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Comment by _fat_santa | Hacker News Reader

So one thing I've always wondered about EVE. We all know about the "corporations" in the game and they seem to be ingrained in the culture of EVE. Were those "corporations" started by the creators (like the Alliance and Horde in WoW), or are they purely player created?

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There are both, but the NPC ones are largely holding players that are very casual or new. Most of what you read about are probably not corporations though, but alliances. Alliances are groups of player owned corporations that work together. The massive battles are mostly fought between these.

What makes Eve interesting is that all star systems except for those in the very middle of the map are controllable by players, and actually provide value to those holding them. So that's why you have these gigantic, drawn out conflicts and large battles where player blocs with thousands of players each are fighting for territory.

Purely player created. They're basically guilds in other games.

There are some built-in 'NPC Corporations' that you start on, and default back to if you get kicked out of a Corp, but they're basically just placeholders.

It's also important to acknowledge that these NPC corporations have a high tax rate so there's a financial incentive for players to leave these NPC corporations for Player driven ones. Most player corporations have a lower tax rate, less than 10% or matching if there's a war on. Sometimes a corp will increase taxes to recoup war bonds but it's only temporary.

The player corporations and alliances are one of the game’s greatest strengths, and weaknesses.

The big alliances are empires that control many aspects of the game. The downside is that if you want to play casually and don’t like all the boot-licking and drama that comes with player corporations you miss out on a lot of the game.

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