The new Guild UI and Permissions...yikes (Part 1)

[Fumel-arathor (Fumel)]

They…want…more…feedback…

[Tarayn-medivh (Tarayn)]

Here’s some feedback:

Just revert. I know it is a novel idea that hasn’t been brought up before, right? Just put the permissions back how they were. Seems a better plan than looking into this “issue” for 3 more years…

[Raicolette-moon-guard (Raicolette)]

Just give me my god dam permissions back. Like holy dogmess, are y’all this dumb? Why do you need more feedback.

Jesus Christ. This development team got me like Picard trying to explain something to Data and he just like, “why though?”

[Venjin-bronzebeard (Venjin)]

Eff it, I’ll summarize how Rising Sun functioned before the changes and elaborate the reasoning for each rank.

Rank 1 - GM - Self explanatory.

Rank 2 - Co-GM - Me. Given as many permissions as possible historically, basically the equivalent of checking “is officer” since day one.

Rank 3 - Senior Officers - This rank was reserved for persons given the most trust and responsibilities. They could do EVERYTHING except manipulate the MOTD, bank tabs, and Guild Info. Why? Because in September 2007, half of our guild broke off, and a person who we thought was respectable changed the MOTD and Guild Info to instruct others to gquit and join their new guild. If the guild bank had existed back then, the potential for damage would have been disastrous. Since then, these functions are exclusively under GM and Co-GM control. Essentially, this rank helps run the guild when we’re not on. Can no longer been done

Rank 4 - General Officer - Could invite members, demote members, see/edit officer notes, participate in officer chat, and create guild events but could not kick, delete guild events, or modify bank tabs. Why? Kicking is a serious issue for us, and the action is weighed on circumstance. You’re in because we like you, and if that changes somehow, something bad must’ve happened. Deleting guild events situational. We want to encourage members to ask for help and set aside days for these kinds of actions. Deleting events is reserved for higher ranks only, and only in unusual circumstances. Can no longer been done

Rank 5 - Helpers - This is where “official” officer ended. They could see officer chat and notes (but not speak there), create guild events, edit public notes and invite people. This rank used to be highly populated. A lot of guildies wanted to feel “involved” but not “responsible”. Since promotions were kind of a big thing for us (Always based upon overall contribution and desire to help out, NEVER based on how much you raided) these were always handled by actual officers. But overall, this was the transitional rank to people who didn’t know if they wanted the extra load, or were content to just be “fringe helpers”. Can no longer been done

Rank 6 - General Members - They could invite members, create guild events, and see/edit their own public note. No real responsibilities except to be nice others, have fun, and don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Rank 7 - New guys/gals - They could participate in guild chat and that’s it. Until we were sure you were gonna stay/not be a d-bag, this is where recruits went.

Rank 8 - Security Isolation - If we suspected your account was hacked, this is where you went. ZERO access to anything.

Our workaround since the change?

Nobody is an officer (Except me, I guess, by a technicality)

Here’s a wonderful article btw:

Principle of least privilege

[Tixi-moon-guard (Tixi)]

You have enough feedback.

[Dlaciabia-sisters-of-elune (Dlaciabia)]

They…asked for more feedback…?

But…but…but…face asplodes

How many times/ways do we need to say Unbundle the Permissions from IsOfficer so that GMs Can Assign Them As They See Fit?

[Andalya-ghostlands (Andalya)]

From the Live Q&A today (transcript from MMO-Champion since I didn’t watch the video):
Guilds and Communities

• Certain guild features were lost in the transition of integrating communities into the Battlenet platform. The team is working and listening to feedback to bring back what is missed most.

[Fumel-arathor (Fumel)]

Feedback:

I’ve ben guild leader and officer for a number of guilds during my years in WoW, and I can also attest to the importance of letting a guild manage itself.

I used different tiers of officers, I’ve seen RP guilds who use their O chat for purposes other than officer. I’ve seen officer tiers and even some member tiers that can view but not speak in O chat.

There is no reason to simplify what doesn’t need simplifying. Let guild masters manage their own guild themselves.

Make a toggle for the simplified guild management or Advanced guild management, that way those who don’t care can have their all or nothing toggle and those that like to micromanage can do so.

More options never hurt anyone.

One size does not fit all situations. Please Blizzard, make a check box or something to allow guilds to go to advanced ranking if you thought it was too complicated.

I’m going to argue against Blizzard in the case of the guild control changes but not in the context most are presently doing.

As Blizzard’s security staff knows, when doing role-based access control permissions (and/or profiles), the principle of “Least Privilege” applies. This, in lay terms, means “Only what permissions are required to do the necessary tasks for that job role”.

In this context, I am not comfortable granting a person who I did not designate an officer to have all officer permissions. Nor do I necessarily want to grant an officer all of the current permissions. In my guild hierarchy, the structure only allows 3 people to invite to the guild AND remove from the guild even though we may have a separate structure for officers.

(This is to combat the notion that 1 person is the benevolent dictator {i.e. GM}. We have a council of 3 Founders. If 2 disagree, I act as the tie-breaker as the “GM”. Generally speaking, we don’t disagree, but we can.)

I have a separate tier of “officers” in the context that most guilds use them today. These do my guild recruiting, raid leading, and class officer roles that most guilds have today. However, I do not grant them the ability to remove individuals from the guild nor would I.

This is a way of decentralizing power but also not providing a scenario where officers might disagree and act against each other intentionally or otherwise. They should be able to discuss this as a group and make the recommendation to the Founders. As a rule, I tend to let the two Founders handle those disputes (we really don’t see any, but that’s why the structure is there). I know both of the other Founders in person and I trust both implicitly, so it is a simple phone call or text from either of them to get my opinion if a tie should result.

In this context, as a person who has drafted security policies in a past architect role and as a current Operations Manager role, I am disinclined to give ranks permissions that I do not want them to have. It was granularly set in this fashion for a very good reason - and it is a technical control to help ensure that officers in my guild can’t act on a whim.

While my vetting process is actually pretty good, it isn’t perfect as nothing can be perfect. You’re removing my ability to set practical guild permissions for the sake of simplifying the experience. I don’t mind if there’s a “simple” mode for folks who don’t want to manage it, but give me an “advanced” mode so that folks who want to manage those things can.

I would like to expound on this topic and actually focus in on the principle stated in the second paragraph. Specifically the Principle of Least Privilege. There are literally enough volumes on this concept to fill libraries to overflowing.

The Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP) is the standard of Information Security that is adhered to by most if not all corporations (both public and private) government agencies (whether Global Federal State or Local in scope). It is the heart and soul of profile or role based security systems.

At its heart PoLP maintains that you only give the least permissions to a role that is necessary for that role to perform its function. You then assign users to that specific role so that should you need to change the scope of the role and the users in that role you do it once and each member then has the role’s scope adjusted.

It saves the administrator time and effort in having to track down all the users of a role. He simply need only change the permissions assigned to that role.

Likewise if a user must be removed from a role there is no need to change the other users permissions you simply remove that person from the role. This can save enormously valuable time if the user is found to be a bad actor. You remove that users role from them while not disturbing the operations of others and prevent the bad actor from causing damage to you system.

Then there is the implied concept of granularity in the PoLP. Invoking PoLP allows the administrator to clearly define a role by assigning certain permissions to that role and not others.

A guild raid leader might need more access to guild bank resources and or guild reward systems for loot from bosses than a Class Officer might need. Similarly a Production Fire Team might need read access to Production Servers but probably should not be given write or modify permissions. A Production DBA who is the DB Owner might need read write and modify but certainly should not have sa privileges on a DB he does not own and likely should not have remote access OS Level permissions to a Production server.

By compromising this system intentionally, by flagging all of the above roles as simply Officer, you invite disaster.

You invite the accidental or incidental promotion of a bad actor to a level that has access to the guild bank and can then rob that guild blind. Then you have GL’s sending in tickets for recovery of items and demanding (rightfully so since you put them in that position by lumping all Officer roles under one set of permissions) that they be reimbursed for the items.

Then you start getting false reports from gl’s that think they can ‘game’ the system by filing false tickets and getting items they never had. This creates FAR more work for your GM’s than you had previously slowing down the system AND making you hire more of them to handle the unexpected volume.

But lets turn the tables just for an instance. What if tomorrow you came in to work and all of the permissions for all of the data in your corporation were set to a single role. Could you be expected to continue business as usual? No? Then you have your answer for GL’s too.

Thank you! It’s nice to see another of my stripe around. Rare as we may be.

As you saw in my post, I’m all for giving both modes to players. Simple for those who don’t want to manage those permissions (and agree to the concept that simple setup right now probably means more trouble later) and Advanced for those who do want to manage those permissions (and agree to the concept that advanced now means longer initial setup now and less trouble later).

I like how you called out the role-based reasoning for adding/removing folks from permission groups/roles. That’s something that folks outside of security don’t usually get to see. In the context of the game, that’s why the “Ranks” are in the guild (and you can set the permissions per rank and set the rank name). They’re security profiles such that you can have more or less permissions.

Blizzard’s recent change to the permissions model sacrifices “principle of least privilege” for simplicity. And anyone in the security space will tell that is almost always a recipe for disaster. Not only conceptually in a theoretical space, but I also provided a real-world example of why it was set the way it is.

Giving a guild the option to choose simple or advanced security models makes sense. It’s the same things companies do now: You choose to have less security for the less hassle upfront, but the security folks know on the back-end that it creates a mound of issues later on… OR, you can take more time to set it up the right way at the start and have less changing to do later on with a clearly defined access control policy and technical controls to enforce the aforementioned policy.

I’d just like to re-iterate that I think the consolidation of guild rank management options introduced in 8.0 is effectively taking choice away from guild leadership on how to structure ranks and guilds, and it leads to a less fulfilling feeling of promotion, and less impact demotions. Our guild used to have a muted rank, for members who are in trouble, but not quite to the point that a full kick is needed, and now we have no way to try to damage control without just outright kicking a player.

Guilds should be empowered to make more choice, not less, and I think the changes I listed above are a good way to begin doing that.
Thank you for your time.

That should be enough for now.

Give us back our permissions, Blizz. We can discuss improvements to the looking-for-guild function, Guild UI, Guild perks, Guild housing, etc., at another time. Right now, let’s fix what you broke.

[Takoda-kul-tiras (Takoda)]

So I was pretty upset at first. But I finally got my hands on the vod, and I now that I sit down to really digest what Ion is saying…

Full transcript below - most relevant bits bolded for those who like a tldr.

Q: Is the communities feature worth putting dev resources into moving forward? It seems to have caused more issues than it solved, and there have not been many changes to the tools we can use to manage them. We’ve only lost guild management tools. @Scartotem

Lore: We’ve seen alot of feedback along these lines. I know that we’ve made some improvements there already, but overall, this sort of sense that when communities was rolled out into WoW, and the guild system was moved onto the community system, there was a lot of friction there. So how are we feeling about that at this point?

Ion: I think communities as a whole we very much feel are worth continuing to invest resources into. We’ve seen a ton of communities popping up for cross server gameplay and activities. There are everything from YOLO BGs to keystone pushing groups to cross-server raid groups that can easily recruit and communicate and maintain a calendar and maintain a schedule in a way that is compatible with the way guilds work. So we have alot of cross server communities. we want cross-server social groups and the ability to be in multiples of them.

Now from a technical perspective, we shifted the infrastructure for how these groups were built from something that was native to world of warcraft to something that is consistent and tied into our battle.net platform more broadly with cross game communication there. And we lost some things in that transition. Some of those were granular permissions and we’ve worked based on some feedback so far. Early on, where we re-added the ability to have guild ranks that couldn’t speak in guild chat for example. If you wanted the ability to mute that really annoying guy in your guild, get him to shut up without actually kicking him from the guild, you can have a rank that is muted.

Officer permissions are still more tangled together than we would like. We are getting support back from battlenet and want to be able to add that granularity back going forward. It’s something that we’re actively working on. At this point, we hear alot of general feedback about “fix guild permissions,” but not as much “this is the exact specific thing that I would like to be able to do with my guild that I can no longer do.” That type of very specific feedback is what would be most helpful.

I know that those posts have been out there. I don’t want to say that no one has done this. But for you specifically, if you’re voicing the concern that guild management tools are lacking, it would be super helpful just so we could understand the relative weighting, popularity, and demand of each of these features and what it is you miss most so we can prioritize that accordingly.

Lore: That’s something worth calling out about feedback in general, if you’re submitting feedback about class design, about azerite armor, about islands, and so on. We’ll see general feedback of “this isn’t fun, or I don’t like this or when are you going to fix this” and while we can then go and find other posts that do say in more detail here are the issues, we’re then attributing your opinion to what someone else’s opinion is, and maybe your thoughts on that are actually different. Or maybe your way of expressing your thoughts on the issue is something that makes a little more sense to us and we can understand a little bit better.

Ion: Exactly.

Lore: So in general with feedback, when you can, it’s always best to include as much context as possible.

Ion: Or to tell us to fix PVP.

Lore: Or just tell us to fix PVP.

Ion: We’ll get right on that.

Lore: Yeah. We’ve got a wrench, and we’re working on it right now. [moves on to next question]

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/398938704## Timestamp 1:01:04

[Polgara-winterhoof (Polgara)]

As Fumel pointed out, I created a separate thread back in the old forums that I dropped some feedback in when we were originally asked for feedback. Since we are being asked again, I will post those thoughts here with some updates:

The granular permissions previously available have been replaced by an ‘officer checkbox’. While this may not have been the intention, the net result is that an ‘officer’ has now been defined by Blizzard as someone who will always be able to:

• Access officer channels
• Remove people from voice chat
• Delete other people’s chat messages
• Delete other people’s guild events
• View and edit officer notes
• Edit Guild info
• Edit Message of the Day

We are no longer able to define what an officer is. In our guild, prior to these changes, we functionally had 4 different levels/types of officers. This is no longer possible.

Rank 1: Co-GM rank, which has all the permissions of the GM (still possible)
Rank 2: Officer with advanced permissions but no access to Guild Info or MOTD (not possible now)
Rank 3: Officer with similar permissions to Rank 2, but cannot remove members (still possible)
Rank 4: Access to read officer chat, able to delete guild events, read-only access to officer notes. This is a rank of people who are trusted and want to help, but should not be full officers. (not possible now)

While the following does not impact my guilds, they were mentioned in this thread:

• Some guilds were using officer chat for role playing – now they cannot allow access to it without making everyone officers.
• Some were using it as a read only tool for raiding (the leaders could post, team members cannot).
• There are many other instances where the changes have had an impact, and I would encourage you to read through the long thread regarding this.

It has been stated that changes were made to facilitate guilds and communities being able to exist using the same infrastructure. That’s fine – however the net tangible result (if you look through this thread) is that people are now using Discord for things they used to do in-game. You don’t foster and build a sense of community by removing the tools that have been used to build and manage guilds, which are the backbone of communities in WoW.

Let’s take persistent guild chat as an example: You have functionally changed guild chat from being a live conversation to being a message board where we are unable to manage the messages other than to delete them one at a time. Everything that is said now must be said with the knowledge that those words will last forever. This is a fundamental change to what guild chat was.

I realize the path here is forward, and that you are unlikely to go backwards – but, if you were intent upon making this change, the transition to it could have been handled a bit more thoughtfully – and even now, it can be improved: Why not either allow guilds to toggle persistent chat on /off, or at the very least, set a length of time to keep the history?

My personal priority: Give us back the granular permissions so that we can go back to ranks that are more meaningful and creative.

[Venjin-bronzebeard (Venjin)]

In accordance with instructions on the QA:

Also - Fix PvP.

[Druunah-ravencrest (Druunah)]

At this point, we hear alot of general feedback about “fix guild permissions,” but not as much “this is the exact specific thing that I would like to be able to do with my guild that I can no longer do.” That type of very specific feedback is what would be most helpful.

Seriously???

Hey Blizz! Go back to the “first” several HUNDRED (Perhaps even the first several thousand?) pages of this thread and you’ll find more than enough posts with EXACTLY what your looking for including my own!

Don’t make me quote me!

(I’ll do it too!)

[Mirzim-thrall]

I know that those posts have been out there. I don’t want to say that no one has done this. But for you specifically, if you’re voicing the concern that guild management tools are lacking, it would be super helpful just so we could understand the relative weighting, popularity, and demand of each of these features and what it is you miss most so we can prioritize that accordingly.

Thanks for the full transcript, not as rage-inducing as I expected from the summary.

I remember there being a fair amount of specific “my guild did X using Y permission, now we can’t” scattered through the thread, but maybe the issue is that this is a huge thread and the specifics get lost between many other posts that are unspecific.

[Holliday-lightbringer (Holliday)]

2900 posts… and they can’t figure out what we’re saying??? Jesus…

I’ll type it slow so Lore can keep up.

Revert the changes… absolutely nothing should be “bundled” as a single checkbox.

Now, we only need 2900 more posts, and 5 more expansions before they actually do something besides say “we need more feedback”.

[Grunwulf-stormrage]

Ion literally said, “there’s a lot of general feedback out there, but we need more specific feedback…”

Ohh jumping jiminy cricket…just read this entire thread for specific feedback.

I say this without an ounce of animus…I will be glad when these 2 clowns are shown the door. It is long past due.

[Fumel-arathor (Fumel)]

Don’t make me quote me!

Well, I’ve quoted you a few times, and I’ve quoted myself. It’s really not as bad as you think.

So, Ion wants specific feedback. Because, you know, the specific, detailed feedback I’ve been quoting now and again hasn’t been specific enough.

challenge accepted, Ion.

[anon70593351]

Unbundle the damn rank permissions and let us make multiple guild chat channels with the ability to give them persistent chat or not.

Boom. Guild functionality has now been exponentially expanded.

Is it REALLY that complicated?

[Fumel-arathor (Fumel)]

I now start at the beginning of this thread, looking for specific feedback.
Note: I am not a trusted user of these forums, and as such, I cannot even quote links. Thus I’ve had to break any links in anything I quote. To see the original links, hit the arrow to go to the original post.

Whose bright idea was to lump all these permissions under a single check box?

> New Permissions UI: https //i imgur com/v7WlrcH png
> Old Permissions UI: https //i imgur com/Fi55wGh png

Now to give someone access to officer chat, or give them the ability to set their own public note, I have to give them the ability to delete people’s messages, calendar events, notes, gmotd, kick people from voice chat, etc.

Thanks for taking more control away from the players…in favor for watered down solutions.

[Edit] For those not aware - you were previously able to control all these things individually, per rank.

Okay, let’s see if we can interpret this (apparently too vague) post, which just happens to be this thread’s OP.

We have links to images of the old and new permissions. Now, this post was made before the very slight revamp that gave us a couple of permissions back, but the examples still seem pretty clear to me. The old one let GMs assign permissions as they wished, the new one lumps it all under “is officer”.

As the poster points out, giving access to one permission allows access to all. None of it can be controlled individually and assigned to separate ranks. This seems like a very straightforward complaint to me. The poster wishes to create separate ranks with separate permissions.

I hate to be picky, but if anyone at Blizzard really can’t understand the specifics of the above quoted post, perhaps a CM could pass their specific questions on to us and we could explain further. Hmm?

[Tareir-arthas (Tareir)]

I appreciate the full transcript above - Thanks!!!

From that: " if you’re voicing the concern that guild management tools are lacking, it would be super helpful just so we could understand the relative weighting, popularity, and demand of each of these features and what it is you miss most so we can prioritize that accordingly"

Weighting? Popularity? Demand? What???

Why are we having to pick and choose? JUST PUT IT BACK HOW IT WAS! It was hurting nothing. Nobody, NOBODY was saying “gosh I wish I had LESS control over permissions. I’d love just a checkbox for Officer so I could get on with my day”.

Please REVERT

[Venjin-bronzebeard (Venjin)]

07/28/2018 10:34 AMPosted by Keiralynn

So the other day I sat reworking guild ranks and attempting to fix the mess and try to make the best of it all. I had to reach out to an officer, ask them to log in, and dictate who to demote, who to put notes on, etc because I was not physically able to. I spent 30 mins trying everything I could to be able to make public notes/officer notes and demotions stick. I relogged, completely exited the game, closed down the bnet app, made sure there were no updates, disabled add-ons, etc and was 100% unable to do ANYTHING I needed to do to fix things. I am assuming this is a huge bug. This is kind of scary because I lack the ability to even do what Officers can do as a GM. So really if no Officers are on to try to help me the guild effectively is able to run amok while I sit there helpless to do anything about it.

I have had to put recruiting on hold because of all this.

Beyond frustrating.

I feel a bit like Fumel now