start looking up their corporations and asking around in-game. Many corps should have recruit info in their profiles, but firing off an evemail to a listed contact doesn't hurt either -- worst case they tell you that there are no starter corps, best case they point you in the right direction.

But if you don't know just what you want to do yet, or you want to get a better handle on the game before joining an existing corp, or you just don't want to go to the work of finding a corporation filled with people you don't know working toward goals you may or may not be in line with, then join Eve-U. It's comes highly recommended all around, they'll help teach you things about the game (probably will end up knowing more than I do within a few days ), and will be able to help point you towards some corps once you feel comfortable moving on.

If nothing else, you'll have some players to group with for missions, NPC hunting, or fighting pirates. And you'll get some training in whatever aspects of the game you're interested in, so when you find a corp you DO want to join, you won't come off like an idiot.



INDUSTRY/PRODUCTION

Merch Industrial - The corp I'm in. We're focused primarily on mining and production, but we do have combat pilots as well -- necessary to defend our area of low-sec space. People are helpful as long as you aren't annoying. I've had several vets help me out, whether it was just asking questions about the corp, the game, specific questions about what ships to fly and what equipment to put on them, skills necessary for PVP, etc.

If you're PVP-centric then it's probably not for you. Most of our PVP is defending from pirates, and while we do a good job of it, it's not constant PVP action. Of course, once you're able to hold your own, you're more than encouraged to go out and hunt down player pirates. But at first, you won't do PVP really unless you're with a few other people.

So if you need constant PVP, look elsewhere. If you're okay with occasional PVP, or are into mining/production/NPC hunting/missions, consider joining. They accept all, which means I'm not going to vouch for you. You join and act like a jackass, I'm not going to defend you. Keep in mind, I've only been there a week. I like it in MerchI, but I'm certainly don't have any strings to pull.

Also, if you join MerchI, you're probably going to want to do one of two things:

1) Chill in nearby high-sec Empire space, running missions and killing rats, until you can fly a decent Cruiser
2) Come down to our 0.1 home, but you'll have to be a miner at first and run like hell from both NPCs and player pirates, until you can fly a decent Cruiser

Because you're just not going to be able to defend yourself at all in a frigate, really. At least with a Cruiser, you can equip it to give you enough time so that if you do get jumped, you can get out of there to safety.



I'll try to add to this as I go, but a good way to find out corps to join, truly, is to read the forums. The recruitment ones have bad signal:noise ratio but they're worth skimming. But read the Corp, Alliance and Org Discussions forum to get an idea of who the major corps/alliances are in Eve, and who you'd want to join with. Then check their info, their corp's info, and the alliance's info in-game to see what you can find. At the least, you can usually find someone to contact that can point you in the right direction.

Also, I'll gladly toss 3 mil ISK to any starting 2+2ers who want some help getting started. All I ask is that you don't blow it on high-priced equipment for your ship. Use it to buy a better ship, use it to buy skills, etc. Basically, use it conservatively and you can feel a bit more comfortable, knowing that if your ship gets crushed that you aren't going to have to mine for 3 hours to replace it. If you decide not to extend the trial, just toss the remainder and your goods to me. If you do extend, then help some other new player down the line.

This is the mission that made me quit playing missions on my second day. I haven't run a mission since.

Not that they're not worth running, they are. They're profitable, especially once you move up to higher agents. And the status/loyalty points can be useful. But the missions in Eve frustrate me. I'd rather mine, or just fly into asteroid belts and kill random NPC pirates, or chase down player pirates, etc. Mission running is just not my thing.

I've decided to give it a whirl. How long does it take for the free trial pass to hit your email? I entered it about 10 minutes ago and still haven't gotten the code yet.

Apparently their last round of maintenence bugged the trial e-mails ( ) so that's not working at the moment I guess. I'll try to keep an eye for an announcement that it's working and post back.



Also just wanted to say that my mentioning of MerchI above shouldn't be taken as recruitment. It's just the one corp I have personal experience with. Frankly, I'd prefer all the new people didn't rush to MerchI because they're going to wonder why 5-6 new people joined all in a few days (it's usually 1 or 2 each day at most). But I'm sure you'd be welcome to join, and if you're looking to be an industrialist, then it'd be a good fit.

Otherwise, I'd check out the few I listed, or look up some corps on the eve-o online recruitment forums, or look up some corps' profiles in-game.

Hello friend. Papa needs a better ship!

holla back with a name kid

Lsf (yah yah it sux i've already heard that from gorie!)

... wow that name sucks.

I just bought my first cruiser. A Caracal (Caldari missile boat). It's just awesome! It really makes the missions a lot easier - mainly because it gave me about 10 km more range. So nothing comes close enough to hit me now.
Downsides are that it's slow and ugly as hell.

Now I just have to figure out a good setup for it.

I also changed agent, from a quality -5 to a quality 14 agent. There was a lot of speculation about what quality meant in the rookie channel. One difference I've noticed is that I get sent on harder missions. I haven't done that many missions yet for my new agent, but (fortunately) I haven't been sent on one of those where you have to kill 2-3 drones that take one shot each to kill.

Hey Madtown, et al.

Decided to give this a whirl even though I'm picking up Everquest II currently (did trial, it is downloading updates now...It is actually for a college online course...awesome).

Anyway, I'm doing the training tutorial and I just blew up some pirate ships. Next is some mining and stuff.

Seems fun so far but it is a little hard to get used to the orientation. It is hard to scroll in 3-d and locate the pirate that was shooting at me. Oh well.

Name is Lockepick for those who care.

I shall be leaving to go eat dinner, but I might play some more tonight. Later sirs.

I finally got the Caldari Navy to like me enough that their absolute worst level 2 agent would talk to me. Obviously I had to try a level 2 mission in my new cruiser.

The mission was A Murderer Brought To Justice. I had to find and kill a guy that had been eluding CONCORD (the police). So off I went.

When I warped in, I was immediately struck by the fact that the plus-signs used as icons for the bad guys were a little larger than I was used to. And there were 3 of them. They were the escort and the murderer was in a frigate himself.

I was about 60 km out and thought I was safe. I have about 35 km range on my missiles and on level 1 missions nothing had been able to hit me from more than 20 km. But these guys spotted me, locked on to me and started sending heavy missiles my way. I tried shooting back, but I couldn't hit them from that range. They had no problem hitting me and soon my shields began dwindling and I decided to take a breather and warped out.

During the confusion I'd had enough presence of mind to see that they were shooting me with Thunderbolt and Sabretooth missiles. So I looked them up and they both do electro-magnetic damage and are especially hard on shields. Most Caldari ships - like my cruiser - rely heavily on their shields, so I had to do something to beef them up.

I went on a shopping spree and bought a shield hardener especially designed to counter electro-magnetic damage. I also got a shield enlarger that gave my shield more power generally. After having fitted these two items, I went back.

The plan was to hit the afterburner and get in close, so I could get in range and then see how it went. So I warped in and did that. The shield hardener seemed to soften the first volley of heavy missiles they sent my way. I got in range and took out the frigate and one of the escorts before my shields evaporated completely and I decided to flee.

After having recharged my shields and my capacitor I went back and took out the last two escorts without too much trouble.

Normally I use the bounty on pirates to get an indication of how hard they are. The toughest I've been against on level 1 missions have had a bounty of 11-12,000 ISK. The escorts on this mission had a bounty of 35,000 ISK each.

But damn, it was fun going against them and really getting challenged. And earning 100K+ in bounties, 100K+ in mission fee plus loot isn't bad either.

Here's my new battle-christened cruiser:

Oh man, hope I'm not going to regret this. I'm really enjoying the game. Always loved the Shadowrun type genre. Just picked up a new ship and loaded up on missile bays. It's entertaining crushing the little pirates before they can even hit me. Running around picking up loot in a 100k km^2 radius with a ship that tops out at about 300km/s isn't so much fun though.

Username is Kalindros.

For anyone starting out, finding the game complicated/slow/frustrating/confusing, here's a post on the current larger politics of Eve.

I'll quote a post from the SomethingAwful Goonfleet recruit thread:



Now I'll try to explain the situation as succinctly as possible. Which is hard, because this involves thousands of people and a few months of essential history recap.

First, check out the Latest Sovereignty Map. An Eve player updates this map usually about once a week. It shows which alliances control which areas of 0.0 space.

See that giant blob of blue in the lower left? That's Band of Brothers (BoB). See that little pink blob squashed between BoB and Lotka Volterra (green) in the bottom right? That's Ascendant Frontier (ASCN).

About two-three months ago, ASCN and BoB were considered the two powerhouses of Eve. BoB for their unsurpassed organization and PVP skill, ASCN for their numbers and industrial might. ASCN formerly controlled all the blue in the south on that map.

ASCN was the first to build a Titan -- see this pic for size comparison -- obviously the ginormous ships are the four types of Titans. The materials alone to build a Titan (not including the time it takes to build, and to train the skills to fly one) cost approximately $9,000 US in ISK, if you were to buy the money off eBay.

However, their organization was terrible, and their turnout for combat was weak. Many members simply weren't willing to fight, and if they were, they weren't skilled at it. What was expected to be a long, drawn-out war of attrition ended up breaking down into a slaughter in about 3 weeks. That little pink spot is all that remains -- most of the corporations in the alliance have left.

Now, during this war, the aforementioned ISS, a neutral, publicly owned alliance, got into a tussle with IAC. You can spot this area in the middle of the map, slightly to the south -- IAC is a small dark green blob, and ISS's area is marked by a red and white triangle of doom (meaning the area is being warred over).

With ASCN falling to it's knees, and BoB looking unstoppable, most people figured that unless the other major entities in the game allied to fight BoB now that they'd slowly be able to take over the entire map (exceptions made for any alliance/corp who befriended them and became BoB pets). Most people figured that could never happen -- a megaalliance would crack and dissolve too quickly.

ISS also controls a fair number of strategic points.

In the last couple days, all those alliances mentioned have jumped into the war, looking to demolish ISS (as mentioned in the SA post above). This includes AAA and TCF (two yellow blobs, south and southeast), RA and GoonSwarm (red blob, southeast), and D2 (all green blobs in the north, have non-aggression pacts with all other northern entities).

This essentially means that 5 of the larger alliances in the game are going to wipe out ISS (a corp with publicly raised assets worth around $20k US) in a region that would be strategically key for any war against BoB. BoB's only major ally in such a war would be LV, the green area in the southest. And as you can see, LV is being pushed back a bit in that area by RA and GoonSwarm.

This means that it's very possible that Eve's first World War-scale war will break out, which would likely affect in the tens of thousands of players. It would be fought all over the south, and probably even in the north. And I would guess that in-game damages would total up around $100,000 US, if not more.

Man, it's fun running around ganking nonsecure miner cargo.

Note to self: Kalindros = kill on sight.

PIRATE BASTARD!

Madtown,

Thanks for taking time posting all this. I have been following this thread for a couple days, and the more you post the more I want to try this game again. I got the 14 day trial a couple months back, but had to go out of town and never got to finish it. Guess I'll pay for a month and see if I actually can understand what is going on. From what you have explained, this is the exact MMO, i've been looking for. BTW check out www.mogarmy.net. Its a podcast about MMOs. Most people probably wont enjoy the humor, but these guys are hugh EVE fans, and that's where I first heard about the game.

I just DL'ed the client and I'm going through the tutorial (did the first warp accelerator jump and killed a few pirates, apparently they left some kind of key but I have no [censored] idea where it is)

Are there quests in this game? It's sounding like it's just completely open-ended (though that may be a good thing)

Missions are basically quests. Btw you need to approach the things you kill and then open their cargo holds and transfer the cargo to yours. That is where the key is.

Ive never played it but it looks awesome

Question for people who are paying and done with the trial. Is there only a month to month subscription option? When I went to reactivate, i only had an option to pay 19.95 per month. I thought they reduced the price if you pay for like a couple months or a year in advance.

Am trying it out and liking it so far, although I don't have a ton of time to invest so I'm ambivalent on how much effort I put in to learning this.

Lost my first ship but had just enough to scrape together a slightly better configuration, my advice is to upgrade as soon as you finish up the main tutorial or youll be quickly overwhelmed.

I went with a science type char figuring specilties would be in the most demand, but It doesnt look like I can do much with all those intelligence points untill later in the game.

I can see what Madtown is pushing the corporations, although its fun so far I havent picked up on any sense of community at all playing on my own. Space is a big place and I feel a little alone out there.

Rolando Cajones fwiw

Seriously loving the lack of any needed grinding in this game. You can grind for isk/standing, but it seems like even a simple frigate properly fitted can do some damage. Free to just have.... fun. That's a nice change for an MMO!!

On the downside. It is not a coincidence that this message was posted during the daily maintenance time.

I'm on the trial run now, will be renewing when it expires. I never played MMO's before, but so far I'm really enjoying it. I like the fact that skills train when you are not online. I only have so much computer time and don't want to cut into my poker time too much, may do some mining for awhile, I think I can probably 3 table and mine once I get the capability to use drones to deal with those pesky belt rats. I can see how it could be really addicting though, and I lament all the hours I spent playing Simcity, and Civ back before I found poker. I could have made so much money had I known what I know now (sigh)....

My breif experience so far.... completed the tutorial, bought a Slasher, equipped it with bare bones autocannon, shield booster and , mining laser, set out for my new agent in .7 sec space. Only did a few mining runs so far, and seem to run into rats about every time. They are really only a pests, one time I just tanked until my hull was full, then took them out. Thing is with my frigate I seem to be making 15-40K a run on rat loot and 6-7K in ore. I think a few more runs and I can pimp my ride out and I'll start some agent missions. I do want to get into a corp eventually once I have a better handle on the basics.

If you see "Chigger Troutslayer" cruising the galaxy say hello.