Guild ranks, ability to dethrone

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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This is another newer feature in Retail, added piece by piece to reduce the impact on GMs/Support by allowing players to take actions for themselves. Using similar logic to Loot Trading (doesn’t affect gameplay, was always an option but just more automated), I’m wondering whether Blizzard plans to include this as well - and whether you, as fellow Classic players, see it as a good thing, bad thing, or not all that important in the grand scheme of things.

Details:

Basically, for those who haven’t played Retail in a while, if the guild leader character has not logged in for 90 days (even if the player has logged into other characters), someone in Rank 2 or Rank 3 could see an option to dethrone, moving the guild leader down to Rank 2 and themselves up to Guild Leader.

The idea was to allow an officer to step in if the leader wasn’t able to play for a length of time, so that the guild members didn’t have to all leave and make a new guild just to have someone else take over.

Of course, there’s an ugly side - which is trusted officers being scumbags. Some would dethrone and take over, then /gdisband (all bank contents mailed to them as leader) or kick a bunch of people and make sure no one was Rank 2 or Rank 3 to switch it back.

In vanilla it might not have been common, but I know in TBC there were cases where someone quit and months later their guild was struggling because they didn’t come back and there were bank tabs no one had access to, they couldn’t kick or promote when needed, etc. They would put in a ticket, the GM would have to review how long it had been. Policies weren’t clear about when a GM would do a transfer, or to whom the transfer could be done, but generally the result was the same after a lot more internal work.

This isn’t something Blizzard has said will be in WOW Classic. However, in the vein of Loot Trading which was added to make it easier for players to perform a task they previously had to ticket for, it is something that potentially could be there without “warning” because it doesn’t directly affect gameplay.

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You don’t need guild lead to actually be a ‘lead’ of the guild in vanilla. There isn’t guild banks that get locked and such. As long as you can kick and invite then you are basically the leader.

I don’t see this being an issue.

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Definitely something to give some thought to.
It does seem like the main reason for this would be guild bank contents not going to waste but I can see the concern.
If a guild group really wanted to keep the same guild name but the GM has left.
Even if gbanks don’t make it in there should be such a feature to keep guilds alive with a transfer of ownership.
Guild names are one of the biggest draws to populating a guild. This is known.
At the very least deserves some discussion.

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These are the kinds of little changes that I’m afraid are going to creep in to classic. Individually, they’re not a big deal, but they can accumulate to the point that the game doesn’t feel authentic.

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This is the exact problem I have with these types of changes. Even though they technically don’t change the game much they destroy the feel. It’s almost like people are sitting at their computers just thinking “Hmm I wonder what really small change we could fit into classic without anyone else noticing”.

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This, I think, was a part of why it became a thing. If a guild was set up so that officers could invite, but only promote to a low rank, then over time if they wanted to move up another officer they couldn’t. Sometimes guild leaders wanted to be the only one who could kick, or only made that available to themselves and their second (Rank 2), and if Rank 2 was actually a spouse there was a chance both went AWOL together.

It wasn’t just about Guild Banks (though the addition of those underlay some of the abusive dethrones, as did the addition of Guild Levels and Perks in Wrath/Cata.)

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I have a feeling this is going to make it in, just like I have a feeling the whole “taking people’s names away if they don’t log in for X months” thing. This is a change that will make the money.

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I mean that type of guild doesn’t sound like it’s too organized in the first place to get to a point where leaving and remaking would just be the better option. If a guild leader left and destroyed a guild, honestly I thought it made for some grade A drama on the server forums. I just don’t see it is necessary at all and can have way more negative issues with letting the guild be up for grabs for anyone at the lower rank.

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The timeline for that one isn’t months, though, it’s years. Like a lot of years (though I forget exactly how many).

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I would add that I, personally, don’t really like the system. I am ~NOT~ promoting it. However, the last line in that linked support article says " Note: Game Masters will not assist with transitions in guild ownership." That concerns me, because it seems unlikely they’d want to move back to Game Masters manually assisting for WOW Classic. A successful WOW Classic could last many years, and there will be situations that come up where a guild leader leaves and never comes back (could even be death, which was one situation I remember in TBC).

I carefully have every single one of my personal guilds that include other players set up so I am the only player in the top ranks. (This one, for example, is all me in Rank 1, 2, and 3, and my adult son who hasn’t played in years in Rank 4.)

I’ve even dethroned someone in their guild a couple times, handing it back when they returned the first time, rearranging it so they couldn’t be dethroned the second before leaving it and making my own. (I even left them with more in their guild bank than they started with.)

I see the times it has been useful, but I see far more times it feels like it was abused. ESPECIALLY when someone left the game before the change and came back to find it’s not “their” guild any more.

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This is something that the dev team should think about and or us should talk about, I know in Vanilla if you made a ticket about something like this, there was little they could do (IIRC). I think 90 day’s of inactive hell even 60, if they just MIA without themselves saying anything is enough.

I think it could or would be better to make it so the system votes, I.E rank 2/3 or officer ranking can vote to replace the GM If MIA for x amount of month’s. Normally when this did happen everyone just up and remade there guild, it’s always a shame to lose the name but, irl happens. I would also want there to be say certain amount of players in the guild for this to be active, A guild with say under 30 people couldn’t use this option or something, etc. Then again that’s just me.

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the thing is tho is, in classic its really not a big deal for the officers remaining to drop and just make a new guild, no achieves or ranks or anything to worry about, just drop and reform from those active with a new guild. no bank to worry about and so on. we did this once and it wasn’t really a bad thing either because it completely cleaned out the inactives. idk, I don’t think its needed to put in for classic.

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Without a guild bank. I am not sure where rank structure is more than a title. Loss of access could only come in the form of the ability to invite or kick.

Creating a new guild doesn’t come with a loss of guild bank items or guild achievements.

It’s a good question though.

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Another good reason not to have guild banks :wink:

No one’s going to overthrow the GM if there’s nothing to gain. An active officer might not be able to promote or demote (depending on permissions set by GM) but at least that person can still organize things regardless of title.

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its two expansions

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I can see Blizzard doing this simply from a cost benefit perspective, but it would come at the expense of some of that old school guild drama. :slight_smile:

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just /gquit and look for another guild.

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18

NAILED IT!

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I mean you could take the 10 minutes to form a new guild and invite members of the previous guilds. This wasn’t present in classic and shouldn’t be a part of it.

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They can just make a new guild. There’s not going to be any guild bank to sneak off with and no one is going to care about their crappy guild name that probably has words like “aeterna”, “cruor”, “noctem”, or “requiem” in it.

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