You're right about the lines in the sand and where people stand. Forgive the example, but it seems fitting. What it boils down to a simple question: Are you a sperm donor or a father?
Is the "sperm donor" the only name on the mortgage and the deed to the house? If so you should be actively looking for a new place to live. Sure you may get to live there for a while, but even if you're paying the mortgage, you can be evicted. Are we done with dumb analogies?
I almost forgot to ask you, If guilded players can return after being gone for however long, why cant Leaders?
I'd love for my guild leader or any of the officers to come back. Unfortunately, it's been well over 5 years since any of them have been online. I doubt they're coming back any time soon if at all. The point of taking over the guild at this point would be so I could invite my alts and new members to the guild to have it actually be active again. Right now, the only person that has been online in the past 3 years is mine. The current guild leader has been offline for almost 7 years.
So I know it's been almost a month but related Tale of woe: Guild I was member of for over a decade and officer of for 2 years before I took my break had a malicious person do this process. They got leadership transferred to themselves after people were gone for a year+, removed ALL of the members who were anything above lowest rank and removed all permissions from lowest rank, can't even guild chat. Promoted the longest standing "offline" person to guildmaster, then left that character has a whopping 15.5 years offline time (A year after guild created). Meaning even if the guild members returned like me, they couldn't do anything with the guild, again, can't even chat. The reason some of my characters are still members is because (un?)fortunately they weren't all promoted to officer alts so like 5 of them got spared from the slaughter. Can't even check the guild hall to see the damage done to that place because don't have upkeep permissions. Sad time.
Yeah, this is sadly still an issue. I really wish they'd at the very least consider an escalated support issue to resolve these cases. To where they'd reach out to the remaining leadership and possible inheritors first a few times and then with no resolution there finally give someone else in the guild leadership. Or bring it up to a vote.. Because right now it's still just rough on people stuck in similar situations.
Honestly both folks are right, and it comes down to the 'founders' choice. IF: the guild is a community and not 'a person' property then yes, they have other officers in guild and if something happens, one of them can take over... IF the found feels it is 'their' property and not wanting to risk losing it, they appoint make sure no one else is able to kick the vote for leader off. Honestly if you were in a guild while leadership was active, unless some extreme event wiped everyone out at once.... as 'officers' decline, member should be raising to the existing ones, hey we need a few more active officers, just in case so someone is around/one... If at that time, the officers are like NO its ours, nobody else can have it.... then you decide, hmm maybe this isn't my home... If you weren't active while the leadership diminished/vanished then you also really aren't entitled to much, If you came back after hiatus to in a guild but with no active officers, then the guild is dead, and you are just freeloading off resources. Personally I would at that point myself just look for another guild (while only really play on skyfire I cant imagine there isn't a fully developed guild on any server with 'dead' guilds that is accepting members).... and watch/see if the old guild every has leader come back online.... But yeah the short of it is ultimately 'The Founder' made the guild, it is up to them how it is passed on.... If they appointed officers, then it can be inherited, if they kept is locked down to them only, anyone IN that guild knew it was a 'personnel' guild and wasn't going to go to anybody else and chose to stay knowing it was in somebody's house, not a shared structure.
There's 2 different extreme cases here and probably a bunch in between. 1. One set built the guild and feel they own it and may have personal contents in the guild hall. I can see this point of view. 2. Truly abandoned guild that was more a community then a single persons extended house. They might have strong nostalgia for the guild hall or name. Maybe a leadership change vote when no officers are active would lock any existing leaders, guild names and possessions to make them untouchable? That would safeguard the interests of people who really did build up a guild and allow abandoned guilds to become functional again. Some history for my situation as an example of a probable abandoned use case for those who care to read: In my case it's definitely a nostalgia thing. The guild in question was a raiding guild and we only ever kept it to 30 members max, we didn't even have alts in there. The original leader left the game and appointed another leader. I was an officer at the time. The guild eventually got so short handed we couldn't continue maybe around 2014 and we merged into another guild to continue raiding. At this point the guild was an alt guild. More people topped playing including the leader and eventually a vote was initiated while I was on a break too and there was another leaders probably 8 years ago. I've been back almost a year now and had no officer or leader active in guild. I had to move my toons to an active guild and only have one in that guild at recruit level with no one else on in a couple of years. All resources in guild boxes and depot's are open but nothing above level 100. Have no way to assign trustee's i.e. my mains. Anything in the guild bank is level 100 when we all left. There are still 4 of us scattered around various raiding guilds. Currently there are 11 toons in guild, no one above level 100, no officers at all. 5 leaders going back to the original leader, the other leaders are alts but they aren't playing anymore, at least their mains aren't or any toon I remember from those days. No way to make it an active viable guild again or even a home guild for folks. There should be some way to do a new leader vote with no active officers or leaders.
Guilds should be like housing. Owner ( leader ) doesn't log in, house ( guild ) goes poof. If/when the leader pops back in, they can reopen the guild ( add an option to leaders guild window ) or just choose to scrap it. In the meantime, noone can "steal" the guild as they will all be busy finding new ones, any guildhall items owned by members will be returned to them via mail, and the guild name can be freed up for an active player to use it for theirs.
That would be a logical thing. In my recently discovered case, my hubs and i founded a guild many many years ago. We had a great group of officers and members. We had to take breaks here and there and never had any issues..until we did. Imagine my surprise logging in to find my guild in the hands of someone else...who then demoted all my and my hubs characters and alts to standard members, and promoted her alts to officers - ensuring that when we did return we couldnt force a vote to get leadeship back. More than a decade worth of my personal items, my quested for items, my real world cash...all inaccessible with zero recourse and no help because Daybreaks "doesnt want to get involved". It's heart breaking really. I'm hoping she does the right thing but Im not holding my hand on my tail for it.
Another option I would be open to is if they let members vote a new leader, old leader/leaders keep their rank and no one is able to strip it. That way issue's like Loosie posted above would not happen. Although honestly, if there are members plural to vote, I don't understand why they don't just join to form a new guild. A few max levels doing normal things would probably level a guild quick now days. I managed to get over 10 levels on a dead guild on Test server over a few days with 1 character just with max tradeskill.
Why would they want to form a new guild if they're still active and keeping the guild going, just because the leader hasn't been around for over a year or two? If the guild is that important to the founder, how hard would it be to have to log in once a year to keep it active, especially now that the game is free to play.
Once again, knock on the founder not being active and just ignore the fact that there is guild members who could reform and level a guild rather than wait and wait and hope for a change to the style. If you want to stay in a guild without a leader, that's great, if you want to be in a guild with a leader and there are multiple players, easiest thing to do would be to form a new one. Gives you a chance to set it up the way you want to. Not have to rely on leaders being inactive. Real life stuff happens that could keep a person away from this game a while. Letting some random person steal the guild and all the time, energy, and potential real life money they put into it is not the fair or easy way to go.
Why should they have to re-level a guild and rebuild the guildhall because the founder doesn't play anymore, especially if they contributed to the guild, too? Hardly easy if you have to redo everything you've spent years on, including the guildhall that all the members helped with. If you want your own private guild, don't invite other people to it, or kick them out before you leave the game. Some random person that you invited into the guild and who has been participating in it and levelling it up and taking care of it? If taking over leadership could only be done if the leader hasn't been active in a year, what's going to keep you from logging in once a year even if you don't actively play? And if there is something going on in your life that keeps you without Internet access for a year, you've got way bigger problems to worry about than a guild. I just don't see guilds as belonging exclusively to the founder, and the longer the founder is gone and the members continue participating, the more it's their guild now.
