I have a secret...

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I have a secret...


And it's not in my pants!  
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Hello everyone, I am Ginger and you may remember me from such blogs as "Immersionalism, it rocks" or "WAR, it's beautiful".  Well now I am the new volunteer manager and I'm here to talk to you about our volunteers and what they do to make EVE a better place to be.
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The plan is to devote a blog to each of our volunteer teams to give you a general overview of their purpose, day to day running, an idea what it's like to be in them, and what sort of applicants they look for.
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So, I would imagine a fair few of you have no idea what the volunteer team is.  Its official title is the Interstellar Services Division, or ISD, and it was created many moons ago with the intent of creating teams of volunteers to help support and improve EVE.  Within it are housed several teams of volunteers which each concentrate on a separate aspect of EVE.  Many of our employees here at CCP, including me, came from the volunteer program which only goes to show you in how high regard we hold it.  
Let's have a quick look at each team before getting into the gritty:
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<strike>Equipment Certification and Anomaly Investigations Division</strike> Bug Hunters (ECAID) : Team with the longest name possible that most of the time even I can't remember what it is, so we all call them the Bug Hunters.   The bug hunters are the tinkerers, prodders, engineers and conniving geniuses that live on our test servers assisting the CCP QA department in a whole manner of work including filtering bug reports, investigation bug reports, investigating defects and making fun of QA behind their back.
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Interstellar Correspondents (IC) :  Our in game volunteer news agency, crewed by intrepid journalists who venture into many dangerous territories, from the savage barrage of emo'ness to the painfully bludgeoning forum discussions to bring you all the politics, personas and wars of EVE.  In short they bring you the news, most recently with their excellent accomplishment covering the Alliance Tournament.
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Support, Training and Resources (STAR) : STAR is our new player support group.  Gentle shepherds for the flocks of young starship pilots, it is they who wave with a big smile on their faces to passing newbies asking if they want help making their first tentative forays into the dark, sometimes unforgiving and potentially soul destroying but ultimately fantastic world of EVE.  
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Mercury (M) : See below.
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? : Something else on the horizon
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The information we have on the website is somewhat out of date and will be updated soon so please don't take it as gospel, however you can find a short FAQ as well as the application page for ISD.  Now let's talk the first team to highlight in a dev blog and the newest one at that:
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Mercury is the secret that's not in my pants, well not anymore at least.  Mercury is what arose when our old AURORA team was brought to an end.  We needed a volunteer team to assist the content and storyline department in all kinds of fictional works and projects so we created Mercury.  They have been kept under the radar somewhat while they mature and gestate but are now big and strong enough to face the daylight.
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They have already completed several key projects for us including the Region Descriptions (of which they wrote the majority), storylines introducing new patch content such as the black ops ships and the boosters, the code aria inquiry, fiction news for the  
alliance tournament
and various other storyline and descriptive works for CCP content/storyline.
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I'll let Galen, head of mercury describe them in his own words:
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"The back story of EVE Online is huge and detailed, full of incredible stories and history and much more than just a simple backdrop for a game. We build on that and expand it; we add more detail to this background. Mercury provides you with the fiction that is at the core of this universe.
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We aim to show that there is more to being Amarr than the hoods, more to being Minmatar than the sunglasses. When you enter EVE you are surrounded by billions of living and breathing beings that exist only in story. We give some of them a voice and we try to show that you have a chance to tap into an immense repertoire of fiction and that using it can enrich your EVE experience in ways you might not have thought of.
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As the Irish poet Arthur O'Shaughnessy said, 'We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.'
"
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The work in this team is varied, there are generally multiple projects running at any one time and you need a very good understanding of the fiction of EVE and a good writing ability to be able to join Mercury.  Mercury is now accepting applicants so please click here to apply and select "Fiction (Mercury)" as your team and good luck!
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Please post any questions about mercury or the ISD team in general on the comments thread and I'll do my best to answer them, details on the other teams will be forthcoming in future dev blogs.  Fly safe all!
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http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=546