Eve University

Like every other newbie in Eve, I was initially flustered by the scale and outright complexity of the game. Without any friends who played, the only personal source of information was the rookie help chat. Of course, that only worked when someone managed to spot my question in the 2 seconds it remained on-screen. I needed to find some corp that would help me out.

I first heard about Eve University from a YouTube video ad which, while not being particularly well-done (no offense to the university intended), presented exactly the kind of helpful community I was looking for. After joining their public channel, I was surprised by the helpfulness and friendliness of the unistae. After a few days, I contacted a recruitment officer and signed up.

Classes are held several times a week. Depending on whether there's a war, there might be anywhere from zero to a over a half-dozen classes in a given week, ranging from topics like fleet discipline and how to survive in enemy territory to industry and trade. These classes usually take place only on TeamSpeak, though some may have a hands-on section. Mining ops are held each week, but this depends highly on who's available to host. From time to time, special events like lowsec/nullsec roams or logistics ops might occur. These are a real treat, as you can fly with sometimes hundreds of other players, an experience you could otherwise probably only get in nullsec.

That leads me into the downside of joining the University: wardecs. When the uni is wardecced, you have two options: stay in the corp to fight, or temporarily leave to an NPC corp (while still having access to forums and secure chat channels). The latter option lets you mine, mission, trade, or whatever you would normally do, but without corp/alliance mail and chat. The first choice is extremely, but understandably, restrictive. You need to move to the uni headquarters at Aldrat and set up a PvP ship or three, and can't leave the station except for fleet ops. While these occur frequently enough to make it worth logging in to your account, I find that it gets boring fast. This is especially true when the uni is at war with a small corp, which happens more often than not.

The uni gets wardecced often, and right now more time is spent in war than out of it. If you're interested in PvP, then it's a good place to start. Be aware, however, that the sprawling campaigns of nullsec you may have heard about are very different from the hide-and-seek skirmishes of hisec warfare. Most fleets don't encounter an enemy pilot at all; if they do, it's usually just one or two ships against a uni fleet of dozens. Having said that, every newbie should fight in at least one war before leaving for another corp. At the very least, you'll learn the basic fleet commands and maneuvers.

While the constant wars do make Eve University a bit more annoying, it's definitely worth checking out for any new players. You can learn things you might never learn otherwise, and be part of a massive community that's always willing to help out.

The Eve university website is located at http://www.eve-ivy.com/. Application instructions can be found here.