New in 4.3: Inactive Guild Leader Replacement

Originally Posted by Maklor

I'm not sure if you're an adult but if you were working you would know that can't actually take all the days at the same time.

Ofc u can. Its totally up to u and your company to work out your vacation schedule.

Originally Posted by Maklor

Sure but in the real world it's not that simple, most places it isn't possible and you can't demand it.

Not sure what awful palce you work but depending on role and employment contract our staff get between 4 and 6 weeks leave per annum, it is more common than not to take all the leave at the same time, or even put this years and part of next years back to back - I have had 5 or 6 staff in the past 12 months take more than 6 weeks leave ina single block

Sorry but in the real world this sort of thing is common, just not in your world

Another money grab by Blizzard. Scare GMs into not taking breaks, and automate this "service" so Activision can fire a few more customer service people. I don't think Blizzard understands the value of a figurehead or symbolic leader. I've built a community over the course of 6 years, and tailored it to a place people want to be. I've provided an ad free website and Ventrilo all that time to bring added value to the organization. I've got good officers, but they're good at raid leading, recruiting, website management, and other specific areas. Not all of them are fit to make the big calls on overall policy, and some have shortcomings to go with their strongpoints that would make it an outright disaster. If our temperamental raid leader was to get control of the whole kit and kaboodle, it wouldn't be long before a guild with over 125 accounts ceased to be a hospitable and recognizable environment for many of the members. Turning a 6 year old organization that's been rock steady for people on its head by ousting the founder and chief of guild philosophy is a sure way to help usher many of those accounts into cancellation, since community is what's really keeping some of these hangers on around, as WoW continues to decline due to staleness and bad corporate and developer decisions.

Originally Posted by Maklor

Again it's not the total amount of vacation I mean, it's how much of it you take at the time.

No, it's common to take around 3-4 weeks in the summer and the rest through-out the year.

I don't see where the problem is. First of all, you have the chance to take over the GM it's not auto. Also you can always make the GM back to his rank when he is back. The problem is that you could need some of the GM features, and seriously even 30 days to me seems a lot, maybe too much. My only concern about this is how will this work with alts chars or chars on other realms.

To ANYONE saying they will g-kick their entire guild if and when they decide to take a break from the guild: you are a horrible guild leader and nobody should want to be led by the likes of you anyway. You should have the decency to at least tell your guildies that you plan to do this out of selfishness. I mean how selfish can you get? To openly admit you'd rather disband your whole guild rather than allow someone else to take leadership is quite apparent of how horrible of a leader you are.

Originally Posted by Grail

If our temperamental raid leader was to get control of the whole kit and kaboodle, it wouldn't be long before a guild with over 125 accounts ceased to be a hospitable and recognizable environment for many of the members. Turning a 6 year old organization that's been rock steady for people on its head by ousting the founder and chief of guild philosophy is a sure way to help usher many of those accounts into cancellation, since community is what's really keeping some of these hangers on around, as WoW continues to decline due to staleness and bad corporate and developer decisions.

Try passing lead to someone that you know will give it back when you get back from vacation. If you can't trust anyone with that, then maybe those officers shouldn't be officers.

What happens if the 2nd in line does not take it? I'm in a guild with friends and the guild leader is away from the game for an extended period of time. It does not affect us in anyway and a few of us who know the GL in real life are officers. I don't think either of us will take control away from the GL but what happens if we do not act? Will a lower ranked member be able to take control?

Originally Posted by Grail

Another money grab by Blizzard. Scare GMs into not taking breaks, and automate this "service" so Activision can fire a few more customer service people. I don't think Blizzard understands the value of a figurehead or symbolic leader. I've built a community over the course of 6 years, and tailored it to a place people want to be. I've provided an ad free website and Ventrilo all that time to bring added value to the organization. I've got good officers, but they're good at raid leading, recruiting, website management, and other specific areas. Not all of them are fit to make the big calls on overall policy, and some have shortcomings to go with their strongpoints that would make it an outright disaster. If our temperamental raid leader was to get control of the whole kit and kaboodle, it wouldn't be long before a guild with over 125 accounts ceased to be a hospitable and recognizable environment for many of the members. Turning a 6 year old organization that's been rock steady for people on its head by ousting the founder and chief of guild philosophy is a sure way to help usher many of those accounts into cancellation, since community is what's really keeping some of these hangers on around, as WoW continues to decline due to staleness and bad corporate and developer decisions.

Don't blame Blizzard because your officers are inadequate. The system is designed to stop guild stagnating because 1 person decides to bugger off for an extended period of time and not tell anyone.
If you're a good guild leader with a good team of officers, leaving someone else in charge should be no problem. If you don't have players or friends like that you can trust, then it's time to perhaps look at permissions and ranks in your guild.

It's dead simple, if you're going to be away for more than 30 days you let your guild know. Anyone can access the internet from almost anywhere. If it's a serious guild then you should have guild forums or a method of contacting your officers outside of the game. "Oh buy what if i'm in hospital" .... Then get a grip, your guild is the last thing you should be worrying about.


Blizzard fully understand the importance of the Guild Leader. You're there to lead, set examples and manage your guild. If you can't be that person they're making it clear that the people who should be looking up to you for guidance now have a say in weather you're doing a decent job or not. If people want to be the big cheese they have to accept the responsibility of properly running the guild, a massive part of that means having proper coverage in any period of extended absence. In your example you don't trust the officers to make the "big calls" so what happens when you're afk for a month or 2? That's right nothing, nada, zilch. The guild just sits there with no one taking responsibility. The issues raised don't get delt with and when you come back you have either a shit storm to deal with or a good few guild members missing due to lack or action.


Another money grab? - Pul-ease. If you're not maintaining a on going subscription month to month as a guild leader then you don't really give a dam what happens to the guild then do you?
This will also help stop the scumbag guild "leaders" who make leveling guilds with an alt, just to log in and skim the guild bank every so often with all the money that's been dumped in it from players' doing quests.

Oh I can already see how this will be "exploited" a lot... You have a problem paying for subscription for 1 month ? = no more guild for you Greedy Blizz. But I wonder if this 30days offline counter counts the Battlenet account or the actual character?

Originally Posted by ghostprotocol

What happens if the 2nd in line does not take it? I'm in a guild with friends and the guild leader is away from the game for an extended period of time. It does not affect us in anyway and a few of us who know the GL in real life are officers. I don't think either of us will take control away from the GL but what happens if we do not act? Will a lower ranked member be able to take control?

If I read this correctly (and fix it if I'm wrong):
The system NOW - someone can be given GM even if they didn't ask for it, if someone else reported the GM afk for 30 days.
The system COMING - You only are given if you're online and agree. If you're not online or don't agree, it will be given to someone else.

---------- Post added 2011-10-01 at 05:13 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Nian

Oh I can already see how this will be "exploited" a lot... You have a problem paying for subscription for 1 month ? = no more guild for you Greedy Blizz. But I wonder if this 30days offline counter counts the Battlenet account or the actual character?

If you're not online, or have quit the game, you're no longer leading the guild. You can't lead the guild if you don't play the game. If you're not leading the guild, you shouldn't be the guild leader. How hard is that?

I've never ever posted on these forums, but with this feature incoming I really wanted to give my opinion about it.

Let me first explain my situation, i'm running a ten man raiding guild and we raid for three days per week. However we never raid the whole year, we basicly raid for some months and when we've cleared most of the content or when we feel like it's enough again, we stop playing and switch to another game for some time. Then when new content gets released, or when we simply feel like it, we get back to raiding. My raid group consists of mostly irl friends, so that's why we're capable of easily starting the raids back up again.

The periods where we stop playing usually take around longer then 30 days. So basicly what will happen now, the guildleader, officers and raiders will be inactive for 30 days and a social rank or friend of a raider who logs in after that period can simply take over the whole guild, since he's the highest rank logged in. This means that a random member that has put no effort or very little in the guild, just got a free guild. And all of the people that worked really hard building the guild up, lose everything they've worked for. Since most of the guildmembers are irl friends, we also have holidays together and most of the times these holidays take longer then 30 days. Basicly all the people I trust to take over the guild, officers and some raiders are simply inactive during the same period.

If this system launches I get forced to either kick everyone from the guild that I don't trust to take over the guild or I need to keep paying subscription, while i'm not even playing, to log in, to make sure the inactive guild doesn't move to a random raider friend or social rank, that can take over the whole guild and all it's valuable items.

As you can hopefully understand out of my story, this system does not work for our guild. I hope they really reconsider this feature.

Originally Posted by Howdyho

It's a great change, don't get me wrong. But I suspect the true agenda behind this is that now a guild master of any guild, no matter what they do and how small it is and if it's a leveling or raiding guild have to keep paying for game time if they want to keep their guild. More subscribers!

The true agenda for this is the same for the feature of BOP items being tradeable for 2 hours after aquiring them from a boss: less people using the GM Petitions.

Unfortunately, this means that GMs are going to be far less willing to assist people in the event that their guild leadership vanishes and they're unable to get a successful resolution for guild control if, say, the person who manages to become GuildLeader first completely shuts down access to the guild bank / takes the money for himself, ect.

So yanno, this will work out fine for guilds ran by responsible adults that trust each other. Not so much for guilds with antisocial/powertripping officers that were only tolerated or kept around by the guildleader because it's his cousin's kid or he thought the guy was funny.

Originally Posted by Kaeso

If this system launches I get forced to either kick everyone from the guild that I don't trust to take over the guild or I need to keep paying subscription, while i'm not even playing, to log in, to make sure the inactive guild doesn't move to a random raider friend or social rank, that can take over the whole guild and all it's valuable items.

What you seem to misunderstand is that this system has been in effect ALL ALONG. At any point, once you have been offline for 30 days, that social member had the ability to request to be made GM. That has not changed. The only difference is that is being handle in-game without the need to submit a ticket.

If you trust your social member to not attempt to take over the guild, then you have nothing to worry about, and don't need to overreact by kicking people.

People will complain about anything

Originally Posted by Ineras

It seems like a lot of people did not know that the 30 day inactive rule has been around for a while and is not just being implemented in 4.3. They are just making it more automated instead of having to put in a ticket to get the guild leadership changed over from an inactive guild master.

We certainly didnt! We moved to a new guild when our guild leader showed no interest in coming back after around 2 months. After getting the guild to lvl11 we abandoned it and started another (just got to 19). If we had known....... (guess we all missed something in a patch note sometime ago)

Originally Posted by Maklor

Sure but in the real world it's not that simple, most places it isn't possible and you can't demand it.

My free 30 days a year from being in the military would like to say Hi. Also all my use or lose days would like to say shhh be quiet.

PS: I have the power as a guild leader to empty the guild ranks completely therefore I OWN the guild. Regardless of what any of the other people want to say. If they had a part of the ownership of the guild I wouldnt be able to just kick them just for funzies.

Originally Posted by shammaz

its obviously going to get abused once active - it will cause more problems than it will solve.. its only purpose is to save people having to open a ticket to request the transfer of leadership. - save GM's time so they can deal with some noob hunter saying his wolf doesnt have stealth like the other night elf lvl 30 hunter in gnomer that has it for his cat I think having to open a ticket and having a gm investigate is more thorough buuuut i guess if one noob complains about it on forums then others will therefore a new lazy 'click to get gm' system will be implemented, blizzard really needs better solutions... for example: what if a gm is on holidays for 30 days and leaves leading the guild to his 2nd in command? he'd have to, to make sure no one else takes gm status Will the gm have to pass leadership to this 2nd in command to ensure the guild isnt passed off onto someone that has their own agenda - since they only have to click a button now.. or better yet after the rank 1 gives gm to his 2ic, what if the 2ic takes the guild for himself? Well there you go in the 20 seconds i had to think of that at 4am i've already thought of why this is stupid. and my finally my favourite part - "Inactive guild leader replacement is currently live on the PTR, but keep in mind that it may be difficult to test, as a guild leader will need to be inactive for a full 30 days before the option to transition leadership will become available." LOL so wtf can we do then. make a guild on PTR, invite some people on PTR, make ranks for this PTR guild, log out for 30 days, come back... OO my guild was taken away from this hunter that complains about his pet wolf not having stealth. Here is my suggestion: Give all hunter pets stealth and we wont need this guild replacement system, there i said what we were all thinking. good night xx

Annnnnnnnd..... BREATH! Phew, thats better isnt it? Less coffee maybe?

Joking aside, this has nothing to do with hunters and pets, or people "taking a guild for themselves". The guild doesnt "belong" to the guild leader anyway unless its his bank guild it belongs to all the members that make it work. He (or she) simply LEADS it. You cant LEAD without being there. If you lead a guild and care about it and are having to go away from WoW for a while, you would WANT to pass it over to someone else so that the guild can carry on functioning.

---------- Post added 2011-10-02 at 01:02 AM ----------

Originally Posted by fixit

Shouldn't even be an option.The guild leader owns it,just cause they want to study for uni or concentrate on a work project for 3 months,they should not lose their property.The officers should have access to all the tabs anyway if they wish to clean it out and start another guild.Even though they feel robbed of their guild achievements/history...to fkn bad,it belongs to the guild leader plain and simple.For instance if you own a house and decide to go on holiday why should your flatmates/tenants be able to claim the house.

Guild leader is like a company managing director...... He doesnt "own" the company (usually) and can be replaced by the shareholders or board of directors. His role is to LEAD the company, not to own it. The only thing the guild leader did special to create the guild is get 10 other people to sign. Its all the work BY OTHERS that MAKES the guild after that.

Hey Cassidin I believe blizzard has already answered this entire fiasco even before there was talk of this system. Put it like this. If a guild leader decides to scalp everything out of the guild bank and leave the server would blizzard ban him? The answer to that question would solve this entire hooplah about guild ownership via blizzard policy.

Originally Posted by shammaz

your missing the point man

with this new system you cant say to blizzard "hey im gona afk for 30 days, plz dont kick me", its all automated and it doesnt matter if you tell everyone or not that your going away for a month - your guild can get taken away from you regardless... there is no arrangements! unless you pass gm to an officer but again! you can be shafted

If you are a guild leader and are worried about this then either a, get new officers you can trust or b, stop being a guild leader in the first place because you are too insecure.

Hello everyone!!!