New in 4.3: Inactive Guild Leader Replacement
Originally Posted by Lylirra (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
In the event that a guild leader takes a leave of absence and remains inactive for an extended period of time, it can be difficult for some guilds to carry on as normal. To help assist with these situations, we're introducing a new system in patch 4.3 known as "inactive guild leader replacement" that will allow players of the appropriate rank to take over leadership of a guild from an inactive guild leader via the Guild tab.

The way inactive guild leader replacement works is pretty straightforward. If a guild leader’s character is inactive for 30 days, a notification will appear in the Guild News & Events feed which can only be seen by guild members who are eligible to become the new guild leader. To determine eligibility, the game will look for the highest ranked character in the guild that's logged on in the past week, and any guild member from that rank will be able to request guild leadership simply by clicking on the notification.

As with many actions in World of Warcraft, clicking on the notification will open up a confirmation window which, once accepted, will transition leadership from the inactive guild leader to the first player to request leadership. If guild leadership is changed, the old guild leader will be notified via email to his or her registered Battle.net address. While some players may need to log out and back in before their Guild tab will visually update, the change in leadership will be immediate, with all ranks and permissions remaining in-tact.

Please note that if you're an active leader of a guild, this system should not affect you or your guild. The goal of inactive guild leader replacement is simply to allow guilds which have found themselves without leadership for a long period of time to resolve the situation on their own without the need to contact our In-Game Support department.

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.
This article was originally published in forum thread: New in 4.3: Inactive Guild Leader Replacement started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 195 Comments
  1. jayremy's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Mammoths View Post
    Because shit for brains a house is your property, but a guild is a club and the gm is the club president. The president may have started the group and organized it for a few years, but the club members got the gold did the raids got the achievements not solely the gm so stfu asswipe.


    Infracted.
    By joining a guild, not leading it, you already got what you joined for, if you don't like the fact the GL is gone then leave. Club President does not equal a guild leader, you don't have meetings and "official" business to do, scheduling anything is simple in game, and you can raid and function without consent to do things like a President position would.

    Often is why you implement a VP as well, VPs take over in absence but they are never the President unless they are gone for good.


    I don't think its right to make it convenient to snatch a guild up, from somebody who put a crapload of work into starting something they can show ass theirs and feel proud of, but hell they ever need to take a brake its gone. I don't agree with what has existed, so stop pointing it out nor do I support the change, not for my sake at all but for others.
  1. Pally power's Avatar
    One way that I could see this feature being defeated would be if the Guild Master created a couple of buffer ranks just below the Guild Master rank. As Blizzard will probably only allow the next highest ranked players, maybe even one rank below that, to call for a coup a simple buffer rank or two between Guild Master and all other ranks could make this feature useless.


    Second, I think that otherwise the takeover of leadership should require that the players of the highest rank(s) vote on their new leader, as with a simple "click to get Gild Bankz" any old butthole who simply had their rank to carry out their duties could claim the guild and steal everything.
  1. jayremy's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by merv View Post
    To all the people that think they own anything in the world of warcraft, read your TOS.

    To all the people that think 30 days is too short, you aren't there so how would you know?

    To everyone else, it's about time sone thing like this got implemented. I just hope it is the first step towards more guild changes that will eventually eleminate the idea of a single guild master.
    Not ever guild is the same or formed the same.

    I think it should be up to the guild's creators to design its course, not the Devs to structure it to be the same for everybody. Yes multi/group guild leader systems would be fun and appropriate but that is for guilds who are founded in a commune fashion or by a group of people not just one, wanting equal "power" or status. People should be entitled to have their guilds the way they want, whether its group run or individually run.
  1. Prod's Avatar
    The biggest concern I see here is how the request to transfer leadership is first come first serve. I'm sure there are guilds out there who have equally high ranked officers but are on each other's throats if it wasn't for the guild leader stepping in between them. Or in one of my previous guilds, we had an officer that was as closely trusted as any of our other officers, and thus had no reason for any suspicion. But then, he suddenly had a server transfer without letting us know. The only way our guild leader realized it is because all the guild bank rares have been ninja'd. I can imagine how some officer could just "steal" a guild because he has that "I'm not gonna see any of you aholes anymore" mentality.
  1. Shaede's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by jayremy View Post
    By joining a guild, not leading it, you already got what you joined for, if you don't like the fact the GL is gone then leave.
    Obviously the people who make the game disagree with you. Where's your argument exactly?

    ---------- Post added 2011-09-30 at 11:13 PM ----------

    You don't own anything in this game, you do realize that right? I hope so. I hope you don't think just because you formed a guild that you own everyone in it and that they have to abide by your every command or something ridiculous like that. If you are going to C O M M I T yourself to building a GUILD and then plan to abandon it/them because you want to take a break or you're tired of playing, then don't have the nerve to say it isn't fair that someone else gets to take control. Nothing in this entire world runs that way, and to think otherwise is absurd. And again with the entitlement..you as a player are not entitled to anything except being able to log on. There is no argument. Guild leaders can design their guild's course. What guild leaders (and most do) need to realize that when you are a leader you have made a commitment to other people. If you aren't willing to commit then don't build a guild, it's that simple.By the way, before anyone argues more over this...This feature is nothing new. All they are doing is implementing a system that does the leadership exchange for them, so that they don't have to manually do it.
  1. Rafy's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Pally power View Post
    One way that I could see this feature being defeated would be if the Guild Master created a couple of buffer ranks just below the Guild Master rank. As Blizzard will probably only allow the next highest ranked players, maybe even one rank below that, to call for a coup a simple buffer rank or two between Guild Master and all other ranks could make this feature useless.
    you clearly need to read the blue post again...
    if you read the post while awake, with your face out of your WoW game, you can see that they say:
    "To determine eligibility, the game will look for the highest ranked character in the guild that's logged on in the past week, and any guild member from that rank will be able to request guild leadership simply by clicking on the notification."
  1. Adrim's Avatar
    The intention?

    That guilds remain active and populated.

    The actual result?

    Everyone in a level 25 guild gets gkicked because the GM wants to keep the name and is too worried about losing it.

    Blizzard basically enacts a policy that gives every GM out there an incentive to mass kick everyone from their guild if there's even a slight chance they think they might be gone a little too long. Suddenly on every server there's entire waves of people that now have to start the Guild rep grind all over again.

    This is the worst possible implementation of a solution to a problem that didn't even exist. It's a solution designed by an idiots, encouraging people to act like idiots, and only found at all a good idea by other idiots.
  1. Brazen's Avatar
    Guilds do not only belong to the GM. A lot of people put work into these things to make them what they are. I personally have had a GM of mine tell me "Oh, it's just a few weeks," only to find out 4 weeks later he had no intention of returning to us, and had created characters to play elsewhere. If you are gone 30 days, and the people you play with know why, and respect you, you are fine. If you aren't able to return, or just have no intention of doing so, the reigns are handed to someone else. I don't see the issue here. If a GM kicks everyone out because he's going to be offline a while, then he's a crappy GM to start with, and you are probably going to want to find a new guild.
  1. Pulse000's Avatar
    Ive been taking a break from WoW for a few months now, and plan to come back eventually, but not just yet. I have a personal guild used solely to store my own stuff in guild bank. I dont know how many random people's alts or strangers left over from signing the charter are still in the guild. So now I'm going to have to re-subscribe to WoW just to prevent my stuff from being stolen? Great.
  1. Zechs-cenarius's Avatar
    Dumb system...Just 100% certain now that I will gkick everyone from my guild before I leave on deployments.
  1. Slummish's Avatar
    The point we're all overlooking is: WoW's leadership playerbase has declined to the point of Blizzard needing to implement a tool such as this. Sad times...
  1. VenomousCarnage's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by merv View Post
    To all the people that think they own anything in the world of warcraft, read your TOS.

    To all the people that think 30 days is too short, you aren't there so how would you know?

    To everyone else, it's about time sone thing like this got implemented. I just hope it is the first step towards more guild changes that will eventually eleminate the idea of a single guild master.
    ^this all this.

    Anyone who thinks they own a guild needs a reality check. Get off your high horse, if you leave for over a month and still expect to be big cheese you would be wrong. Make a guild, expect responsibilities in running it. Leaving for a month when leading a larger guild is irresponsible. I am very happy this system is being implemented. Too many wow players need to grow up and take responsibility.
  1. VenomousCarnage's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Jdman View Post
    Catering to casuals again
    how is this catering to casuals? If someone is gone for a month they are not hardcore. If they only play when raids are new, they need to find a new way to get some self esteem.
  1. xenoz's Avatar
    Remind me to kick everyone out of my banking guild.
    Dat loot dies with me.
  1. FearGX's Avatar
    I'm not a guild leader but I'm not a fan of this change / new feature.
  1. Chrysia's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by shammaz View Post
    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
    It's really simple, if you distrust your officers, have a rank immediately below GM with the ones you DO trust. As long as they log in weekly, that will be the rank that gets the option to take over the guild, rather than anyone you suspect might take advantage of it.

    If you trust none of your officers, you are a bad GM, plain and simple.
  1. lolipopp's Avatar
    LOL very stupid idea that is going to be abused A LOT !!!
  1. simsy1991's Avatar
    30 days is too short. My computer died one day and i couldnt afford to fix it for 3 months. I dont wana loose my guild.
  1. Kuja's Avatar
    Hmm.. More reasons for players to keep subbed to the game. No login in 30 days, no guild for j00. Shame on you blizzard Not that I'm against it. My alt is in a decent guild too but none of the officers or leader has logged in... in like 4 months?
  1. Rudolpho's Avatar
    As the GM of my guild, I approve. If I were going to be gone for that long, I would pass leadership anyway. The biggest problem for me is that I did not know about this rule sooner...I have a bank alt guild with randomly invited people in it and have spent more than 30 days without logging on him before. I'm just going to have to kick everyone out of that guild now so no one can steal my stuff.

    I'm just glad no one has petitioned to take it before now. I actually logged on it about a week ago so I am safe now, but I am willing to bet the most problems will come between now and about a week from now as people that did not know this rule start using it to steal bank alt with random invite guilds.

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