I just joined Eve a few days ago and finished the five career paths and am looking for a newb friendly corp that can continue my Eve education. I live on the East Coast of the US but travel overseas frequently for my job. I can use Discord with no problems. I am also unsure of what exactly it is I want to do in Eve since there’s so much to choose from (a lot more than other space MMO’s that I have played, STO and BSGO have been my mainstays for many years and this is nothing like them). I think I would like to try Exploration yet would like the ability to defend myself, my corp, and my faction in fleet battles if needed. Any suggestions of corps would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
H0bbes78
aka Jani Basmi Kuha (in game toon, not sure which one to sign with lol)
I know most people will tell you to join a corp right away but personally I see that differently. Partly because most corps are terrible and mostly because as a true newbie you have very little understanding of the game and what options you have. Meaning there’s a high chance you join a crap corp that will just slow your “growth” OR you join one that puts you in the rapids, forcing you forward without any control of your own.
I’d take the time to get some general idea of the game and figure out what you do and don’t want to do. No reason to rush, your time “clowning around” aimlessly is actually quite important, it allows you to find your own niche playstyle instead of being forced and turned into yet another clone soldier.
I am of the mind that it is beneficial to join a new-player-friendly corp fairly soon. I sure learned a lot from my first corp.
Importantly, however, do some research on corps…and probably best to avoid any corp that spam-mails you.
A couple of the larger more training-oriented corps are Brave Newbies (currently involved in a pretty big war) and Karmafleet (involved in the same war but part of the other side from the first lot mentioned…and their recruitment might be closed at the moment due to war, not sure). EvE University used to be fairly well recommended for newer players but I heard they weren’t what they used to be but not entirely sure about that. There is a large alliance called SICO that personally I would avoid as they kind of have a reputation of being more interested in gaining numbers on their membership than other things.
Don’t be afraid to leave a corp if you think that would be best for you. Better to have a short/otherwise odd-looking entry on your EvE employment record than learn nothing/wrong things/be exploited.
Tharvus does bring a good point, but I think that overall, the good outweighs the bad. Player corps will tend to focus on a relatively narrow portion of the game, but they also provide a lot of benefits (which can include community knowledge, PvP and PvE opportunities, free/discounted ships, free skill books, SRP, structure access, corp buybacks, intel networks, camaraderie, sense of purpose, and/or exposure to activities and play styles that you might not otherwise get into.
Of course, most corps tend to focus on a relatively narrow segment of the game, which might not be something you particularly care for. A good example of this is the large nullbloc corps. They offer some really great benefits and opportunities, but many players find a lot to dislike about the play style (such as TiDi, blue balls, the hurry up and wait, and a lack of feeling like they’re making a meaningful contribution). In fact, so many people dislike the play style, that many players are now arguing that we shouldn’t be recommending to newbros to join a nullbloc corp. I disagree. I think that they offer a lot of advantages, and are most certainly a better option than going it solo (which is often referred to as playing Eve on hard mode). The only thing to keep in mind is that they represent only a small fraction of what Eve has to offer. So don’t assume that just because you don’t like their particular play style, that means you don’t like Eve.
Of course, there are many other corps that focus on dramatically different play styles. The problem, however, is that most of us don’t know jack ■■■■ about the vast majority of them. Some are good, some are bad. But since we don’t know which are which, it’s hard for us to make recommendations. So, we tend to recommend the most widely known newbro friendly corps -which often means that we recommend nullbloc newbro corps such as Brave Newbies and Pandemic Horde.
Anyway, Eve University is a great alternative. I hadn’t heard anything about them being in decline until I saw Xuxe’s post, so I don’t know. What I can say is that they are a teaching corp, that they have campuses in all areas of space (and therefore offer access to a greater diversity of play styles), have a good corp culture, and that their December 2020 calendar is full of ■■■■ (so it looks they’re still going strong).
I don’t ■■■■ about Silent Company, and I haven’t found anyone recommending them outside of their spam emails. I’m not saying that they suck, but it would appear that their numbers are more a result of a successful spam campaign than their merit as a corp.
Oh, and definitely check out the recruitment section of the forums.
Indeed our numbers are high as there are a lot of new player that try out eve and despite our efforts to keep them around they quit. However we have managed to increase the 1% retention rate of new players that joins us to around 30% (30 day) so the direction is right. You can check our actual active numbers from our homepage at https://eve-linknet.com/
Our goal is simply to connect all players who start out playing eve so that they have a place to interact with other real players as they learn the basics and figure out what they want to do. We try to guide players from our massive entry corporation into our smaller more focused corporations once the players has a clue what they want to do in eve.
So TLDR; we invite everyone in so that they can start forming the initial player contacts while they train up. NPE does a shitty job in this.
