Quitting corp
Posted: 2010-04-14 Filed under: eveonline | Tags: corperation, eve online, friends 8 CommentsGod no, I’m not leaving the corp, which I just got director status (thanks caz!).
No, I’d like to talk today about leaving corps in general. For people who expected drama, large ship explosions or corp theft, sorry to disappoint.
We’ve all been there before, sitting in a group of people, and everyone’s laughing and smiling except you. The leader suggests that everyone do something, and everyone but you wholeheartedly agrees, and you don’t want to do it, seeming to leave you with the option of doing something you don’t want but have to do, or leaving and trying to find a group that meets what you want to do.
In Eve, a corp usually has a specific purpose, and then states this purpose openly to attract similarly minded people in order to do the thing together, which is more fun, talking, laughing, ectera.
At some point, you may find yourself at ends with corp policy. Maybe something as small and silly as “no talking in local”, or “no mining during wardecs to keep our losses down”, or something silly or serious that you have a problem with. In this scenario, the first thing you do is to see if you can go along with it. Like, try talking in private convos or rolling an industrial alt. If you just can’t deal with the policies, then bring it up with the CEO. Have meaningful points to support your argument and know his points ahead of time so you don’t walk away from the argument feeling happy and realize something crucially flawed in his principles while making hot tea and ending up spilling it on the cat which then latches onto your leg.
If you just can’t deal with the policies or the people, leaving the corp is certainly an option. Eve is a game. It isn’t your job, it isn’t your childhood friend group, and leaving a corp is not the same drastic change that breaking up with someone in real life is.
If you leave a corp, you leave it because you can’t or don’t want do what they do, or because you hate one or more of the people in it. You can find a new corp, and do what you want to, but the friends in the old corp, that is, if they were really friends and didn’t just like you because you could fly a Rorqual or HIC or falcon, will stay in contact with you. Most corps have private or public channels, and no-one’s banning you from staying in those and talking and laughing with old corpies even as you make new friends.
You should never feel bad about leaving a corp. Unless you stole shit. Jerk. If you didn’t steal shit and you still feel bad about leaving, then there’s some part of the corp you still like and you shouldn’t leave. Simple as that.
Fly with friends that aren’t constrained by the ticker after your name.
k162space 
Congratulations on your director status.
I’ve left more corporations than I wanted to. Most because, as you said, I didn’t want to do what they wanted to do and I got tired of it. The last corporation I left I rather regretted because I really liked the guys I was flying with, and my new corporation sees them as enemies (that’s what happens when you realize what you want out of the game is different than what your friends want, I guess). But, you really can tell who thought you were fun and who just talked to you because you were there.
Who says that your Corp isn’t made up of childhood friends? Whilst my Corp is not literally full of people I’ve known since I was a kid, it is about half filled with actual real world friends that I’ve known before EVE 🙂
“You should never feel bad about leaving a corp. Unless you stole shit. Jerk. If you didn’t steal shit and you still feel bad about leaving, then there’s some part of the corp you still like and you shouldn’t leave. Simple as that.”
^^ that! Thumbs up nice post
Lol, I beg to differ on the “no-one’s banning you from staying in those [public corp channels]…” When some of us over here in Semper Liber (ex-WTE) left OUCH, Black Claw banned us all from the public channel.
But I digress… I still occasionally talk to a few friends in that corp, so it’s not that big of a deal.
I managed to leave and stay in a way. I had a major disagreement with the CEO, and left, but since the corp had a public chat channel, I’ve continued to remain there and have kept chatting with “the guys”. No real hard feelings at all, and I feel pretty fortunate about that.
Of course, my solution was to start my own corp, which has remained at 1 person for pretty much the entire nine months I’ve been running it… But I also blame real life infringing on my EVE time for that… 🙂
I’ve moved through a few corps in the past year, but luckily am still on good terms with past corp-mates. I would still shoot them if they are neut in my 0.0 space, but I would expect nothing less from them!
0.0 does set some friend/foe limitations that strain prior relations. Blues firing on friends because of them being = is something my corp has dealt with in the past, tho luckily those = friends are crackshot pilots so we didn’t feel overly bad.
In the end people move about and alignments shift, eventually you find yourself sitting in a private channel of predominantly reds. My rule of thumb is to never ask someone to compromise their present alignment and everything more or less stays peachy ^^
Enjoy the posts about your corp’s adventures, and added the blog to my blogroll 🙂