I have a question for the server. When it comes to accepting members into your RP guilds how many of you are concerned about the OOC reputation of someone? Would you remove someone from the guild, or even reject them wanting to join just because other people had issues?
I’m not talking about bullying, trolling, god modding, or meta gaming. I’m talking about someone getting upset and lashing out a bit during an argument. Personally, I tend to overlook such things. I’m sure most of us at some point overreacted, and behaved a little erratic in the midst of an OOC disagreement. But that’s me. I’m willing to give people a chance and form my own opinion of someone based on my own interactions with them.
Unfortunately, it seems that some people are not like that. If you just happen to have someone hold a grudge against you that person could end up monitoring your guild status and when you join a guild they message the guild leader with all the bad stuff they don’t like about you. And some guild leaders will remove you from the guild to protect their guild’s reputation. And this seems a little juvenile. This isn’t high school. You should form your own opinion, and if it differs from what someone else says then too bad for that someone. I find that actively warning guild leaders about someone you had a falling out with makes you just as immature and petty as you are making them out to be. Am I the only one who thinks this?
I haven’t been playing too long and was unaware that such a thing is prevalent in the game; it is very juvenile.
There are always two sides to every story, both should be heard. I’ll admit though, were I to ever become a guild leader I imagine i’d be more likely to block/kick the grudge holder.
Enjoy the game, or not and leave, but monitoring someone’s movements for revenge…that’s creepy and crazy. Those people are a cancer to the game and i’d bet in real life as well.
Rarely have I ever seen bad blood be spilled over one argument.
Most of the individuals who find themselves with bad OOC reputations have earned them through their own long-term incredulous and abhorrent behavior, and even giving the very slightest of the benefit of the doubt leads them to act as if they’ve been vindicated, and a vicious cycle begins anew.
Yes and no?
On the one hand, one bitter bum-nugget should not spoil a new member to your guild.
One bitter bum-nugget with some Elephant/Chat logs and/or unedited screenshots should give you pause and make you consider keeping a close eye on your new guildie.
A bunch of bitter bum-nuggets with the aforementioned evidence should make you consider at least probationary roles in your guild until the guildie proves their value and/or disproves the evidence provided by the other folks.
There’s plenty of folks who have earned their infamy. There’s just as many who haven’t. This is the net, and unless you’re either there when it happened or somebody can provide chat-logs, eye-witnesses and other evidence, it is all a bunch of he-said she-said shenanigans that you’re better off dodging entirely if you ever want to have fun being a Guild Leader or Officer.
Personally, I suggest giving the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise, as people can change and grow, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. But if there’s a rank smell everywhere somebody goes, it might pay to check their shoes first before you listen to them blaming the folks around them.
This is arguably one of the most tolerant and open-minded servers left in WoW. Unfortunately that means the fringe elements also get let in and can fester for a long while before they blow up in everyone’s faces, at which point it become difficult to get them to leave, because by that point they will inevitably have built up enough of a base of friends and ‘friends’ that it is easier to just ignore them and pray you can stay away from them for the most part…
I hope so, because actively warning guild masters is probably the best thing you can do.
Let’s say this was real life, and you had a reasonable fear that someone with a vendetta against you was going to go to your boss in an effort to harass you. The most professional thing you could do in that situation is to warn your boss that this person exists and of their intentions so they can actually help you; no manager wants to be blindsided with personal issues that their worker didn’t tell them about it.
On the other hand:
It depends on the nature of the “lashing out.” I suspect that, if more than one guild has actively chosen to disassociate with you when confronted with these logs, you lashed out a little more than “a bit.”
In that case, your only real option at that point is to own up to it and be mature about it. “I know I said that, I know it was wrong to say that, but I’ve moved past it and promise that nothing like it will happen while I’m a member of your guild.” No guild is required to take anyone as a member, but saying something like that will at least improve your chances.
I can only give you one heart on your post, but here is one from my post: ![:heart:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/heart.png?v=6" ":heart:")
The Rest of This Is For OP:
If ya goofed, be an adult and own up to it. It’s okay to make mistakes… We’re all human. This is what we do.
I don’t understand how if I told my GM that someone was bad news bears because of something they did or how they were acting toxic makes me immature. We have some things that need ironing out and I haven’t done much recruiting lately, but if someone is known to cause drama or make other people feel like poop, I don’t see how inviting them benefits my guild. If my GM invited the person I did not, you bet your butt I’m gonna have words with them so they’re aware. I’m so patient a lot of people think I’m slow (I probably am) and even stupid (which I definitely am) so if I “fall out” with someone, and I’m gonna sound entirely bad here, it’s definitely on them. I’m the guy who takes a step back and listens to e v e r y t h i n g. We aren’t all the same, and emotions are difficult to read over text a lot of times. At least for me. I’ve been told I don’t do this emotion thing right. I thought I was just blunt with people lol.
People disagree every day. But if you’re toxic and treat people like poop, I don’t want you in my guild treating my guildies like poop. I want every single one of them to be happy and succeed. They should be thriving.
I’d say it depends on the guild and guild leaders.
Back in Vanilla, I joined a guild that didn’t have a great reputation. In fact, I’d joined not long after those responsible for the poor reputation were kicked out and went off to form their own guild to harass ours. The Guild Leader was very invested in building up the reputation of our guild again, and so accepting new members was a selective process and they did try to make sure you didn’t have a history, but depending on how bad, they were open to second chances as well.
I know once our reputation got repaired we were more open to taking more risks in guild recruits and all, but some things were just a blanket, “You’re not a good fit for us.”
There’s a lot of information missing from this question that I’d need to form an opinion. What do you consider “lashing out a bit”? I’m assuming you’re the person the guild is being warned about?
Yeah there really isnt enough information to process this question, one persons lashing out is another persons harrasment.
And this?
Is a very oversimplified, way too generalized opinion.
I’ve known people who blurt out horrible slurs and worse when they’re mad and have a moment of “lashing out”. We’d need specifics to really say whether or not we agree.
You can’t really blanket all warnings about behavior as immature. That’s honestly just reductive and harmful to the community.
I once joined a guild run by someone who had a horrid reputation on this server yet was well-respected on our former. The unsolicited opinions, slurs, and other B.S. were always totally non-specific as to why this guildie was so awful, but I did notice that it came from, best I could tell, one particular RP heavy clique. When I got up the nerve to ask the person what had happened, he stated that he honestly didn’t know and said he somehow must have pissed off someone who had a lot of friends. He was also pretty wounded by the ordeal and had completely given up RP and interacting with anyone outside of the guild. Another guild mate who was a prolific RPer confirmed things, said it was fast and furious and suddenly this individual was a total pariah in the server RP community for no explicit reason. To this day, I am still a little peeved that the trolling – and that’s exactly what it was – got so bad that a person I’d played alongside of for several years just walked away to what was a hardcore PVP server and didn’t look back.
This incident has led me to NOT want to know what other people think of potential guild mates. Don’t care if the person is a known bank thief, metagamer, general P.O.S., whatever; I’ll judge someone’s character myself and if they should somehow do me wrong, well, that’s entirely on me.
Addendum: Just wanted to add that I acknowledge I’m in a tiny, near vanity guild. This isn’t to say that we don’t accept recruits and that the four core members don’t discuss applicants before accepting them. Because we’re so small, we’re even more selective than larger guilds. What we don’t do is give any credence to outside opinion.
And that’s exactly why I don’t listen to others. Now this didn’t happen to me. I didn’t get removed from a guild because someone said I have a bad reputation. I just sort of saw it happening. Someone joins the guild and then is removed a few hours later. Nothing happened in guild chat, or RP. So when I asked the co-GL why she was removed I was told someone brought up that she has a bad rep, and provided screenshots.
Now screenshots can be altered, or taken out of context. You can make it look like you’re having a civil discussion with someone and then that someone just randomly blows up. But parts of the conversation can be left out. One minute the discussion is civil, then someone throws out a hurtful insult, and the person is now reacting to the omitted insult. The co-GL would not give me any details. I wound up leaving because I don’t want to be associated with such people.
Nobody’s saying that you’re not entitled to your own opinion, but you’re also not entitled to crap on guild leaders that run their guild the way they’re comfortable with by calling them out on the forums as immature high schoolers.
If someone has a pattern of behavior I don’t find socially acceptable or want to be associated with, I have every right to tell the person that I’m not comfortable having my guild name attached to them. If someone is warning others of abusive behavior, that’s not immature either, unless they’re simply lying. But in the scenario you’re presenting, you’re saying it’s immature because to you the behavior simply isn’t a big deal. Well not everything is a big deal to everyone, or not. Some people find something abhorrent that others may cackle at in Discord to their buddies.
That’s why you simply present the information to the guild leader, and let them do as they please with it. They can kick the person, investigate the claim, or ignore it all together. Telling people to adopt a “see something say nothing” policy and belittling those who don’t with claims of immaturity is irresponsible, and if anything begs some questions about your own behavior.
So people who distance themselves from behavior they find questionable are immature… but when you do it, it’s fine? I’m a little confused.
How do you know if the person is really that toxic? Even with screenshots it doesn’t prove anything. You don’t know what was going on weeks or months leading up to the explosion.
The person could have been bullied and belittled by the guild, and was just working hard to fit in. Now you may have the confidence to leave a guild like that, but not everyone does. So she stays in the guild, tries not to make waves, but is constantly put down until they finally snap. Now they’re kicked and the former guildies are making sure she never stays in a new guild.
You really have no idea what is behind the warning. It could be someone who has a legitimate concern. Or it could be a bully who doesn’t want to see someone they don’t like to thrive and be happy. So congratulations. You are now being manipulated by a bully.
And as far as distancing myself. I am choosing for myself based on behavior that I personally witnessed not to associate with someone. I am not going to tell others not to associate with the guild. I’m not going to name the guild or any of its members. I am making a personal choice for myself based on what I witnessed. There is a difference between distancing yourself based on someone else’s account, and doing so because you witnessed the bad behavior yourself.
I’m not asking people to ignore toxicity. I’m asking that you give people an honest chance because you will never have the full story unless you were there.
This issue really isn’t so black and white. How appropriate it is to present things about others and what results from it is largely dependent on the severity of the accusation and whether it can be verified. If someone approaches a guild leader with the intent to harm a new recruit’s chance based solely on some minor thing they can’t provide any proof for, then perhaps dismissing the accuser is justified and the benefit of the doubt can be given to the recruit. But if screenshots are provided that show the recruit slinging slurs around or something, then re-thinking that recruit’s admittance is totally reasonable. Every case would have to be evaluated individually. It’s dangerous to try to apply a blanket precedent to every case of something like this happening.
This is a dangerous line of thinking. If you start to question the validity of every screenshot and tend toward dismissing them for the simple possibility that they could be altered, you give crappy people a lot of room to be crappy without consequence. Let’s be realistic. Faked screenshots are more than likely hardly the norm, and pulling off flawless Photoshop jobs is not something that is totally effortless enough to be seen very often at all. As for taking things out of context, this is where that whole evaluation of every individual case thing comes in. Though, if a screenshot contains some abhorrent behavior complete with slurs of some sort, that would be enough for me. It’d be a hard pass, no more context necessary. Guild leaders and officer cores are not obligated to share their entire process with every member when determining things like this. That isn’t to say that every guild leadership group will always make the correct decision, but it is hardly grounds to dismiss them and say that you’d rather not be associated with such people just because you didn’t get to weigh in on things.
inb4 totally unrelated ‘lash out’
This seems like there’s more to it, but I’ll get to answering:
Most guild leaders with an interest in keeping their guild looked upon in a positive light will make an effort to protect that reputation.
If there are credible screenshots of a guildie being a wacko or a jerk, that can hurt the reputation.
If they turn out to be faked, well, damn! But I doubt most good leaders would act immediately.
Long story short: Proof brings action and screenshots are proof.
And do you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that, in the hours between invitation and kicking, they didnt actually investigate the claim?
How does a jury know anyone’s ever committed a crime? They weren’t there. Let’s just assume all evidence is fabricated and stop doing trials.
Avesae for President 2020: Be Terrfied
Clarification: This is a false equivalence in terms of impact on society of course. My point is that you seem to just want to… stop looking at and talking about abusive behavior. Because you think everyone is out to get you and is going to fabricate screenshots of you doing bad things.
It’s not a rational argument. So no, people should keep doing it.
I actually do know. The person was only in the guild for two hours and the co-GL told me that he didn’t bother talking to the person he kicked beforehand. He made his decision based off what one person said with just a screenshot or two. And he didn’t kick her because the screenshot showed her trolling or bullying. She was kicked for being confrontational with someone else. Not sure what that entirely means in this specific case because the co-GL wouldn’t discuss it any further.