Myself I hated this game for a long time until my brother dragged me into it. I hated that everything in the game was bases around commerce. Now I found a small groups of pirates and we’re having a blast pillaging and burning where we are not supposed to go. I guess the whole “farwest and lawlessness” vibe is what keeps me in. We managed to raid people up to 0.8. Obviously players crops hates us for raiding their mining whales but so far we can avoid them by keeping on the move.

Yarr mateys!!

I heard a story (I am not sure if it is totally true) that reveals the amount of player involvement/interaction in the game world. There was a huge corporation that owned a substantial portion of the galaxy (Given that its a huge galaxy, it was probably only a hundred or so systems – but thats still alot). They were pretty much accepted as the big boys on the block and it was rumored that some devs even played in that corp.
At the same time, there was a smaller but very ambitious corporation that wanted to take down the first one. A member from the latter group left his corporation and began fostering a friendship with what we will call the Big Boy Corp. He joined them, was one of their most loyal members, and helped them become the major corporation while playing with them for over a year.
Eventually he worked his way up in the ranks and was able to gain a large amount of control within the corporation. He was a well known, respected member and a major player on the server. Then, one day when few were online, he signed in and transferred all of the Big Boy Corp’s wealth he could get his hands on to his old guild and his own characters. He took their stations, assets, ships, etc. He then deleted the corporation and restarted one under the same name so that none of it could be recovered.
As you can imagine, this left a huge power vacuum that many corporations rushed to fill, and is still being filled to this day. Even though devs were said to be members of the dead corp, they decided that they would do nothing. Sabotage and corporate espionage are part of the game.
I have no idea if that story is true or even possible. I do know that the Big Boy Corp did exist and now doesn’t (whatever its real name was). Even if only part of that is possible/true, this game allows for some pretty crazy player interactions.