Commrade Pluto
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Posted - 2010.10.08 19:25:00 -
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TLDR:(admittedly, I tend to ramble): I've had several truly bad corps, either non-existant membership or not actually performing as advertised. I want to know any general guidance on finding a suitable corp. What to look for, what's a dead-giveaway for a flop, and any related information you're willing to share.
More specifically i'm looking for a home for my mission and industrial based characters (two accounts) operating in the North American or European timezones (if anyone has a corp to suggest).
Longer Version: I got involved with EVE around 7 months ago at the behest of an old gamer friend who had been around EVE since '06. Shortly after I finished my second month he sold all but one of his characters and more or less retired from EVE. I was left in the wilderness with a now-absent guide and had little going for me. So, being the gullable sap I was, I decided to pop into the corp/alliance recruitment forum and shop around. After a few days of reading copy/paste blerbs, chatting with rather ingenuous people over evemail, and trolling google for extra help I ended up in my first player corp.
My first corp was overall a positive experience. Nobody within was pulling an obvious scam. Nobody really used the newbs like me for cheap slave labor. Nobody really spammed too much in corp chat. The only problem was; nobody really did anything else either. The corp was supposedly a strong connection between some established industrial types, traders, mission runners, and their pvp alts. They claimed to have over half the corp in my timezone; however, for whatever reason, I quickly realized the activity level in the corp was extremely low. I could hardly find someone to have idle chatter with (so many afk), to say nothing of teaming up to do something. After three weeks of "giving them a chance," I had to call it quits. I was completely depressed by that experience and the only positive outcome of it all was that I gave up mining out of sheer boredome and picked up exploration/mission running/salvaging instead.
Fast forward another month or two back in NPC corp and we have my second blunder-corp. I met the recruiter in my NPC corp channel and he seemed to say all the right things. Mission running help, pvp ops that anyone could participate in, training programs, incentives to work together, and almost no taxes. I was tentative (remembering my last forray into player corps) at first, but after speaking with more members I left my reservations behind and joined up. The first night or two were pretty compelling. We ran some missions, I was taught a few things about scanning down sites, and the chat was promising. Sadly, the following weeks were nothing like this. Once again, I found most players became all but absent on a regular basis, but this time the CEO also seemed to have a scam afoot. Tax hikes coinciding with popular mission running nights and no response from the CEO lead me to wondering and after confronting him about it his explanation was all that I needed to leave in good conscience: "I'm working to build this corp, I should be paid." Now, to caveat the last bit, I don't think the CEO job should be pure sacrifice. I've been in a position of leadership in games past. But, going out of one's way to milk the corp for expensive personal asset gains is just an obvious goof when the corp provides literally zero benefits to it's players aside from the common channel.
So, as I said in the TLDR, i'm looking for some advice from those of you with corp experience. I want to be in a player corp, but I just can't seem to find one that actually delivers. A corp that I can rally behind and enjoy working one. One that's both active and not trying to scam members. Is that something very rare in the eve universe? Are most corps just a copy/paste recruitment message in front of a bunch of afk alts?
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