Casiella brought up this issue as Question of the Day on twitter. I thought it was interesting enough to make a blogpost about it.
The big difference with Eve and other mmorpgs (as far as I know, haven’t checked them all) , is that your corporation history is being tracked. Everyone can see what corps your character has been a member of. In warcraft or other similar mmos, there is no record of what guilds you have been a part of. There is a site called http://www.warcraftrealms.com/, that sort of keeps track, but it’s not complete and it’s not in game, so it would take more effort. I don’t know if people use it for the purpose of tracking people down.
The other difference is that there is more at stake in Eve. Also corporate theft is an accepted game mechanic. As far as I know, it’s not in most other mmos. You can steal loot from a guild bank in wow, then type /gquit, and that guilt will loose some items, but in Eve you can ruin the work people have been doing for months or years.
The downside of this is that in Eve it can sometimes be pretty hard to find the right corp. When I was looking for a new corp, it took quite some time before I found one that sort of felt right. Also, once you have been a member of a somewhat shady corporation, chances are that even years later people will ask about, and it can throw up a red flag. But corp hopping can happen, especially early on in an Eve career when you’re not sure what you want. Or you joined a corp and it turned out their time zones are different, or they’re just not as fun as you thought it would be.
If you still find yourself corp hopping after quite some time in Eve, you might want to wonder what it is that you want to do. It will probably also make it harder for you to find something else. So be careful with too much hopping, don’t get dozens of corporations in that history ;).
I’ve been involved with some bizarre ones during my time in Eve, Corps that suddenly decide to leave the Alliance you joined them to stay in, Corps picking up and moving to remote corners of the universe, another player stealing corp assets… my history is longer than I would like but ultimately it is who you are as a player that really matters. And nothing can take that away from you.
When Hellcats and Hellhounds gets apps from prospective recruits, one of the things we look at is their corp history. Too “busy” a history raises all kinds of questions–especially if the type of corp is not consistent. If we think someone is interesting enough to be worth the time, we’ll do a more in-depth background investigation as a result. This usually involves talking to former CEOs and others we know in-game who may have flown with them. If not, we’ll usually just reject them outright.