Guild Wars 2

Okay I have face palmed over this like 50 times using both of my hands my forhead is in facepalm mode today. It is just so kitten sad and funny at the same time XD.

I decided to create my own guild. Days go by and I spend money on influence points for upgrades and whatnot. Spend around 50 gold, not that much but still a large amount to set the guild off by.

Anyways since I’m the creator of the guild I thought it would be a good idea to mess around with the ranks a bit and here is when I accidentally de-ranked myself to the lowest rank of all. Now I have 0 permission in the guild all I can do is invite people and be sad…

I sent ANet a ticket I hope they will help me out with this. Please ANet help me I don’t want to lose my guild. I’ve begun to make a website to and also recruited a couple of players that want to be a part of my growing guild they like it. Please I hope I get the help I need I don’t want to be forced to lose all my guild founding privileges because of some stupid mistake of mine.

why does the guild founder not have a special icon before his rank so people can see that HE is the founder of the guild and nobody else?

There is a relatively quick fix you can run yourself:

As long as a Guild has any members, one of them will always have ‘leader’ privileges….if you check the ‘ranks’ section it should tell you how many members are ‘leaders’.

If you started out as the only leader, then when you accidentally ‘demoted’ yourself, one of the other members will have been automatically ‘promoted’ to leader in your place. From there it’s going to be a little ‘hit or miss’, but if you ask each member to check what permissions they have – one of them should find they have all the boxes ticked.

Once you know who that is you just ask them to ‘promote’ you to leader and then ‘demote’ themselves back to whatever rank they were originally – or you may be able to do that (never actually tried demoting a ‘co-leader’ before).

This does depend on whoever has the permissions currently agreeing – if they refuse to promote you back up Anet will not be able to help, they don’t get involved in guild issues like this.

Hope this helps…and good luck. Let me know how things work out for you.

:)

If it is how it’s intended to work, it’s a completely stupid feature! Obviously a guild always must have a leader and then the creator shouldn’t never been able to demote themselves.

Bbear.7830:

This does depend on whoever has the permissions currently agreeing – if they refuse to promote you back up Anet will not be able to help, they don’t get involved in guild issues like this.

This is the reason for saying that’s stupid. Because of that someone else can simply take advantage from someone else’s mistake and cause grief by taking over the guild. Not even to say what a person could be able to do when they “accidentally” earns more power over a guild, even worse is seeing the former guild leader and creator being required to ask and beg for having their power back.

If the current leader needs/wants to leave or be demoted, they should to promote someone else themselves first and then they would be able to demote themselves. Picking up someone else to be the new leader randomly is a dangerous move, there is the risk of the “supposed” new leader start to do the things mentioned above and such.

I really hope this is a bug and not intentioned, also I hope that what I said above never would happen to anyone. But well, here is the warning.

Guessing from your input you don’t know about the other way a guild leader can ‘loose’ their position Shadow.

Like you say guilds are designed so they must always have at least one leader with full permissions. There is an automated feature built in to the system to ensure this.

If there is only one leader and that player is offline for more than a fixed period – I think it’s currently 14-21 days, then the game automatically chooses another guild member and promotes them to leader rank with full permissions.

This is intended to allow guilds to still function if a sole leader leaves or is missing. This carries over to ‘personal’ guilds too…one created just to provide extra storage space for a single player…so its important to ‘check in’ on personal guilds at least once a week to avoid locking yourself out and losing access to whatever may be stored n the bank.

Where a guild has only a single member and this auto kick feature triggers, effectively that guild ceases to exist and anything in its bank is gone.

This is also the only way to ‘dissolve’ a guild, short of Anent removing one for some reason, kick all members then ‘stand down’ when your the last person in it. Guild ceases to exist.

Like I said in my first reply, Anet policy is not to get involved in anything connected with guilds that doesn’t involve an actual fault or error in the game code. The rule is…be careful and pay attention when doing anything involving your guild.

Sidebar to this is pretty obvious, never put anything you can’t afford to lose into a guild bank, Anet never ‘rolls back’ guild banks…after an accidental lock out, or if they get raided by a member/members.

The OP is in the hands of whoever currently has the leader permissions, if they are a ‘good guy’ they will restore his/her position…if not then there is nothing to be done.

I have never heard of this 14-21 day automatic choosing of another Guild member as Leader design. In fact, I belong to a Guild where the Leader is offline for months at a time, and there has never been any change in any of the ranks or positions.

Can you link the official statements backing up your claims?

Inculpatus – As far as I understand it this is covered in the Guild section of the online Manual.

Only triggers where there is a single person with full privileges and they become inactive or stand down, which may be why it never cropped up in a guild with more than one leader all having the same permissions.

I did say ‘I think its currently 14-21 days’ – may be longer or shorter. You would have to check the Manual yourself, I just gave it a quick skim read when I started playing.

There have been other similar posts on the forum discussing this – and they seem to support. Given the search facility isn’t the best, good luck finding them.

[EDIT] Found a reference on the wiki – search ‘Guild Leader’ – for some reason it won’t let me cut/paste the link here. Trigger period is between 60 and 72 days inactive.

I have read both the Online Manual https://www.guildwars2.com/en/manual/, the Extended Online Manual http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Extended_Online_Manual and the Guild page http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild in the wiki. There is no mention of what you have posted in the Manuals, and neither on the Main page or the ‘Talk’ page of the Wiki.

Furthermore, this issue has come up before over in Account Issues, and (as far as I know) was never resolved. Some Guilds have Leaders that are inactive, and can do nothing to replace them.

As I said, I would love to see some official declaration on this subject, if you can provide the links.

I did a quick search on Google and found a link to a forum post from about a year ago, which looks like the one I originally saw.

You can search the forum for it using ‘I was Guild Leader and I’m now the lowest ranking member’. Tested the forums search and it actually works!

Either read the full thread or skip to tab 4 for the happy outcome. Assuming the OP was being truthful, the system certainly seems to randomly pick a replacement from the membership active or inactive.

May be worth asking for confirmation from Gail or one of the other support team?

Leave that for you to follow up if you want.

Yes, in fact I couldn’t say so much as I didn’t create any guild neither I am leader of any. But, if really there is an “auto promote” in case of the current leader is inactive for a long time, it really would make sense, it’s just a understandable cleanup method.

However, giving away the leadership position to a random member automatically when the current leader demote themselves or something else happens… sorry but it sounds completely stupid for me. It’s like a company’s president would go out on streets and toss away a certificate that ensures the company’s ownership, whoever would get it would become the company’s owner. That’s the point I was trying to bring up. For me it simply sounds like a bad-planned and faulty system that relies on someone’s goodwill to not become evil and take over a guild that was accidentally given to them.

Again, an auto-cleanup system that removes inactive members would sound fine. But causing people to lose completely their privileges due a mistake doesn’t look good.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

As I said, I would love to see some official declaration on this subject, if you can provide the links.

Yes, I also would love to hear officially some clarification on this subject.

This from GW1 Wiki:

Automatic succession
If a guild leader has not logged in to the game for 60 days, they will be automatically demoted and replaced by the officer with earliest join date (according to the status window).

It’s possible they could of implemented this into GW2.

Bbear.7830:

If there is only one leader and that player is offline for more than a fixed period – I think it’s currently 14-21 days, then the game automatically chooses another guild member and promotes them to leader rank with full permissions.

I’m sorry, but that’s not true at all. Example: My primary guild’s leader didn’t log on for over six months at one point. She was never demoted, and she is still the only one with her rank (the highest in our guild).

There have been a number of threads where a guild leader was banned or stopped logging in and people were asking if there was a way around this. The answer was no.

Gaile Gray source
ArenaNet Support Liaison
Snip
“And it’s correct that we do not have a system for replacing guild leaders. In fact, I don’t know that we will develop that because we try to let guilds have a level of privacy and autonomy that could be impacted by someone cleverly petitioning for help (and really seeking something wrong.)”
Snip

So, if the only guild leader steps down, the game will appoint another person. If the only guild leader is banned or stops logging on, then that guild is out of luck.

The thread “Guild leadership vanished” has been moved to the Players Helping Players sub-forum as this is not a game bug.

Ok, so here is the answer I was wondering about. It just makes me “facepalm” to how bad developed this feature is. Luckily I don’t own any guild and I don’t plan to create any one at any time soon. Good luck to guild leaders out there and I hope you don’t fall by a mistake like these then.

ragin demon.9386:

This from GW1 Wiki:

Automatic succession
If a guild leader has not logged in to the game for 60 days, they will be automatically demoted and replaced by the officer with earliest join date (according to the status window).

It’s possible they could of implemented this into GW2.

But, they did not. You can’t look at the Guild Wars (One) Wiki and apply it to Guild Wars 2. Although some things are shared between the games, using another game’s wiki is just not….well, applicable.

If you read the Guild Wars 2 wiki on this subject, there is a discussion about the previous game’s policy, but nothing about it being applied to the current game. And, as you can see from Dev post, they took another stance for Guild Wars 2, as being too involved in Guild business didn’t work out.

shadow.6174:

The thread “Guild leadership vanished” has been moved to the Players Helping Players sub-forum as this is not a game bug.

Ok, so here is the answer I was wondering about. It just makes me “facepalm” to how bad developed this feature is. Luckily I don’t own any guild and I don’t plan to create any one at any time soon. Good luck to guild leaders out there and I hope you don’t fall by a mistake like these then.

Not sure what answer you got by the thread being moved to another sub-forum, but as far as I know, no automatic changes are made to Guild Leaderships positions no matter what the reason for a Guild Leader to be inactive.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Not sure what answer you got by the thread being moved to another sub-forum, but as far as I know, no automatic changes are made to Guild Leaderships positions no matter what the reason for a Guild Leader to be inactive.

I was talking about the issue in the OP, they said they lost the leader position because they accidentally demoted themselves and then someone else said that another person might have gotten the leader position. I was just wondering if it was intended feature which the position would be given away in these cases, moving the thread to here and saying “this is not a game bug” answered to what I was wondering about.

Bbear.7830:

I did a quick search on Google and found a link to a forum post from about a year ago, which looks like the one I originally saw.

You can search the forum for it using ‘I was Guild Leader and I’m now the lowest ranking member’. Tested the forums search and it actually works!

Either read the full thread or skip to tab 4 for the happy outcome. Assuming the OP was being truthful, the system certainly seems to randomly pick a replacement from the membership active or inactive.

May be worth asking for confirmation from Gail or one of the other support team?

Leave that for you to follow up if you want.

If that is the thread from Tiger Ashante in which I posted as well, then it was resolved because a friend of the inactive member (that became leader when she played with the ranks) came online and was able to contact him – so he logged back in and promoted the former guild leader Tiger again.

So, just going from memory – at the time of losing your own rank someone else will become leader (if there is one, no idea what happens if it’s a one person show), the metrics are unknown – maybe the longest member out of the highest ranking – however the system definitely did not check if that person was active recently. There would have been better alternatives in that example.

But from then on nothing would have happened if the person would have not come back.

Hey devs, could you give some highlight and official words on this subject please? :P

shadow.6174:

Hey devs, could you give some highlight and official words on this subject please? :P

The Dev response is quoted further up in this thread. No action is taken with regard to Guild Leadership by the game or Game Mods/Managers. I don’t know where people are getting the idea that anyone is automatically replaced as Leader for inaction/banning/accidental demotion. I can’t find any official sources…or any reliable source.

As I said, I belong to a Guild where the Leader has been absent for over six months. No one has taken his place.

This has happened to people before. Here is one thread about it:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/I-was-guild-leader-and-I-m-now-the-lowest-ranking-member/first

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I have never heard of this 14-21 day automatic choosing of another Guild member as Leader design. In fact, I belong to a Guild where the Leader is offline for months at a time, and there has never been any change in any of the ranks or positions.

Can you link the official statements backing up your claims?

Don’t know about Guild Wars 2, but this DID happen to me in Guild Wars 1. I went back in to help some people in my guild get some HoM points and I was no longer the guild leader, but someone else was who hardly ever logged in and wasn’t in my current GW 2 guild. I was quite perplexed.

Vayne.8563:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I have never heard of this 14-21 day automatic choosing of another Guild member as Leader design. In fact, I belong to a Guild where the Leader is offline for months at a time, and there has never been any change in any of the ranks or positions.

Can you link the official statements backing up your claims?

Don’t know about Guild Wars 2, but this DID happen to me in Guild Wars 1. I went back in to help some people in my guild get some HoM points and I was no longer the guild leader, but someone else was who hardly ever logged in and wasn’t in my current GW 2 guild. I was quite perplexed.

Yes, for Guild Wars 1 they do have an autopromotion policy
Automatic succession http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guild
“If a guild leader has not logged in to the game for 60 days, they will be automatically demoted and replaced by the officer with earliest join date (according to the status window).”

However Gaile has specifically said that in Guild Wars 2 they do not have an autopromote feature if the guild leader is absent/banned and that they don’t currently have any plans to put one in.

Gaile Gray
ArenaNet Support Liaison
Snip
“And it’s correct that we do not have a system for replacing guild leaders. In fact, I don’t know that we will develop that because we try to let guilds have a level of privacy and autonomy that could be impacted by someone cleverly petitioning for help (and really seeking something wrong.)”
Snip

I think they need to add more permissions too, like access to Guild valut / Deep cave etc being separate

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

The Dev response is quoted further up in this thread. No action is taken with regard to Guild Leadership by the game or Game Mods/Managers.

Yes I have read it up, but the quote is about autopromotion, as occured in GW ,1 when the leader is absent for a period or banned. I was talking about the question mentioned by the OP, where they accidentally demoted themselves and then people mentioned that someone else could have gotten the role. This is what I wanted to hear an official response about.

I think the bottom line is…a guild has to have a leader as long as it has more than one member, so when they accidentally demote themselves like happened here another guild member is chosen and gets auto-promoted to fill the gap.

Lesson seems to be…be careful playing around with ranks and do your best to find a person you trust to act as your ‘back up’ leader in case this happens.