EVE is such a good game

What sets EVE apart from other MMOs I've tried is the strength of its social structures. I'm the CEO of a corporation, which is a group of pilots who work together. There are security measures in place so that new members don't have access to many assets, others have access to more, and still others have access to a lot of assets.

Previously, we had a Director, who has almost as much power as the CEO, and can access anything the corp owns and can give members access to things as well. This director was known to me in Real Life, so I assumed I could trust him with all this power. It turns out I could. He no longer plays a lot, so he is no longer Director.

Over the last four years of running my corp, the operation has grown considerably. We used to be a small safe-space mining corp. Now we have highsec operations, several stations in a wormhole, and we are beginning operations with our alliance in lawless nullsec space. We also are running a 7 billion credit investment project which is now paying dividends to shareholders.

The time has come to appoint a Director (two, actually) that I do not know in Real Life. One has been with the corp for a year, the other for two separate periods of time adding up to about 19 months. Over time, these people have proven that they can be trusted with large assets. It's true that some of EVE's bigger scams were over a year in the making. But our operation isn't big enough to warrant that kind of infiltration, so I don't expect that is going to happen to us yet.

I had to consider whether the membership would trust these people, and if I was leaving someone else out who might be better suited to the position. It's a decision that took me a few weeks of occasional contemplation to arrive at.

Here is the letter I wrote to the corp as a whole informing everyone of the promotions. I think it illustrates the depth and complexity of the relationships between players in this game. Sure, mining and running missions in the game is ultimately not that much fun. But the bonds that form between players, co-operational or adversarial , are real; these are what make the game worth playing.

Directors
From: Norjia Blacksteel
Sent: 2010.05.08 16:11
To: Blacksteel Mining and Manufacturing

Hello,

After long consideration, I have appointed two Directors: Sachiko and Roarke. They can do anything I can, except appoint more Directors. I have done this because the corp has grown beyond the small empire-mining corp it once was, and our command structure needs to grow.

The corp remains a semi-dictatorship with important decisions and policy decided by me, but you can ask the Directors for help with issues only I could handle previously.

This is a big step for me, since one of BM2's founding principles was that there would never be a Director that I didn't know in real life. But since I'm the only person I know who has really stuck with the game (with the exception of Mejiityr, who currently doesn't play enough to take the role), I've had to let that idea go.

It's also hard for me as my role in the corp will shift further away from daily operational duties to directional decision making, accounting and diplomacy. But ultimately this is necessary because BM2 is successful, and that's pretty cool.

I still remember the guy in chat before I founded the corp who said, "Why does every noob who comes into this game think they can run a corp?" I wonder where he is now.

So congratulations are in order for Sachiko and Roarke, and to everyone who has made this move necessary by contributing to BM2's continued success.

Norjia