EVE is at times an overwhelmingly complex game. From time to time, I will intersperse general explanatory articles about the mechanics of EVE to help contextualize specific stories.

Background

• In Between Moments – In response to the query “Why Do You Love EVE?”, I tried to capture what makes it special for me. A useful overview of the magic of the world
• Items Don’t Grow on Trees – Where items come from in the world.
• New Eden Geography – How the world of EVE is organized. Important background for Alliance wars!
• The Single Universe Problem, Part One – Introduction to sharding and instancing – how virtual worlds separate their players into different world franchises.
• The Single Universe Problem, Part Two – How being single-sharded makes EVE the world it is.
• The Ships of EVE Online – My first EVE visualization, showing the prices of common ships in EVE in ISK, USD, and hours to earn the ISK to buy them.
• The Price of Death – What happens when you die, and how is it different from death in other games? Why does it matter so much what happens when you die?
• Money Does Grow on Trees (continued in part 2) – The basic ways that people actively make money by killing pirates and mining asteroids, and how these mechanics form the foundation for economic warfare in 0.0.

Major Geopolitical Groups

Since EVE is a strongly group-oriented game, various player organizations play a big role in my experience. I’ve gathered some of the major players below. Most of the time people in-game refer to these organizations using various abbreviations, so I’ll include those too.

• TGRAD / The Graduates – My corporation in EVE. This is the lowest level organizational affiliation. “TGRAD” is what’s known as the ticker symbol for the corp. It’s like a company’s stock symbol, and it’s used in the game’s UI to identify people.
• RAWR / Morsus Mihi – The alliance that TGRAD is a member of. Owns the Tribute region.
• NC / Northern Coalition – One of the major power blocks in EVE. Includes my alliance, Morsus Mihi, as well as seven others. Between these alliances, NC controls most of the northern regions of EVE. As of this writing, NC is friendly with GoonSwarm, and has varying levels of hostilities with most of the other southern alliances. More on NC history here.
• TRI / Trimuverate – A current major enemy of Morsus Mihi. They’ve been attacking Mostly Harmless space, and most of NC has been engaged in its defense to varying levels. Has not traditionally owned space, but has tried numerous times in the past to take some. Allied with pretty much anyone who wants to cause trouble for NC.
• EVOKE – An ally of TRI, enemy of NC.