Guild Leadership

[______________Chiiba]

The decisions you take today will determine the behaviour of your customers tomorrow.

IF AN ORG LOSES ITS LEADER FUNCOM SHOULD HELP. NOT SHRUG SHOULDERS FROM THE BENCH.

We have worked hard to build a decent org. It has 30 or so members ranging from lvl 6 through to lvl 140.

Everyone gets on well. Its a relaxed org focused on bringing in newbs and turning them into pro players. Lots of helping people out basically. There is nothing nicer than taking a lvl 5 agent and giving him a ql100 gun and say 'now bank that, work hard and lets see how quickly you grow into it'.

Unfortunately our leader has gone completely AWOL. Hasnt appeared in 7 weeks. We have no idea whether he is coming back.

When we petitioned we were told 'well - just make a new org'. I actually felt sorry for the ARK who was evidently embarassed at having to read off a 'policy' he had to adhere to.

That is the single most unhelpful thing anyone has said to me in AO.

Obstacles:

1. There is no MOTD in orgs - so i cant tell those offline that there is a change to org and seek X officer out.

2. There are occasional players - so i cant be sure we will get everyone.

3. There is 1.4m creds in the bank which just go 'poof' we cant transfer them.

Why is this such a difficult problem for funcom? In DAOC if the guild leader does not appear for 4 weeks then leadership automatically goes to no 2. Who then transfers back if leader re-appears.

I am stunned at the attitude FC have shown to this. Player interaction is the core of MMORPG.

As I said in the beginning, your actions today determine the behaviour of your customers tomorrow. Its ok to hold us to ransom when you are the only MMORPG in this genre out there right now. But we all know that will change.

Good luck funcom - when you fight your customers, you destroy your own aspirations.

[Destractor]

Well you can find out the names of all in the guild from the website, and send each one a message. (Would only work for small guilds) but you would still lose the bank.

(Is it just the leader who has access to the bank?)

I must say, I certain organisation types there should be ways of voting out the leader and instating a new one. There is already a voting systems so you'd think a vote of confidence would be easy enough to implement.

[Thyme]

I agree.

Something needs to be set up for this. One mil credits of hard earned money is not something anyone just wants to say goodbye to.



Bumped.

[Nyadach]

The bigger the org, the bigger the problems you get. You start an org with 6 folk you all know for a good laugh, next thing you know others come in and your up in the 20s-30s...before you know whats happened your over 200 and managing people, trying to keep people happy is a major problem, as is running around after them helping out, and looking after new people...orgs take alot of time.

A MOTD thing would be nice. Thanks to one of our guildies who has set up a bot we now have the feature...very very useful

What I personally think would be handy is more Advisors and more Veterans. Theres a cap on the number of these you can have, and as your org grows, the upper ranks are needed more and more to ease the work load off the President. The caps on this is silly, I know from our own experience that being stuck at this cap is a problem as there are times when not everyone is on, and many are out in a mission or somewhere and are having to run back to deal with signing people up.

Having a few new items on the chat system would be good too, maybe one to send a message to all Vets or to all the Advisors.

[______________Chiiba]

Funcom should take a serious look at how orgs are managed in DAOC - it is a great template all round.

[Whitesand]

We had the same problem with our org but some gm helped us! Try to ask them friendly i think they would help you too and if some ark answer your petition - ask him if he could call a gm.

[______________Chiiba]

We did petition, An ARK wouldnt do anything about it. He said he had been given rules the week before.

We were very polite. He said he had his orders...

We know Funcom can do something about it. They have chosen not to.

[Darkbane]

I suspect these rules are because in order to change org leadership, they'd want to validate that the leader really was AWOL, and at the moment the tools to make this simple don't exist. We can but hope, that tools to check this sort of thing appear along with the tools for managing refunding of items...

But, the vote idea is also good, say it needed 75% of the guild to vote to 'overthrow' a leader, with whoever initiates the vote becoming the new leader, with only advisors able to call one.

The MOTD function is much needed, and again advisors should have access.

[Whitesand]

Hmmm i would like to hear a statement from any funcom employees - i cannot belive funcom wouldn't help in this case. But if I'm wrong this would realy a bad thing. Hope Cosmik or Cz will do some statements!

[__________Holmgehirr]

Originally posted by Chiiba
Good luck funcom - when you fight your customers, you destroy your own aspirations.

... it´s their favourite sport ....

I agree to you Chiiba, orgs can´t be leader-only depend from a decent size on ... I gave guild lead away when Iknew I wouldn´t be able to even login for more than a week ... but next time I might face RL issuies that prevent me from doing so ... leaving a headless (leader-only commands) guild behind, doomed to fade away.

Set a timer on the org leaders, no activity for 4 weeks relaunches an auto-election. We will all appreciate this.

[______________Chiiba]

I received a reply from Funcom customer service.

Basically they will not help out. They say that unless the account of our leader is deleted they will not intervene.

Classic attitude of 'I am primarily here to solve my own problems, not assist you in solving yours'.

Personally, This reaffirms my desire to develop a Wookiee Bounty Hunter.

God I never thought I would see the day when I wanted to go back to Verant...

[assassimon]

If you lucky your petition is answered by one of few nice GMs and they will help you.

Else you will have to start a new guild.

Just check the AO guild page and you will see all members, send each one a tell so they can contact you to switch guild.

If you are clanner I can sponsor the guild with the 1.4mill for the guild bank.

Just send a tell to Azzazzimon when you have the new guild up and running with members.

If FC don't care about the players, the other players have to..

[______________Chiiba]

Which GM should I approach in your opinion?