While it is certainly possible to play EVE alone, it’s generally a lot more fun to have a group of other people who share your interests. Joining a corporation will give you many more options than you’d have flying alone.
You start the game in one of these, automatically assigned based on how you created your character - your race and bloodline. If you ever join a different corp and then quit it later, you’ll be placed back into another NPC corp based on your race.
All NPC corps have a built-in tax rate of 10%. That means any mission rewards you earn will be charged a 10% fee.
Faction Warfare (FW) allows you to sign up to PvP for your race’s empire in low-sec space: Amarr vs. Minmatar and Caldari vs. Gallente. There are two ways of getting into faction warfare - you can either join the empire’s FW NPC corp, or you can find a player-run corp that participates in faction warfare.
For more details about Faction Warfare, see the [UniWiki Factional Warfare guide] (http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Factional Warfare).
Players can create their own corporations (and in fact the majority of corporations in EVE are player-created). These corporations can set their own tax rates, declare war against one another, conquer parts of null-security space, and more.
Don’t accept random corp invitations - the average quality of a corporation that invites players randomly out of the blue is very low. Instead, look for a corporation that is dedicated to doing what you’re interested in doing and ask about recruitment.
EVE University is a well-known player corp in EVE that is devoted to teaching new players. There are many other player-run corps as well. We recommend the following resources for finding a corporation that suits your interests:
There are a handful of large nullsec corps that recruit rather freely amongst new players and often organize group content in nullsec space: Brave Newbies, Karmafleet, Pandemic Horde, and Dreddit.
It’s okay to take your time finding a corporation that suits your interests. It’s also okay to change your mind if you join a corporation and find that you don’t like it.
Remember that once you trade items, send someone isk or give anything else away they can do whatever they want with it. Be wary if a recruiter asks for a fee to join their corporation or offers to move your items. It might be a scam.
You can leave a corp that you’ve joined by right-clicking on your own name and choosing Quit Corporation? > Confirm Quit Corporation. Doing so will place you back into an NPC corp based on your race.