Not trying to necro an old topic but rather bringing up a way to discuss other means of handling GM transitions. In my situation, I have a toon that is in a guild where the GM, as well as any of the officers in the top 3 ranks of the guild, have been inactive for months to even years. I made a ticket and asked what other courses of action I could possibly do to have them intervene and hand the reigns to someone else. Their response was basically… try to contact the inactive officers or guild master and have them promote me or someone to take over. Sure that would be great I would love to but the only means of communicating with them was in the game and they have not logged in during this time. So once again I responded to the ticket and their response was to have it brought onto the forums for discussion. Therefore here we are in this dilemma with no resolution in sight. I know that I cannot possibly be the only person that is experiencing this issue. I actually preferred when back in the day after the GM being inactive for 90 days you could make a ticket and they would change someone else to being the GM. Clearly, if you have not logged in for 90 days or more you are not active and not helping your guild. So why not allow those that are active in the guild and have helped donate and build the guild up to what it is, a means of taking over? Just frustrated that their response is we have a dethrone feature in place but any GM can override it by creating enough ranks in the guild to not have anyone in the top 3 ranks to be able to avoid being dethroned. And if you can’t get them to promote anyone to one of the possible ranks then essentially you are out of luck. Does anyone else have any suggestion on how to handle this situation? Or possibly a better way for the game masters to handle this issue?
After a certain amount of time the guild will revert to the highest ranking active person. I’m not sure how long it takes or the specifics on how the new guild leader is chosen but I directly know of it happening several times.
Blizzard said, “No.”
My “Main” is in the same situation; It is a guild that came to Baelgun, just wanting her for her sig. Then they figured what the heck, letting her stay in.
A couple months later, poof. Whatever reason some of them made characters on Baelgun for, no longer existed.
Now I notice that the Guild Master bothers to log in, just before someone else could take over control of the guild. However, his doing this is moot since NO ONE ELSE LOGS IN!
So my “main” is totally alone, in that guild. But my main is not an officer, or whatever rank could even take the guild over even if the GM NEVER LOGS IN.
It is kind of fun though, to just be in that guild alone; We wish she could invite the rest of us, but unfortunately, she is never on when that GM logs in for a millisecond.
That is not true. It only does that with the highest ranking person, of STATUS to take over the guild. If you are not of that officer status, you still can’t. It doesn’t matter if none of them log in until the end of time, you will NEVER be able to get control of the guild.
Blizzard intends for it to be that way, they even addressed it as recently as Legion.
Only if the active person is in the top 3 ranks. If an active someone is not in the top 3 ranks it will never change hands.
I’ve personally seen it happen with more than 3 ranks difference between the old leader and the new. It took a while so maybe they have some sort of time restriction like every so many months it looks at lower ranks.
As far as I know, someone on the lowest rung on the ladder will never get ownership no matter what. The ownership drops only a few ranks, and Blizzard rarely allows it to go further. This may have been changed at some point though.
That would… contradict several blue posts over on the CS section of the forum, so I dunno about that.
Maybe its different now with the new guild system?
It was a while ago so it’s possible that my info is out-of-date.
Anyways, if it’s that important then leave and make your own guild or join another.
Ofcourse my hunter has been in a guild whose gm has been inactive for 6 years and has no officers in it.(Still is in the same guild)
I made a similar request like you did to blizzard and was denied. It seems from your post its still the case
Ever since they put in the dethrone option for anyone in the first 3 ranks of the guild (GM has to have been offline for 90 days I believe for the dethrone option to kick in) they have said that they are completely hands off with it and they let the system deal with it. The rank thing is so that GMs actually can protect themselves from losing their guild if they care enough, but it also gives members or officers the ability to keep the guild alive.
That’s all I know from before the last bought of guild changes.
That seems dysfunctional.
Why is that?
If you are in a situation like Kypookins described, you can’t benefit from the guild even if you are the only active member.
Why not join a different guild or start one of your own?
Yet another poorly thought-out automated system. Anyone can see that if a guild has gone leaderless for long enough there should be some sort of reasonable succession plan.
Perhaps an option to split the guild or similar for a small in-game fee. The top remaining player pays some gold to duplicate the guild and give everyone a chance to move over.
That way the old owner doesn’t lose anything and the active players keep their guild progress and perks. Do something sensible with the name and you’re good. Makes everyone happy.
Well, there are always what’s left of the guild perks like a shorter hearthstone.
From what I understand, a guild at the end of the day ONLY belongs to a GM. If the GM decides to run off with all of the mats and gold in the gbank that is their “right” as far as blizz is concerned, even if they didn’t put one copper in it.
If the GM wants to kick every single member they have the “right” to do that, because the guild belongs to them when it is all said and done.
The reason (I am assuming) that they only offer the option for the top 3 ranks to dethrone is because they are giving the GM the opportunity to protect their guild without having to kick everyone, if they so desire. The GM can demote everyone if they know and plan for an extended absence, and it’s up to the members to try to figure out what they want to do in response if no one can dethrone.
Cause at the end of the day maybe there is a ton of gold in there, mats, or whatever that essentially does end up belonging to the GM once it goes in the gbank and they want to keep it safe. There is also the considerable amount of gold invested in the gbank tabs sometimes.
If no dethrone option then the members aren’t chained to it. They can leave and find another guild, try to contact old guildies and make a new guild…
I am on my server because I faction changed and server transferred a toon to be in a guild. The officers were pretty… well unproductive shall we say. I was a bit vocal (along with others) about that fact. I ended up kicked. So I lost the value of the real money I spent plus all the gathering time I put in for the guild and the gold I contributed. So now I give to individuals not guilds.
None of this is directly related except to say I am glad I learned that lesson because I didn’t know about this stuff mentioned here in this thread on top of that.
I learned some hard guild lessons too in Legion. I worked my butt off for a guild, and in the end I was demoted from officer because “I couldn’t get along with the GM” who was taking raid stuff for his personal use, let one of his officers have free reign with the bank… Between the two of them there might be 10 or more flasks missing per week. Those were flasks that I went out and herbed my butt off to make. Some of them may have been left over from the previous farming officer, but I had dealt with making sure we were stocked up for a long time.
So I will NEVER become an officer again. I won’t ever put that much effort into a guild. I am fine just being another raider or aquaintance, maybe a distant friend at the most.
But remember… The GM has complete control over their guild and blizz isn’t going to step in.
This is exactly why I do not want to just get up and leave. After you dedicate so much time and effort into making the guild what it is and contributing to the guild bank. You would like to reap some of the rewards instead of just leaving and joining a new guild. Maybe I am nostalgic of the days when you joined a guild and it was more than just a tag and more of a family/community. I just wish Blizz would use some common sense instances like this. It is not hard to see who has or has not been online in sometime and we may not have every person on battle.net ID to be able to contact them. Maybe before allowing a dethrone to be allowed send an email notification to the account to let them know that someone within the guild is looking to dethrone them and give them a 24 hour window to respond, whether they can allow the dethrone or they have to login and that cancels the dethrone? I can see some GMs possibly abusing this but if they do then maybe at that point allow Blizz the ability to act accordingly if they feel the GM is abusing the system and just logging in to the guild to prevent the loss of guild master right then not logging in again or promoting a replacement. Just my idea on what else we could do… other than nothing and hoping eventually something might change and someone might magically login after being away for over a year.
I understand the nostalgia and everything. On my old server I was quite attached to my guild even after it died, but I didn’t even mind being alone in it.
The email thing isn’t a bad idea, but I don’t think they’ll go further than they have because like I said… the GM has “ownership” as far as they are concerned. They arent really into taking what one person essentially owns and giving it to someone else.