EVE Online at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

In EVE Online, the taking and holding of conquerable space by alliances in 0.0 is the closest thing to 'endgame content' available in other MMOs. Unlike raiding in WoW, which almost anyone who plays gets a chance to try at some point, only a tiny portion of the EVE playerbase ever makes it out of Empire. Unlike the gradual progression of PvE dungeons leading up to a more difficult raid, the habits and skills learned by a corporation in Empire are essentially the opposite of what one needs to survive in 0.0. This results in a somewhat stagnant closed system in the outer reaches of space, where roughly the same crew of alliances who 'made it' into conquerable 0.0 endlessly battle against one another. Despite this, the process for creating a successful spaceholding 0.0 alliance isn't difficult, but it is almost never spelled out explicitly - until now.

Suppose for the moment that you are the CEO of a corporation in Empire, a director of such a corporation, or you'd like to become one soon. The gameplay is getting boring - there's only so much one can produce and mine, and the odd wardec or brief jaunt into lowsec or NPC 0.0 hardly counts as PvP. How do you make the jump to transform your moribund organization into something that is feared and respected throughout the galaxy? What steps do you take?

First of all, you have to choose what sort of goals you have for your nascent organization. A number of alliances exist in the game, as far as the code is concerned, but they don't function as alliances; they hold no space and exist as 'roaming PvP' entities, or they live in NPC 0.0 where there is no risk of losing assets in a conquerable station. This is like going to Vegas and gambling with pennies amongst your buddies in the parking lot outside of a casino; if your desire for your alliance is to reach the endgame, you need to decide from the outset that your organization's goal is conquerable space, lest you end up like Interdiction, who spend a tremendous amount of effort on the forums trying to convince other alliances that they are relevant despite never taking space or attacking a control tower.

Once the goal is clearly set towards becoming a spaceholding alliance, you need to decide upon your governing structure - ideally this needs to be sorted out long before you have anyone else to govern. Alliances tend to be ruled either by the founding corporation in a near dictatorship (Goonswarm, Against All Authorities) or conceived as a pseudo-democracy with each member corporation having a say in the affairs of the alliance as a whole. You need to have this sorted out before you begin recruiting other corporations to your banner, otherwise there will be no end to the drama if you try to impose a dictatorial mantle on a democratically-minded crew. From a standpoint of sheer practicality, autocracy is easily the best option for alliance governance; many of the functions of an alliance are most secure when centralized in a single corporation, and autocracies are able to react much faster to unfolding events than any of the talking-shop governments.