Corp mining ops are a great team-building exercise and much more fun than mining on your own. I've even heard stories of real life companies making their employees grab EVE trials to use mining ops for their own team-building purposes. All the corp members get into their mining ships and find a belt to mine in together. Everyone's ore is typically dumped into the same jettison container and a dedicated hauler in an industrial ship collects it and leaves it in the nearest station.
It's a great way to strip-mine a hidden asteroid belt you've scanned down in no time and it gives plenty of time to sit and chat to your corpmates. Another interesting thing about corp mining ops is that people are often willing to participate even if they're not going to get any ISK, ore or minerals from it. People are often content to mine "for the corp" and such mining ops can be used to collaborate on large projects for the benefit of the entire corp. For example, you might be mining the minerals to build a fleet of spare cruisers for the corp to build a corp-owned Orca to assist during mining ops.
Corp operations - Mission Op:
For people that find mining boring, missions and complexes are a much more interactive way to work together as a team. If any of the pilots in your corp have the standings to do level 4 missions, they can take the mission and then you can tackle it as a group. The rewards can even be split among all those involved when the mission is turned in. Similarly, the complexes and sites you find using scanner probes can be tackled as a group and offer similar difficulty to missions but some have a chance of dropping deadspace loot such as corelum equipment at the end.
Putting together a team to do missions or complexes can also let people specialise in particular roles. A typical mission group might consist of a main tank, specialised damage dealers, remote repair support and possibly (though rarely) electronic warfare pilots. This is like EVE's version of groups tackling dungeons as it's done in the traditional fantasy MMO design. If you're running the corp, you can set a tax rate that will put a percentage of mission rewards and bounties over 100k into the corp wallet.
Corp operations - PvP Op:
Perhaps the most exciting operations in EVE are PvP ops. There's a huge range of different types of PvP op you can go on. Perhaps you're a militia corp going out for some fun in faction warfare or maybe you're at war and are setting out to do some damage to the enemy in highsec. Maybe you're pirates locking down a stargate to kill some haulers or a 0.0-dwelling corp fighting for their alliance. Whatever your choice, flying alongside corpmates in PvP and having each other's backs as you charge into the mouth of death is a great feeling.
Organised PvP ops are what turns bands of bloodthirsty individuals into an experienced war-machine flying under a single banner with a single purpose. To document the night's PvP outing, it's common to designate one of the pilots as the camera-man, whose job it is to take fraps video footage of the event. What better way to show off your corp's skills and make a name for yourselves than to prepare a PvP video showcasing what you've got.
Summary:
A number of EVE players choose to play mainly by themselves or with one or two real life friends. Some never leave the safety of the starter corp for fear that they'll be caught up in a war that isn't theirs or made into a tiny cog in someone else's machine. Why not start your own corp, put together your own group of dedicated friends and build your own destiny? I did over five years ago and I've never looked back.
Brendan "Nyphur" Drain is an early veteran of EVE Online and writer of the weekly EVE Evolved column here at massively.com. The column covers anything and everything relating to EVE Online, from in-depth guides to speculative opinion pieces. If you want to message him, send him an e-mail at brendan.drain AT weblogsinc DOT com.
