I want you (to join my corp)!

It has been a long time since my last, and first, blog but here we are again. Usually I can type endlessly about something that usually turns out to be nothing. Some would think it is a good quality, I however believe it to be... well I honestly don't care. I am going to try to be short (read "yeah right"), but it might end up a bit longer. So I give you, the "Corporate Registry". Some way to recruit people using game mechanics has been missing for quite some time now. A centralized database where corporations can spill their guts, and more visibly tell the other 200.000 users that they want them to be their next veldspar mining slavegirl is what we're creating.

Up until now, you have relied on the forums and the recruitment channel, a channel that has grown into a monstrosity with an increasing number of players. I have done this before and while it can result in finding a corporation, you usually end up finding a corp through association, or just by stumbling upon it (or you just tried to get into the high profile ones).

If you already have a corporation, you are all set. Well, almost. You need ISK to use this feature! Yes, this costs money, the DED needs cash for the paperpushing and that will have to come out of your wallet. It is not an extreme amount, but it'll cost a bit.

If you're not the CEO of the corporation, you will have to have either the Director or Personnel Manager role. This will allow you to set up an advertisement in any region you wish. But hold on, you will need to have an office in that region. So let's look at a picture (no, it's not a new Trinity model).

As you can see here, all your active advertisements are visible, as well as the button "add" for placing new ads. Provided that you have a corporation, the role, and and an office in the region, you can proceeed. When you hit the "Add" button it will bring up this window:

First you see that you can select how long it should last and since the price is calculated from this, be sure that you have enough ISK in your main corp wallet (Division 1) to cover the cost. You can have the ad up for up to 30 days and each day will cost you 250.000 ISK along with a one time per ad 500.000 ISK setup fee. The total cost is thus 750.000 to 8.000.000 ISK, depending on your choice. Then you select the races you wish to hire, you can select just one, all or any combination of races. Prospective employees will then be able to see this and having "all" is good as you're likely to get more people interested. After that you select the operation area, which is the three areas of space (high, low and null). Players who wants to have access to 0.0 will be interested in the null sec space. This is pretty much self explanatory.

Operations say what your corp does on a daily basis. So tick whatever is appropriate. You can also set a limit on the amount of skillpoints players has to have in order to join your corporation. So input that here as a minimum requirement. Then we have a 1000 character box where you can write an essay on theoretical physics or whatever you wish to write. Best is to give players information though, that you can not give in any of the other selections. Things like where to go, chat channels to join, and so forth. Your choice!

When you're done you have to go over your selections and your text to make sure everything is correct as once you hit OK you will not be able to change anything. When you press OK you are all set and your advertisement is up for everyone to see! You can of course do this in as many regions as you wish, provided that you have an office there. Also, in Our Adverts, you can remove any ad by right clicking on it.

This is easy enough, right? Remember that right clicking brings up additional choices, like show info on the corp and such. But we are not done yet, let's take a look at it from the other end.

If you are looking to find a corp for the first time, or you are tired of the constant fleet battles and null sec operation and desire to move to empire for some veldspar mining, then here you go! You can now find the corp to your liking. The "Other Adverts" tab is your friend, here you can start setting up your search. Select the region, if you care about alliance or not, how many members the corp has and if you want to limit by skillpoints as you can see in the image below.

Now you will get all adverts in that region. If you feel it's too many, you can start filtering through using the filters page. Here you can further define what you are looking for so that only advertisements that fit your criteria are shown.

When you look at the list, you can see various basic information. You see timestamps when the advertisement was created, when it will expire, the name of the corp, what alliance it is in (if any) and the location of the office. If you see something that catches your eye, you can double click on the advert which will bring up more comprehensive information, showing everything the corp is looking for and the personalized 1000 character "sales pitch".

We haven't changed the process of joining a corp though. You still need to travel to the nearest office and send in an application. Corporations also have different ways of going through the process, so you might need to join a chat channel, send a message to some players etc. This means that corporations should include all necessary information in the text box provided about the way they handle their recruitment.

This should explain how it all works, but we're not quite done yet, there is more coming so read on!

We are working on expanding, tweaking, adding more filters and functionality to this feature. For example:

• Input a chat channel directly into it as a link
• List of recruiters
• More graphics into the advertisements
• A tutorial
• A welcome page

And more...

If you have any suggestions on improving the Corporate Registry, please head out into the feature and development section of the forums and voice your opinion. Or you can just shout in the thread attached to this blog. We do hope that this will ease the transition into a corp for new and old players alike, and that corporations will now have a tool to make themselves more visible to others.