Considering that the ticket system is awful for going into detail and laying out arguments, I'm creating this thread. I would have preferred talking with a GM directly, but this is somewhat meant as a discussion anyway (might rather belong into General Discussion).
A bit about the Guild itself: It was a proper raiding Guild, where everyone adhered to predetermined rules (BoEs contributed by runs were reserved for the Guild Bank for members to purchase etc.). Not one of those random fun guilds you get invited to by an afk level 1 guy.
So a few days ago, in the middle of the night, the few members that were online during that time noticed that our Discord server suddenly vanished.
Since our Guild Master was online ingame, we asked him what was going on and he pretended he couldn't see it either, so we assumed it was a temporary bug.
When everyone logged in the morning after, all Guild Tabs & logs were locked shut, except for the money log. All Officers' rights were completely revoked, being unable to manage and inspect anything in the Guild (except the money log). Upon inspecting the money log, we noticed that the Guild Master withdrew everything, down to the last copper coin.
With the Guild Master being offline and no Discord to reach out to him, everyone wondered what happened.
A quick makeshift Discord Server was made, to which people were directly invited to.
This is also where one member, who happened to be online that night and was browsing the Guild Bank, told us that he saw the Guild Master take all items out of the Guild Bank before restricting access.
Ironically, we found the Gold too: Freshly listed on the market.
He even tried to get rid of the Guild's forum recruitment post. After deleting his replies to the thread, he realized that the thread itself cannot be deleted and as such just redacted the first post.
At that point most people knew what happened.
And upon confronting the Guild Master later that day about what he has done, he refused to reply and placed all members on his /ignore list, transferred the role to a fresh lvl 11 char he quickly leveled up, with whom he kicked everyone else out of the Guild, essentially disbanding it.
Of course we immediately tried to reach out to GMs and wrote tickets.
But those were either mass-denied by the same copy-pasted message of "Unfortunately, we cannot do anything about it.", without even viewing any of the screenshots (as the viewcount was still at 0) or giving any actually explanation on how this is perfectly fine. Probably worse were the replies where the Ticket hasn't even been properly read; we'd just get "If an Officer ninjas the Guild Bank, it's the Guild Master's responsibility and fault." despite multiple times stating that it's about the Guild MASTER himself, outside of the influence from any other member.
See and this is where I wish to start the actual discussion. There is no real way to use Tickets as discussion, unless a GM happens to be willing to open a Chatbox with you (assuming you happened to be online at the same time), and besides that, I'm curious on how the playerbase would judge this incident.
With how easy it is to get banned for trivial reasons such as "Disrupting Gameplay" by asking to be kicked out of an rdf group, it has been more than baffling to some of us how such a severe and blatant case is just thrown under the rug.
This is the only post I found through the search tool that somewhat relates to this specific sort of incident, everything else is usually about Officers stealing:
Spoiler:Show
If one looks past the disruption caused by secretly disbanding the Guild overnight, then there is just one accusation towards the Guild Master:
That being the theft/"ninja" of the Guild Bank:
The established rule and agreement between all Members (that includes Officers & Guild Master) was that ALL contents of the Guild Bank were meant for the Guild as a whole, for those who needed the items as upgrades. Any BoEs that dropped in a run would have to be forfeited/passed on as it would be reserved for the Guild Bank. That is the background that everyone agreed to, therefore only those with sufficient permissions could manage the bank. What people did not agree to, or rather what was not the "Loot rule", was that the items would be reserved for the Guild Master.
One member's ticket was replied to with: "Guilds are the guild masters responsibility alone. If people decide to dump items in the bank then they are essentially giving the item away."
So when dozens of people are told that they are expected to contribute (indirectly through passing on items) to the GUILD, it is their OWN FAULT for not considering that the Guild Master could at any moment just take everything for himself anyway?
If a Raid Leader/Master Looter picks up items from a boss and announces that they will be rolled for later, but then just takes everything for himself anyway without any rolling, does that mean it's the Raidmembers' fault because they agreed to the RL/Masterlooter having the items in his inventory until the rolls?
"Raids are the raid leaders responsibility alone. If people decide to leave items with the Masterlooter then they are essentially giving the item away."
Of course in reality, what follows for such a blatant act in raids is a lengthy ban, because it's the raid leader's responsibility to maintain the established rules.
As such, one would expect with a Guild Master being the one with the highest "responsibility", the one who placed the loot rules and blatantly broke them, that this too would have consequences.
But apparently "it's the Guild Master's responsibility if the Guild Master blatantly exploits the Guild under false premise". So is he supposed to /gkick himself, or how is that to be understood?
I can understand all the replies to when an Officer ninjas a Guild Bank, that nothing can be done, as this would be the Guild Master's fault for giving permissions to someone untrustworthy.
But what about this case? What if the Guild Master himself is the culprit?
To recenter the point of all this: This is not about getting the bank refunded or something dumb like that. The members care more about having been ruthlessly lied to and having been so shamelessly exploited to the point where the Culprit isn't even denying anything. That's the point of this thread. To get a discussion going, or rather to have a feedback on how something like this is perfectly fine, while ninjaing in rdf nm will net you a straight ban lol.
P.S.: Here's the screenshot of a member asking for permission to ninjaloot a guild bank in the future as Guild Master, and the Game Master giving clear green lights for it.
Spoiler:Show
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Member
Guild Master exploits Guild Members and disbands Guild overnight.
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Forum Veteran
cleaning out the bank of a guild he created/is in charge of isn't against the rules. it may be a dick move, but that won't get action taken against him.
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Member
You've trusted the wrong person with your items and gold and that's it. No action should be taken against the dude, he is a dick, but that's part of RPGs, he's role playing a dick. Now consider joining guilds that have nicer people as a leader, I was in one where he was always rude, lazy to respond or even show up for raids, there's a big red flag.
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Member
I know what you mean grobain, but there are 2 arguments I have with that statement:
1. is that only the dumb ones make it obvious that they are malicious. Our Guild Master at least pretended to be a nice-guy until he figured it was time to reel in the bounty. So how is a member supposed to protect themselves against that? Go into a Guild with the permanent paranoia that the Guild Master could at any moment reveal himself as a dick and end it all?
That brings me to the second point:
What's the point of giving bans for raid ninjas? Don't tell me "if you don't like items being reserved for the Guild Bank, don't join that Guild". That's like saying if you don't like the Master Looter system, leave the raid. No one does that. If someone ninjas DBW or something highly sought after, he's not just gonna get let off the hook with "ah damn, what a dick, oh well I shouldn't have raided with him.". You can bet your butt that the GMs will be in hot pursuit of that person.
Which is why I'd like to know how it is any different from having weeks worth of raiding spoils stolen for their own benefit?
The reason people are discouraged from ninjaing in raids is that a "custom" rule has been set in place that will punish with a hefty consequence.
The reason people are discouraged from ninjaing in guilds is that... it'll take a bit of time to build up another one?
Reputation doesn't really matter on this server. It's not like classic retail where there are 500 people per realm where everyone knows each other. It's easy to hide amongst 12k+ fluctuating players.
Whenever people complain about how bad pug raids are, they are always told "your fault, just join a guild".
But when something like this happens, then what? "your fault, just join another guild"?
As a player you literally have more security/support when playing in a pug, than being in a Guild, what.
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Member
Sad indeed, I can imagine how much of a disappointment this has been for you guys; However they are right, it was your mistake to place your trust on the wrong person. It is essential on MMO-RPG's that you get to know the people sorrounding you, there are many ways to see a red flag when you join a guild as others mentioned, and the only thing you guys can do at this point is learn from the mistake and maybe make a guild of your own. It's part of the game that this things happen and all you can do is move on, best of luck.
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