Guild converted to Free-to-Play, help me understand what happened

[CloudCastle]

I've tried to Google this, but I'm having trouble finding good info.

 

I have some alt characters that have been "holding" onto a very old guild for many years, one on the Empire side and one on the Republic. Pretty much all the members had left the game as regular players except me, but every now and then one or two people would log on. I'd been pretty much holding the guild out of courtesy, since this guild exists in multiple games under the same name, and so I felt like the right thing to do was to hold onto the guild, its assets, and name, in the event it ever got revived.

 

Since the characters in the guild were just alts, I sometimes would go over 30 days without playing them, and the leadership would transfer. There's basically two other people who would occasionally play, and over the years, guild leadership has bounced around between the three of us. Not a big deal. The guild is small and all of us were officers anyway.

 

I haven't been playing much this past year, and today I logged to check on one of the guilds to find that it had been converted to a Free-to-Play guild. The odd part though is that all my characters who were in it are automatically lowered from officer to recruit as soon as I log on. I can see this on the guild panel. An alt I am not currently logged into will be listed as officer, but as soon as I log into them, they convert to recruit.

 

I am a subscriber. I assume what happened is that guild leadership transferred and this time, the person it went to was Free-to-Play. But why am all my officers turning into recruits? We set everyone as officer to facilitate management of the guild between us, no matter who was logged on or guildleader at the time.

 

Is it a normal procedure for all members of the guild to become recruits again when it converts to Free-to-Play?

[xordevoreaux]

Any player-created ranks revert to default ranks when a guild reverts from a subscriber's leadership to a FTP's leadership and cannot be recreated until the guild's leader is once again a subscriber.

 

There are other restrictions as well but I don't know what.

[CloudCastle]

So "officer" was actually a rank created when the guild was first formed and not a game title? So the only way it can be restored is if the current guild leader becomes a subscriber, recreates it and then reinstates everyone again?

[Khaleg]

And that is exactly what happens in this case as I said a while back when I had a fruitless discussion here in the forums with some "know it all" but actually "know nothing at all" guys. The leadership is NOT given to a subscriber in case the leader goes ftp as they stubbonly claimed over and over while I knew it better from own experience.

Instead the leadership stays and the guild is being reset to ftp including the default ranks. Thanks for the confirmation and sorry it happend to you.

Nobody else except for the current leader wil/can help you here. Bioware will not interfere in this automated game mechanic. He has to give the leadership to you or another subscriber to make it a subscriber guild again. I don't actually know if the ranks will be restored in this case or have to be defined from scratch. I hope this helps.

Edited June 9, 2018 by Khaleg

[PennyAnn]

So "officer" was actually a rank created when the guild was first formed and not a game title? So the only way it can be restored is if the current guild leader becomes a subscriber, recreates it and then reinstates everyone again?

 

I believe the default ranks are:

Guild Leader

Officer

Lieutenant

Member

Recruit

 

So, Officer is a default rank, and if all ranks in your guild are what is listed above, they were never changed. It sounds like the game is auto-demoting you, and that may also be part of the guild going free-to-play (I am uncertain how this works honestly). But I believe the issues can be fixed by either promoting someone who IS a subscriber to the GM position (which would require your F2P Guild Leader to log in and pass leadership to a subscriber), or that person activating their sub again and handing it off to another subscriber.

 

.

[Everrgreen]

If the log-on's continue as they had and you log in within the 28 day limit, then eventually your toon will become leader again and the guild will no longer be ftp. I'm a sub and this is what happened with a nearly dead guild I have a toon in.

[Nightblazer]

Thia is what happened here.

[Khaleg]

If the log-on's continue as they had and you log in within the 28 day limit, then eventually your toon will become leader again and the guild will no longer be ftp. I'm a sub and this is what happened with a nearly dead guild I have a toon in.

 

Not if the current ftp leader logs on as well.

[CloudCastle]

Thanks everyone for the explanations. Demoting everyone to recruit seems like an odd mechanic and a very inconvenient one at that!

 

It sounds like my choices are:

 

1) Do nothing. Guild may come back around to me at some point and then it will auto-upgrade again. (Unless "recuits" are blocked from becoming auto-bestowed guildeaders?)

 

2) Try contacting current guildleader in this game or the other and letting him know that I'm still a sub and he can transfer leadership back to me if we want the guild to not be Free-to-Play.

 

Kind of a pain, but at least I know what's going on. Thanks for the help everyone!

[Everrgreen]

Not if the current ftp leader logs on as well.

Of course if ftp leader decides to play frequently then it won't revert to sub; the point was that if members are logging on infrequently (as OP indicated) and leadership keeps changing then it will eventually come back around to OP. I felt it didn't need to be pointed out what would happen if behavior changed from what OP said was happening.

[xordevoreaux]

And that is exactly what happens in this case as I said a while back when I had a fruitless discussion here in the forums with some "know it all" but actually "know nothing at all" guys. The leadership is NOT given to a subscriber in case the leader goes ftp as they stubbonly claimed over and over while I knew it better from own experience.

Instead the leadership stays and the guild is being reset to ftp including the default ranks. Thanks for the confirmation and sorry it happend to you.

Nobody else except for the current leader wil/can help you here. Bioware will not interfere in this automated game mechanic. He has to give the leadership to you or another subscriber to make it a subscriber guild again. I don't actually know if the ranks will be restored in this case or have to be defined from scratch. I hope this helps.

 

Official EA Link: https://help.ea.com/en-gb/help/star-wars/star-wars-the-old-republic/swtor-free-to-play-faqs/

 

Quote from link down a good ways on the page:

 

As a Guild Leader, if I switch to Free-to-Play, what will change?

The most important thing for you to be aware of as a guild leader is that only Subscribers may be guild leaders of Subscriber Guilds in Star Wars: The Old Republic. If you plan to become a Preferred player, you should prepare your guild for the transition by passing your leadership on to a guild member that plans to remain a Subscriber.

 

If you do not do this prior to your account status changing, the system will automatically pass guild leadership on to the highest ranked active Subscriber in your guild once your account changes to Preferred. You will remain a member of your guild and will have Preferred player access to guild features.

 

The above is the stated affect, from the company that runs the game, of a guild leader going from subscriber to non-subscriber. If all members have let their subscriptions lapse, the guild reverts to a non-sub guild, because there are no subs left in your guild.

 

So it's not just a matter of the subscriber status of the guild leader, but the flag set on the guild itself as being either a subscriber or a free-to-play guild.

 

Someone who is a subscriber does not become the guild leader of a non-sub guild just by joining that guild:

If one of our guild members becomes a Subscriber, will our guild become a Subscriber guild?

If the guild leader becomes a Subscriber, then yes, the guild will be automatically become a Subscriber Guild. However, this does not apply if other guild officers or members become a Subscriber.

 

But if there is already another subscriber in a guild when a guild leader goes from sub to FTP then boom, that other sub gets the guild.

 

In other words, a sub-based guild remains a subscriber guild until there are no subscribers in it, all non-sub, and will continue to roll over guild leadership to an existing subscriber until there's no subs.

Edited June 10, 2018 by xordevoreaux

[Khaleg]

But if there is already another subscriber in a guild when a guild leader goes from sub to FTP then boom, that other sub gets the guild.

 

Hear hear, once again one of those know it all, actually know nothing at all guys! :-)

 

As simple for you as possible: NO, this does not happen no matter what you can find on EA pages. As if they know their own game lol. Leader goes ftp and nothing happens until he misses to log on within 28 days. That's the reality despite the bs on EA pages or rumors from people with no clue because they have no own experience.

Edited June 10, 2018 by Khaleg

[xordevoreaux]

Hear hear, once again one of those know it all, actually know nothing at all guys! :-)

 

As simple for you as possible: NO, this does not happen no matter what you can find on EA pages. As if they know their own game lol. Leader goes ftp and nothing happens until he misses to log on within 28 days. That's the reality despite the bs on EA pages or rumors from people with no clue because they have no own experience.

 

Call me all the names you want, you seem to fond of doing so, but I have relayed the information as given.

[CloudCastle]

But if there is already another subscriber in a guild when a guild leader goes from sub to FTP then boom, that other sub gets the guild.

 

In other words, a sub-based guild remains a subscriber guild until there are no subscribers in it, all non-sub, and will continue to roll over guild leadership to an existing subscriber until there's no subs.

 

Except I'm a subscriber, my sub has not lapsed, and the guild did not pass to me. It is now a Free-to-Play guild.

 

In my case, one other possibility I can think of is that, somewhere in the last 1-2 months, the guild passed to the other person, and then that person went Free-to-Play.

 

Either that or time since last log on always supersedes subscriber status, and the guild never passes to anyone who hasn't logged on in over 30 days. If it has to choose between people in an under 30 day period, then it chooses the sub over the non-sub. But once 30 days has passed, it chooses the first person to log on, regardless of status. That would also explain what happened in my case.

 

One of those two scenarios must have happened.

 

At this point, it doesn't really matter I guess. I'm more bummed about the inconvenience of all my characters in that guild losing Officer status, since that will be hard to reinstate with so few of us logging on. I'm wondering if not logging onto the rest of them will keep them from becoming recruits, since the actual act of logging on seems to be what's bumping them.

Edited June 11, 2018 by CloudCastle

[Everrgreen]

One of my alts (subbed acct) was default guild leader, but was not logged on for more than 28 days, so then the guild leadership went to another player who was ftp and the guild was marked as ftp. I logged in and saw this. Then the ftp leader did not log in within 28 days and leadership changed to my subbed alt, then the guild was no longer marked as ftp. This is what happened to me, no matter what the EA website says.

Edited June 11, 2018 by Everrgreen
correction