One of the major problems I see when people discuss E-UNI is that they look at it as just another corp/alliance in EVE. This makes them view it with the same lens with which all other entities are judged, while the goal is completely different.
E-UNI doesn’t try to be a typical corporation. We don’t focus on PVP, PVE, Industry, etc… Most of the corp doesn’t focus on teaching (mostly older more knowledgeable players do). We focus on community. Our goal is to try and create an environment that will support new players into sticking with Eve, which is hard for new players without some sort of group to play with or people to support them.
Our players start out knowing little about Eve, what types of gameplay they can try, or if they’ll enjoy them. Over time most of them find that there is an aspect of Eve that they have come to love, or a group of players that they enjoy hanging out with. These people move on and enjoy the game as they want. Sometimes they move on to a different corp/alliance to try their new playstyle. Other times, a group will leave and form their own corp. This is exactly what we want. We are one of the few entities in Eve that wants to see our players leave us for other groups.
Some of our players will find that the goal of E-UNI matches what they want to do in Eve and will stay with us. These players move on into mentoring, running hangars, leading fleets, teaching classes, or just hanging out in chat or mumble and sharing their knowledge. That’s perfectly fine with us. We need these types of individuals to run the corp, and we aren’t about forcing people to do certain activities. We want each player to learn the basics of eve, and move on to doing what they want in their eve life. If being in E-UNI is that playstyle, good for them.
The best part of this system is the number of these players that continue to hang out on our forums, drop by our mumble, and share their hard won lessons with the next crop of students. Some of the best and most instructional posts on our boards come from these ex-members (no, I’m not naming names. I don’t want to start a flame war or upset someone if I forget them), and it’s a great benefit for our students. How many corps in eve allow their ex-members access to most of their forums or voice comms? Our students get to hear advice on small-gang work from people who do it every day in Eve, some of whom are taking time away from being directors of their own corp. If they want to learn about wormholes, wormhole dwellers answer their questions or take them into the depths of w-space for a spin. They see 0.0 players rehash battles and tactics (with the occasional flaming) across the board. In other words, they see many different aspects of Eve, not just a single one. At this point, we have ex-members spread across every playstyle, many of whom are actively trying to support and attract new members to join their segment of eve.
This is our mission…to form a community that goes beyond corp and political lines…beyond carebear vs pvper…a community that focuses on the game we all love and to share the love of that game with new players. The in-game corp structure is just a mechanic that facilitates our true purpose, forming a great gaming community to help people get into Eve.
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