Friday, July 10, 2009

Guild Collapse

So in what I consider a hostile take-over, the guild that I was an officer of for almost a year has completely collapsed. There were to several factors that built up the pressure that led to this take-over. First our guild master was absent for weeks, relying solely upon his co-gm and girlfriend to manage day to day guild things, including our guild website, guild applications, scheduling raids, and recruiting. Second the co-gm lost computer access, and was absent for several weeks from the guild. Third one of the raid leaders who was also an officer and our best geared tank took a hiatus from WoW because he couldn't afford to pay his monthly subscription. (I'm not sure there aren't other reasons behind this, but I don't know.) The other fact here is that a month or two back we merged with a guild called Crimson Legion, gave anyone from this guild an open invite, no application required, to join, and promoted their officers to officers in our guild, including bank access, but more importantly access to setting officer notes, which is used to store the EP/GP rankings for our guild.
That sets the stage for what unfolded on Tuesday when I logged in to send out invites for our regularly scheduled Ulduar run at 4pm server time. I log in expecting to see about a dozen or so guildies ready and prepped, and no-one is on. Our guild messages says that we are to transfer our mains to Crimson Legion. I check my friends list and several of my friends from the guild are on, and I do a who for Crimson Legion and see that they are all in fact part of that guild now. So I contact one of their officers and ask what's up. (This officer has been a regular raider with our guild) She explains that because no-one was posting raids a lot of members were talking about leaving and some had already left. Ok, so I ask what's the deal with all the the EPGP scores being screwed up. Well the officer from Crimson Legion who was promoted happened to have a mishap with his addon, and bjorked up the ratings. I don't believe that for a second. That was pure vandalism. So what is to be the new system for loot distribution? Well a lot of new 80s feel that the EPGP system is unfair because they don't get a shot at loot, so we're going to go with open rolls.
That was previously discussed among the officers of Sinners Paradise, and the loot system was put in place to prevent guild hoppers from getting lucky on rolls and yanking very sought after loot from regular raiders. (Which happened to me personally on 3 occasions) I was offered an officer position in the guild with guild bank access, but ultimately I decided that I didn't want to stay. Considering that there was no attempt to contact me at all before all this went down, and that I was the second most senior officer in the guild. I don't want to be a part of what has been done, and I consider it all a coup against the current guild leadership by the 'new 80s' and the officer that they complained to.
I would like to offer some advice to guild masters left in a situation like the above for whatever reason. If you are not going to be there for the guild, leave someone who is active with the ability to maintain the day-to-day activities if you want to have a guild left when you come back. In fact it would probably be best to just make them GM and step down. Had I been given access to our website, and been able to promote/demote and invite and kick people from the guild, this whole thing could have been avoided. So I have moved on and am now a member of Circle of Dark Scholars on Aggramar. I have several past co-workers and friends that I know in this guild, and so far all has been well. They have a very simple loot system, but I am comfortable with the people in this guild to know when they should roll, unlike a lot of the players on Ursin, who seem to roll for just about anything they can use even if it's a downgrade to their current gear.

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