Seriously, Get In A Corp

In EVE, Corporations are the in-game group, similar to "guilds" in fantasy-themed games. When you join the game, you are in an "NPC corporation," which is not created by players. These are the corporations you get PvE missions from, or that buy pirate tags from you. And they also serve as a sort of holding area for newbies. They also have a chat channel like a player corp does (typically with about a thousand people on it, none of whom know much).

My advice is to find a player corporation and get into it as soon as possible. There is just so much to learn in EVE that it's unrealistic to expect you'll be able to do it on your own. Even asking questions in local or rookie chat is not very effective, because no one in EVE (at least no good player) likes to give anything away for free, even advice.

A common reason new players never "click" with EVE is that they feel like there's nothing to do, apart from the PvE missions that the tutorial guides you into. Fair enough...IMHO EVE should provide more guidance into the 5 gazillion things there are to do in it other than missions. But right now, it doesn't. The only place to get that guidance is from other players, and the quickest way to get access to the guidance of other players is to join a corporation.

So how do you join a corporation? Well here's my handy dandy guide:

• First, prefer to join a corporation of real-life friends already playing EVE, if such exists. Due to the back-stabby nature of EVE, I have found that playing with all people I actually know is a tremendous advantage. Plus, you can count on them to be roughly aligned to your interests straight away.
• Failing that, online (non-real-life) friends work too. I have seen many EVE corporations that spring up from guilds or clans in other games, and they seem to work well. So like, does your BF 2142 clan have an EVE corp already? If so, join that.
• Failing that, look for a corp that does what you think you want to do. If you're interested in mining, join a mining corp. If you're interested in space piracy, join a pirate corp (even experienced pirate corps with skill-point requirements often have "farm league" sister corps for new players).

If you are looking for a corporation to join, there are several ways you can go:

• There is an in-game recruitment interface. I do not recommend it. It's very difficult to pare down the results to what you need.
• The official forums have a corporation recruitment section. This is probably your best shot. First, browse it for corporations that sound like something you might be interested in. Then, if you like, post saying "I am a newbie looking for XYZ kind of corp." The responses are usually friendly and helpful.
• Finally, several corps advertise in game through a variety of means. The most common is to jettison a cargo container near a busy gate, then change its name to "XYZ Corp is looking for members. Convo ABC player for more info!" (Convo means "send a private conversation) That can work too, but be warned -- when a space pirate reads cargo containers like this, he sees "XYZ Corp is a juicy target. Please declare war against us now!" Not that wars are a bad thing...just know what you are geting into!

EVE is full of crazy stuff you can do. Some of it was intended by the developers, and some of it players just made up. I'll try to blog on some specific activities soon. Almost all of them are difficult to learn how to do well, and nigh-impossible to learn by yourself. So join a corporation you can learn from. Don't be afraid to switch corporations as your interests change either. Then one day you may have enough under your belt to start a corp of your own!