Guild Wars 2

(continued)

Why this upsets me even more, is that I’ve been a loyal fan of Anet and its games for many years now. I’ve even convinced several friends who had no interest in gw2, to buy the game and join me. Now, like me, they’re upset with what has happened and being left without a leader and since no one else has high enough permissions, the guild has come to a stand still. This couldn’t have come at the worst time with Guild Missions being released and we can’t do anything as a guild until this is fixed. When and if that will happen, is anyone’s guess.
Anet support refuses to (I say refuses because I believe they can but won’t) help me resolve this matter. All I’ve got is polite, negative responses to all my pleas. It’s very disheartening. I’ve been with them from the start and have put up with many things that bug me in the game, but always tried to be positive and give them benefit of the doubt they will make things right. After this and the lack of support I’ve recieved in this matter, I’m not so sure anymore. I have no means of contacting this new guild leader myself, yet they won’t contact him on my behalf, while saying at the same time, he is the only one that can help me now! If this isn’t a catch 22, I don’t know what is. Let me ask this, who made him the guild leader? Not me! The system appointed him, so please fix it and give me my guild back I worked so hard to build over the past 6 months! If you can remove my leadership from my own guild without warning me, you can also give it back! I even send a PM to a dev and so far no response. I’m losing paitence and have decided to post this come what may.
One could argue what happened is my own fault and sure I’ll take that flak, but the punishment does not fit the crime here and something like this should have never been possible to occur in the first place. The Leader of a guild (especially the founding leader) should never, ever be removed by anything or anyone without a safety net and stern warning! Had I been aware of the danger, I wouldn’t be stuck now with a leaderless guild and be forced to wait and watch it fall apart with my hands tied, in hope this person comes back and restores my guild back to me! And what if he never comes back? How long am I supposed to wait? And what if he comes back and doesn’t want to give it back? This really is a joke, but there’s nothing funny about it.
The moral of this story is, learn from my mistake and don’t fiddle with any buttons in this game as they’re totally unforgiving. Consider carefully if it’s worth your time building a Guild in this game, when it can be so easily taken away form you! I suspect this thread will probably be locked, deleted, or go unnoticed. I hope not, I don’t know where else to turn to and I’m only expressing what happened and to warn others. I only wish I had such a warning before this happened to me. Most of all, I hope someone in the company has a change of heart and decides to address and resolve this issue before my guild dies completely and they forever lose me as a fan.
Thanks for reading this far and please, feel free to discuss. Just take it easy on me, I’m feeling distressed enough as it is.

TL;DR I was guild leader of my own guild and on suggestion by one of my officers, I went to create some fun titles for our members. I wasn’t aware doing this would remove me as the guild leader and demote me to the lowest member in my guild. There was no warning of any kind that this wold happen and my guild is now leaderless. The system defaulted leadership to an inactive member, who hasn’t logged in for at least 2 months and I have no means of contacting him.
Support can’t/won’t help me resolve this matter.

there a tldr version?

That’s . . . an interesting problem.

I’d say the moral isn’t “don’t fiddle with stuff” it’s “double check your work”. The Bank/Bag tab problem, some other things that don’t ask for confirmation, in general the moral of all these problems hitting people is: pay closer attention to what you’re doing.

It’s your own doing, your own fault, and while I take my hat off in sympathy . . . the lesson is not that things are badly designed (and even if you can successfully make the case they are) it is more that you should ‘measure twice, cut once’ as the old adage goes. Double check before you do something you might not be able to undo.

I actually find it fascinating that Anet can’t/won’t help with this… Seems like giving you back the previous rank you had (seeing as how it was the guild leader) would be pretty easy to do. They have record of that I am sure.

That being said, a guild is really a group of friends, and you can always remake. Yes you lose all the work you put into it so far, but the important thing is the people.

I would keep pushing Anet, I am sure eventually they will help if you petition enough. I am a lowly officer rank in my guild, and I had no idea a leader could assign themselves a lower rank, thereby tossing the actual leader rank to someone else…. pretty crazy.

Guild leader made a new title with no permissions and put himself in that group without understanding the consequences. Now an inactive member is the guild leader and support can’t/won’t intervene.

TLDR: He is a guild leader and changed his title for the lols thinking it is just a cool tag. He did not realise it changed his rank in the guild and made him step down to the lowest ranking member, passing somehow the leadership to an inactive random. He is now asking why is there no warning before accepting such action.

Guild titles and privileges are not something to play with without thinking, as they include guild leadership privileges too.
Leadership hasn’t been “taken away” from you, you removed it yourself because you did a mistake when changing privileges.
I realize you are upset but you need to file a ticket to ANet and see if they can reverse your mistake.
Thread will prolly be locked soon, there was no reason to make it as it is your mistake not a problem of the game to it must be solved through support tickets.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

That’s . . . an interesting problem.

I’d say the moral isn’t “don’t fiddle with stuff” it’s “double check your work”. The Bank/Bag tab problem, some other things that don’t ask for confirmation, in general the moral of all these problems hitting people is: pay closer attention to what you’re doing.

It’s your own doing, your own fault, and while I take my hat off in sympathy . . . the lesson is not that things are badly designed (and even if you can successfully make the case they are) it is more that you should ‘measure twice, cut once’ as the old adage goes. Double check before you do something you might not be able to undo.

Its hard to measure something when there’s no indication of what will happen. Other than maybe reading about someone else doing the same thing, nothing in the game indicates or warns that something like this can happen just for changing a title (at least nothing does based on the posts here, I don’t know myself because I have never and will never run a guild). And no reason to suspect it’d happen either, really. A guild leader should be more than just a title that can be instantly swept away by a single action, one would think.

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

Guild titles and privileges are not something to play with without thinking, as they include guild leadership privileges too.
Leadership hasn’t been “taken away” from you, you removed it yourself because you did a mistake when changing privileges.
I realize you are upset but you need to file a ticket to ANet and see if they can reverse your mistake.
Thread will prolly be locked soon, there was no reason to make it as it is your mistake not a problem of the game to it must be solved through support tickets.

Yea i guess my post is too long and u probably didn’t read it fully but i have submitted support ticket, why else would i say support refused to help? And when people say its my fault, I think anet has to take at least partial responsibility for not putting some safety net in here before making such a dramatic changes. Nothing told me this change of title would alter my guild leader status.

Hantu.2815:

TLDR: He is a guild leader and changed his title for the lols thinking it is just a cool tag. He did not realise it changed his rank in the guild and made him step down to the lowest ranking member, passing somehow the leadership to an inactive random. He is now asking why is there no warning before accepting such action.

doh that sucks; maybe ask support again?

I’m sorry…

I hope ANet stop being such a mobile phone support kind of guys and assist you with your issue

this could have been solved by “editing” your current rank rather than “creating” a new one.

that said, I’m sorry for your misfortune… on a positive note you have gone through a learning experience. A couple things you can learn from this… always have a back up leader you can trust, don’t fiddle with things without getting a contingency in place… and research changes before making them.

Poledo.3256:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

That’s . . . an interesting problem.

I’d say the moral isn’t “don’t fiddle with stuff” it’s “double check your work”. The Bank/Bag tab problem, some other things that don’t ask for confirmation, in general the moral of all these problems hitting people is: pay closer attention to what you’re doing.

It’s your own doing, your own fault, and while I take my hat off in sympathy . . . the lesson is not that things are badly designed (and even if you can successfully make the case they are) it is more that you should ‘measure twice, cut once’ as the old adage goes. Double check before you do something you might not be able to undo.

Come on I have to press an OK box to break down a green item and there is no confirmation box for changing guild leadership?

I wouldn’t know personally? I don’t lead a guild so I have to go on what others tell me. I actually think there’s too much “are you sure?” prompts with no way of turning them off (“Do not warn me again”).

Maybe I’m a little harsh about it because I grew up with computer programs that didn’t always ask for confirmation if I happened to slip and type “format c:” instead of “format d:”. Just as a very significant example . . . there are lesser ones. I can appreciate safeguards now, but I still wound up learning the hard way to always doublecheck what you’re about to do.

This is a common problem throughout the game. The interface really needs a LOT of work, sometimes it seems that the greatest challenge in GW2 is the interface itself. Half the time you have no idea what’s going to happen. That’s fine for puzzles but the interface shouldn’t be a puzzle.

OMG, that’s sucks.
I agree the UI needs a lot of work. There are a lot of ways to mess up in this game and no way to fix them (I bought the wrong karma item by mistake and got stuck with a 42k karma loss) Anet needs to fix stuff like this ASAP. But as always we get so some lame “I can’t help you” response.

That…sucks bad.

I’m surprised they won’t help you. That seems ridiculous.
Good job making it public. I would also keep sending support tickets, mailing GMs, and watching for that guy to come back.

I’m assuming that the “random” person who got the leadership spot was the first person you invited to the guild.

You have my regrets.

Thanks guys, I’ll keep trying with the support.
I’ve also sent a forum message to the member in question in hope he had email notification enabled for when he gets a message but since I haven’t received any rely from him I guess he hasn’t enabled that option. I also left him an in-game mail in case he comes when i’m not there, but I don’t think he’s been on since Xmas and I have no idea when and if he’ll come on.
I would actually like to know how long he can remain a leader if he’s inactive? It simply don’t make sense the leadership was given to an inactive member as opposed to an active one or even an officer. It all seems wrong somehow.

I think it’s really awful this happened. As another poster pointed out, you have to confirm to salvage a green, but you don’t have to confirm to give up leadership of an entire guild?

I’m really sorry OP. I don’t have any ideas other than to beg and plead with Anet to make this right. Their inflexibility is puzzling. And disappointing.

A thought . . . we had the revelation some time back that ANet wasn’t able to rollback characters. Maybe the responses are because they actually can’t fix it?

Folk.2093:

there a tldr version?

I just want a version where he uses the enter and tab keys.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

A thought . . . we had the revelation some time back that ANet wasn’t able to rollback characters. Maybe the responses are because they actually can’t fix it?

I submitted a support ticket within half an hour of this happening and roll back was the first thing I requested/suggested. They said that a roll back would not fix this issue and reinstate my rank therefore they won’t be doing that. /sad face.

Really starting to get disgusted with how Anet seems to treat support as just another facade that makes them look important to potential customers.

I’ll bet that if someone has trouble buying gemstones, the response lightning fast with impeccable service though.

I’ve seen a guild lose it’s leader to a ban and then left completely without a leader. I have also seen a recent thread started where someone accidentally salvaged their legendary GS.
I would hope that Anet has the ability to rollback an account, whether they admit it or not. It would not be in their best interest to admit to it since it could be abused.
Your case is quite legitimate even if it was ‘user’ error that caused the issue. The result effects more than one player and the new leader is inactive.
Continue to communicate with support and hopefully something productive can be done.

I feel your pain, and know how much of a blow it is. All that work. I began a guild and worked hard to grow it, eventually everyone was inactive but me, and I still built and built. Eventually I just gave up and left it to someone else.

Better to be in a guild by myself and not be reminded of how many people no longer log in. I purge my friends list of inactives too, It just is too sad.

Even sadder to still want your guild, but by accident to give it to someone due to a really buggered guild leadership interface. At least in gw1 if you were inactive for 3 months you could not be guild leader.

My heartfelt sympathy to you.

Neural.1824:

Really starting to get disgusted with how Anet seems to treat support as just another facade that makes them look important to potential customers.

I’ll bet that if someone has trouble buying gemstones, the response lightning fast with impeccable service though.

I agree…as someone who drifts wide and far on the Internet i can tell you Anet’s reputation is not good, in fact amongst other games and game companies Anet is considered “a bit of a joke”.

Robbyx.1284:

Neural.1824:

Really starting to get disgusted with how Anet seems to treat support as just another facade that makes them look important to potential customers.

I’ll bet that if someone has trouble buying gemstones, the response lightning fast with impeccable service though.

I agree…as someone who drifts wide and far on the Internet i can tell you Anet’s reputation is not good, in fact amongst other games and game companies Anet is considered “a bit of a joke”.

So are a lot of other companies. Like, all of them. Even Mojang.

Nothing positive to contribute except: good luck, I hope ANet helps you out of this mess.

My condolences.

Can’t really say more. I’m already up to my neck with infractions hehe.

The only solution is if you’re able to rally your guild to spam send support tickets to their customer service. As a single person, they’re going to dismiss you, possible fraud case etc etc. In which case they’d be too lazy to check beforehand.

Perhaps with numbers, it might budge them a little.

There are always extraordinary exceptions to the rule. Hard kitten toe liners will never be able to see it. I hope you get the help you need.

I’m really blown away that Anet wont help with that. Its pretty surprising to me for sure. Any other company would have gotten that worked out within minutes of the ticket being answered by a GM.

That’s a shame.

Problem solving at it’s best,

Solution: Make a new guild and re-invite friends

it cost one silver to make, but influence lost sucks but now you know not to mess around with your own rank.

WoW thats a long post Tiger. My sincere condolences and I really hope Support can/will help you.

SHORT VERSION
I’m the player that requested my guild leader to make some new ranks, so I feel really bad about this. The Idea was to theme the ranks, new member (Mortal), Standard Member (Ascended), Officers (themed ranks) and Leader (godess)

WHAT HAPPEND
Tiger Ashante.1792 the Guild founder/leader of Guardians Of Divinity [GOD] created a new rank and placed herself into the new rank without realising she had to add all permissions. By default a guild member, DancinWookie.5246, whome has not played for months is the new leader and can’t be contacted to re-enstate Tiger Ashante.1792 role as guild leader. Basically making the guild HEADLESS and if it can’t be rectified will render the guild permanently disfunctional.

FIX Request to ANET support
1. Ingame GM tool (if such a tool exists) re-enstate the guild leader; or
2. Email DancinWookie.5246 on our behalf and ask him to log in if at all possible; or
3. Request a DEV to look into fixing the issue. ( change a value in the file data base for the Guild : Guardians Of Divinity giving Tiger Anshante.1792 All Permissions.

Patch Request for Guilds UI
1. Guild Founder can-not be Kicked or Demoted by other guild leaders
2. Guild Founder/leader can not be Demote them self without Warning: “Are you sure” cheak box.
3. Default Leadership goes to Most active/Highest ranked Member
4. In game members roster “last active timer” so you can see how long ago some one in the guild last logged in.

just highlights how truly awful and lacking the guild ui is after all this time. hasnt been changed at all since release, lacks indepth permissions and basic features like “last logged in” or “notes” for each member.

Just an idea, and I’m sorry if this was already nixed, but -

Do you guys have a guild website? Did this “new Leader” sign up on it? Maybe you can find his email or PM him (which would hopefully send him an email containing the urgent message).

I hope this idea can help you…but if not, I’m really sorry this happened.

I’m sorry this happened to you, I don’t have any suggestions other that what people have already said, but just want to express that I think this is very poor design that this was allowed to happen in this way. I do feel that Anet should fix this for you and then make changes to give warnings in future so it doesn’t happen again. Good luck, I really hope it gets sorted for you, I can imagine how this must feel.

Sad news indeed.

As a programmer myself I find it insanely unbelievable that Anet do not have the Dev Tools / functions / code in place to arbitrarily change your status flags within your guild.

I hope they change their mind and decide to help you rectify your error.

If there’s anything that would need a failsafe lock, it’s definitely guild leadership. It is oddly easy to accidentally give up control.

Demondim.7046:

Sad news indeed.

As a programmer myself I find it insanely unbelievable that Anet do not have the Dev Tools / functions / code in place to arbitrarily change your status flags within your guild.

I hope they change their mind and decide to help you rectify your error.

Thanks for your understanding and yes, I believe same as you. Although support initially told me they have no ‘external tools’ to amend ranks once someone has been made a guild leader, i believe they do have ‘internal tools’ to make the changes. After all, it’s their game, they designed it and they have access to everything, but ofc that requires the will for them to do it.

Harro.6391:

WoW thats a long post Tiger. My sincere condolences and I really hope Support can/will help you.

SHORT VERSION
I’m the player that requested my guild leader to make some new ranks, so I feel really bad about this. The Idea was to theme the ranks, new member (Mortal), Standard Member (Ascended), Officers (themed ranks) and Leader (godess)

WHAT HAPPEND
Tiger Ashante.1792 the Guild founder/leader of Guardians Of Divinity [GOD] created a new rank and placed herself into the new rank without realising she had to add all permissions. By default a guild member, DancinWookie.5246, whome has not played for months is the new leader and can’t be contacted to re-enstate Tiger Ashante.1792 role as guild leader. Basically making the guild HEADLESS and if it can’t be rectified will render the guild permanently disfunctional.

FIX Request to ANET support
1. Ingame GM tool (if such a tool exists) re-enstate the guild leader; or
2. Email DancinWookie.5246 on our behalf and ask him to log in if at all possible; or
3. Request a DEV to look into fixing the issue. ( change a value in the file data base for the Guild : Guardians Of Divinity giving Tiger Anshante.1792 All Permissions.

Patch Request for Guilds UI
1. Guild Founder can-not be Kicked or Demoted by other guild leaders
2. Guild Founder/leader can not be Demote them self without Warning: “Are you sure” cheak box.
3. Default Leadership goes to Most active/Highest ranked Member
4. In game members roster “last active timer” so you can see how long ago some one in the guild last logged in.

Hey Harro thanks for your input. Great post! Yeah sorry about my long post, I’m not good at summarizing things, but lets hope the devs take note before it happens to someone else.
The funny thing is, had I discovered this flaw during beta, I would have been praised for reveling such a fundamental flaw in the guild design, instead, I feel like I’m being penalized for it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/ArenaNet-Communication-and-3rd-Party-Sites

maybe post something on this website, seems they pay more attention to it.

sorry to hear whats happened, maybe something good will come out of this….. getting your guild back and giving gw2 player a confidence boost towards anet support…

Demondim.7046:

Sad news indeed.

As a programmer myself I find it insanely unbelievable that Anet do not have the Dev Tools / functions / code in place to arbitrarily change your status flags within your guild.

I hope they change their mind and decide to help you rectify your error.

My guess would have been human error, reading the text fast “ah, again the rank edit thing” overlooking the part that an inactive member has been made leader instead.
I am not surprised that they won’t contact any customer on another customers behalf.
It’s even understandable that they are not getting involved in internal guild issues – but this is not a guild issue. The issue is how the system decided the successor. If the system would have decided on the next highest rank being online – that would have been Harro (yes, I’m in the guild as well) and we would have had a laugh at it.

Anyways, not losing faith just yet

That does suck. I want to say in other games you had to assign a new guild leader before it would let you move down.. not sure why that would not happen here to prevent this

why didn’t you just edit the rank of guild leader rather than create an entirely separate rank?

I feel your pain, our guild leader had a refund on release and now none of us have leadership over our guild (though officers)… we can’t change the emblem or anything.

Leader decided to ticket arena net asking if they could transfer leader to me, and they just replied with “this is not possible as we have no system in place to manage guilds”

What company cannot do that?

Its incompetence at its best.

That sucks. Anet “should” have some kind of way to keep track of that. I’d be honestly shocked if they don’t despite what they say. Have to remember to let my better half know this when she is fiddling with things. Just in case.

Even though the game runs beautifully when at it’s best and is one of the best experiences I’ve had with games, I have to agree with the condition of the fundamental UI framework. It seems like the game was made before the UI, which is just an exaggeration but fits the situation. And the support is minimal at best. Every problem I’ve had with the game, I’ve had to workout myself or wait until a patch is released to fix it.
An example of the UI shortcomings is in the launcher. Having to modify the game’s .exe by adding -repair to the “Start In” field in the properties is pretty sloppy, when there should just be a check box on the launcher.
I think the absence of an alert pop-up in the Guild leader UI, is completely their responsibility. It’s not as if you had a detailed User Manual to know this. I miss those thick user manuals that used to come with games. But this is the world in which we now live. Less for more.

Really sorry for your loss OP. But don’t lose hope, you can always make a new guild if you won’t get your leadership title back. I know that it’s hard and off-putting to do the work all over again. So I can just say this:

I was once in a guild full of people, we worked our kitten off till we got level 4 in almost every upgrade but everybody left. I rebuilt the guild again and left. So I almost gave up in making the guild. I almost lost hope. But, I remembered that I have good friends in the game, so I made a new guild called the Billy Boys. I invited a few of my friends and it started out small. We’ve had problems in recruiting but we worked our kitten off again for 3 months till we got our level 3 upgrades. And during the course of those months, I’ve made new friends and met plenty of people, I gained their loyalty through hard work. Despite having shortcomings such as guild members leaving, it doesn’t matter. I still have my friends in the guild. One of my friends is my brother (Thanks so much bro).

Anyways, what I am trying to say is, no matter what happens, just keep doing things until you get what you are aiming for.

Also, I wanted to have a huge kitten guild, but instead, I got a small guild. Although that small guild has alot of my friends in it.

:D Anyways, have fun OP, and hope for the best and remember, if all else fails, make a new one. Hard at first but worth it!

Well I would expect my guild leader to be a leader and not make simple mistakes such as this, YOUR IN TIME OUT!

Really though sucks that support is being stupid about things like this, one area gw2 sucks is helping people with legit issues.

Namu.5712:

Well I would expect my guild leader to be a leader and not make simple mistakes such as this, YOUR IN TIME OUT!

But how are we supposed to know that making a change like that has such far reaching results? Good interface design doesn’t allow mistakes like this to occur without, at the very least, asking for confirmation.