My continuing search for the real EVE Online, err…continues, with my application and signing-up with one of the many player corporations advertising on the in-game Recruitment chat channel. The channel itself is a bit of an odd place, regularly showing more than 300 people, all of whom seem to spend much of their time spamming rather generic recruitment adverts over and over, bitching at each other for spamming too much, and subsequently arguing so vehemently that they don’t notice those few players who actually do seem to be looking for a corp to join.

Determined to get started on the bigger game, I lurked in there for a few hours, and for want of seeing anything that really leaped out at me, signed up with the least automated seeming recruiter in there, and soon found myself hauling my mini-fleet to the other end of the galaxy to start another new life.

I probably should have done my homework a bit better to be honest, and it turned out that my new corp was predominantly a mining and low-end ship production outfit, and that I had somewhere around seven million more skill points than most of the membership of thirty or so. No wars, no alliances, no player-owned stations, and as far as I could tell, no real plans or infrastructure beyond a barely competitive ore buying scheme.

Of course, I say all that, and may be wrong. They might have all sorts of plans and prospects, but as a raw newbie to the corp, I represent an entirely justified potential security risk, and so wouldn’t expect to be told of the bigger things in any case. Large-scale corporate theft and espionage is not only possible, but an accepted and officially allowed play-style, so it doesn’t pay to entrust the new folks with much.

I’m sure I’ve bitched about mining in EVE before – It’s not terribly interesting, and if you’re having to read a book, watch a DVD or play Puzzle Pirates in another window, then there is something wrong with the basic gameplay, I’ve always thought. I did give it a go though, managing a sustained effort of perhaps an hour before snapping. I’ve no idea how much that helped the corp – I just threw the ore in their hangar, then went off to run Agent combat missions in the hope of stopping my eyes from bleeding. I’m not adverse to the idea of a particular mining operation to build a specific thing, but the nightmarish prospect of just mining indefinitely for no real purpose other than to dump fresh ships into an already over-saturated market seems to me to be like something out of greek legend.

I am not a miner.

Trouble is, a great many Empire (‘safe’ space) corps seem to want exactly that – new players should serve two purposes; they should bulk the member count, and should go mine ore for the corp’s greater glory. From a purely income point of view, there is very little a player can do for a corp that wouldn’t earn them more money doing for themselves alone – even mining. Even assuming that the members are willing to donate their time and potential solo income to a corp, once working for that corp, they are still more effective soloing within it, be it trading, agent missions, mining or whatever.

Mining in particular tends to promote the AFK activities mentioned above, making for a very quiet corp chat channel, and in a week of membership, I think I’ve only actually seen two of them in space ever, and that was only because I was hopping about asteroid belts looking for more interesting rocks to stare at. If I’d been getting on with my job, I doubt I’d have ever ‘met’ any of them. It’s actually quite damaging in a way, because a new player who knows no different, will quickly reach an understanding that the way you play EVE, is to keep quiet, work hard and stay alone, which can’t be right…can it?

The majority of the corp seem to be brand new players, and for want of attention from actual and presumably busy corp leadership, I seem to end up answering their many and genuine questions about complex mathematic gameplay elements I’d sort of come to take for granted. It’s irritating in a way – not because of their open and refreshing naivety – I quite enjoy passing all this accumulated nonsense on and helping new folks understand - but because in corp terms, I’m just as much of a newbie minion as them, and this kind of mentoring should be the responsibility of a busy clique of leaders who seem to just want mining drones that can operate without a mother-ship, or indeed, having to be online yourself.

It’s hardly surprising then that my sage wisdom and advice seems to revolve around Agent Missions (the NPC Combat content); how to do them, how to use the bewildering array of equipment to do them well, ship fitting advice, how much personal wealth they can offer, and how much more fun than mining they are. I’m vaguely aware that in doing so, I’m working against the aims of the corp, i.e. “Shut up and mine”, but if my own feelings on asteroid mining are in any way common, I think my advice might help stop them just quitting the game in disgust.

It’s been an insightful week, certainly, and it's entirely possible I've misread the situation somewhat and am being unfairly harsh on them, but regardless, it's time to move on. Clearly this is not the corp for me, and I’m just likely to cause unwanted, and perhaps undeserved, trouble if I stay.

Oddly enough, my most enjoyable EVE memory of the last week was actually ganging up with the other member of my original two-man solo-corp, and taking our Battleships in to an Agent 4 mission – some of the most difficult PvE content available in Empire space. More on that later, as we’re currently half-way through a two-part mission, and anything could happen on the next part.

But having sampled a randomly selected ‘typical’ corp, I’m beginning to suspect that the real solution to my ‘Don Quixote’ style search for ‘The Real EVE’, may actually be to create it myself…

(Edit: Don't take my word for it: Toilet Cleaning Preferable?)