A change to guilds and IT infrastructure...

[Kinanmer]

So I am a returning veteran SWTOR Founder/Beta player.  I ran into an issue recently that I would want to bring to your attention.  Myself and many of my friends from 10+ years ago have been inactive.  I came back to the game several times though and built up quite a few resources that I would transfer and store in our guild bank for members to share and have access to over the years as they return from the game and take breaks.  It was mostly rare artifact level crafting schematics, extra unbound equipment and things that were no longer accessible.  I mean, collection just sort of naturally happens.  

 

Some may or may not be aware, but the guild system will arbitrarily and automatically assign a guild leader to the last person to log in. This happens any time that the existing leader has not logged in for over 4 weeks.  I am not sure if it goes down the lines of rank or not.  But in my case and my former guild, it would not really have mattered since no officer had logged in for a really long time. 

 

Normally I understand this and this is not an issue.  What happened to me and my guild however became an issue.  We had one member that invited their kids into the guild.  They only leveled up to maybe level 10.  Since they are young adults and younger teens, they may have not realized that they were suddenly granted guild leadership.  This means that one character inherited the bank vault, capital ship and all resources of the guild.  Well... their kid deleted their character.  Along with the entire guild.  I had no idea that once a CHARACTER becomes guild leader, all resources are bound to that one CHARACTER until they transfer leadership to another member.  But in the event that the one CHARACTER is deleted, the entire guild is vaporized forever.

 

I was told by a CSR to open this up for comment.  Currently, the way their systems work, there are no backups of the guild database.  Does not even happen.  No possible way to even recover.  I asked.

 

Having worked in IT as a Sr. Engineer for data centers and infrastructure for almost 30 years now, I can't really imagine that a company would not at least backup something important like the guild database and any relevant metadata.  Going forward, I would suggest that someone in your IT department review that process and maybe add it to your backup sets.  I would also suggest maybe making it possible to decouple the guild resources from a character.  Maybe in hopes of preventing an accidental deletion in the future?  Maybe notify the user beforehand or something that deleting their character will in fact delete the entire guild?

 

So just posting this here to hope that this is seen and some action taken to help prevent this from happening to others. 

 

Edited March 21 by Kinanmer
Typos

[SteveTheCynic]

3 hours ago, Kinanmer said:

Some may or may not be aware, but the guild system will arbitrarily and automatically assign a guild leader to the last person to log in

The reason that people aren't aware of what you say here is that it isn't true.  That only happens if the "current" guild leader ***character*** doesn't log in for at least 28 days, and even then, it isn't true.  The exact criteria aren't well-defined, but they aren't as simplistic as you imply.

3 hours ago, Kinanmer said:

I had no idea that once a CHARACTER becomes guild leader, all resources are bound to that one CHARACTER until they transfer leadership to another member.

You weren't aware of that because it isn't true.

3 hours ago, Kinanmer said:

But in the event that the one CHARACTER is deleted, the entire guild is vaporized forever

Only if the character's player kicked everyone else from the guild before deleting the character.

Edited March 21 by SteveTheCynic

[Traceguy]

18 hours ago, Kinanmer said:

I can't really imagine that a company would not at least backup something important like the guild database and any relevant metadata. 

At my company we're going to have backups of our databases, because they contain things ranging from customer orders, to payables and receivables. These things are very important. And years of these records would be needed should the IRS or other government entity want to do an audit or investigation.

A guild on the other hand has no value to the continuation of game or any benefit to the developers. Guilds almost completely player owned and operated. The players do with the guilds as they please.

However, no one knows whether or not guilds are backed up or yet. I would bet money on it the entirety of the game is backed up. The problem is they're not going to run a database restore for a single guild. Not only would that require bringing the servers down, it would go against their system that's working as intended.

It's no accident you lost your Guild Master status. They designed their system to work the way it is, and it's working exactly as intended. You must maintain an active subscription if you wish to remain the guild leader.

 

 

 

[lingburger]

On 3/22/2024 at 5:23 AM, SteveTheCynic said:

I had no idea that once a CHARACTER becomes guild leader, all resources are bound to that one CHARACTER until they transfer leadership to another member.

You weren't aware of that because it isn't true.

Your not exactly correct either. 'Bound' is not the right way to look at it - but 'owned by' with the capability of full control is more the case.

I have to ask - have you ever deleted a Guild Master? Maybe there is an actual glitch that your not aware of.

This game has many bugs - and that could just as well be another one that's not been documented..

I'm certainly not going to try and test it - not on SV...

[casirabit]

I can't comment on the glitch but I can comment on deleting a Guild Master.     You cannot just delete the guild you have to /Gdisband and with that command, it removes everyone from the guild along with everything else, banks,, ship, etc. 

[jyork]

if someone became guild leader and deleted their toon it would simply pass to the next person who logged in as far as i'm aware unless this has changed ... same as if they transfered to another server and did not pass leadership.  The guild does not simply go poof.

 

[Rohndogg]

I can tell you from experience that deleting a Guild Master character doesn't delete the guild I've actually done this. It passes leadership to a SUBSCRIBER (Only subs can be guildmasters last I checked anyway) with a character of the highest rank below guildmaster but it's otherwise random as best I can tell. This is also what happens if nobody logs into the GM toon for a month. It passes to someone of the next highest rank. It will go down the roster in rank order until it hits an active character. We had this issue a ton on the Imperial half of our guild because we'd forget to log in for a while. We've had to fix the guildmaster on that side like 5 or 6 times over the years. If the guild has no remaining members and the last character leaves or is deleted the guild will cease to be. That's the only way deleting a character deletes a guild.

On the IT note, I work in IT and can tell you that absolutely no company would back up your guild after deletion for long term. It makes zero sense to do so, it's not relevant to keeping things going and if it was marked for deletion then why should they retain it? In case you change your mind? In your case you hadn't played in such a long time, do you even remember what all was in the guild bank? Especially considering we have no idea how long ago the guild was deleted it sounds like. It also warns you when you delete a guild that it's not recoverable as do most things in this game like your mail for example. It's unreasonable to expect the devs to retain every tiny piece of everything for every player for recovery sake. Inventory and character data is usually sufficient.

On the idea of decoupling the guild resources from a character, that's not going to happen and really shouldn't. The reason it's not going to happen is it would require a fundamental redesign of guilds to even do that. But also, the majority is tied to ranks not a specific character. The second reason it won't happen is SOMEBODY needs to have full control. You need to have a person that can manage and override everyone else in the guild. That's the only way to deal with problem members, prevent a "coup" so to speak of toxic players or hostile takeovers by outsiders joining. You need a structure in place to control and manage those assets and somebody needs to be at the top.

Frankly, the guilds are one of the better done aspects of this game frankly. They ultimately just work in the vast majority of cases.

I'm sorry this led to a negative outcome for you, but unfortunately I doubt this issue is very common at all.

[SteveTheCynic]

1 hour ago, Rohndogg said:

Only subs can be guildmasters last I checked anyway

A subscriber guild must have a subscriber as leader.  If the leader drops down to Preferred, the game switches to a different active(1) subscribed member character, if there is one.  If not, it downgrades the guild to be a "Free-To-Play" guild until such time as the leader becomes a subscriber (whether that's by subscribing, by overtly passing leadership to a subscribed  character, or by the non-subscribed leader goes inactive and an active subscriber is the next leadership candidate).

EDIT: noteworthy among the differences between subscriber guilds and f2p guilds are that F2P guilds have:

• No access to the credits in the guild bank, even for non-leader subscribed characters.
• Only five ranks, with no possibility to change the names and no possibility to add new ranks either.  At the moment the guild is downgraded, the ranks are reset to be those five with the default names, and all member characters except the leader are demoted to the lowest rank.

(1) Meaning "has logged in to the character in the last 28 days".

Edited March 25 by SteveTheCynic

[SteveTheCynic]

1 hour ago, Rohndogg said:

The second reason it won't happen is SOMEBODY needs to have full control. You need to have a person that can manage and override everyone else in the guild.

It doesn't have to be just one person.  Example: guilds in Guild Wars 2 can have co-leaders.

[KaiserImperium]

On 3/21/2024 at 1:54 PM, Kinanmer said:

So I am a returning veteran SWTOR Founder/Beta player.  I ran into an issue recently that I would want to bring to your attention.  Myself and many of my friends from 10+ years ago have been inactive.  I came back to the game several times though and built up quite a few resources that I would transfer and store in our guild bank for members to share and have access to over the years as they return from the game and take breaks.  It was mostly rare artifact level crafting schematics, extra unbound equipment and things that were no longer accessible.  I mean, collection just sort of naturally happens.  

 

Some may or may not be aware, but the guild system will arbitrarily and automatically assign a guild leader to the last person to log in. This happens any time that the existing leader has not logged in for over 4 weeks.  I am not sure if it goes down the lines of rank or not.  But in my case and my former guild, it would not really have mattered since no officer had logged in for a really long time. 

 

Normally I understand this and this is not an issue.  What happened to me and my guild however became an issue.  We had one member that invited their kids into the guild.  They only leveled up to maybe level 10.  Since they are young adults and younger teens, they may have not realized that they were suddenly granted guild leadership.  This means that one character inherited the bank vault, capital ship and all resources of the guild.  Well... their kid deleted their character.  Along with the entire guild.  I had no idea that once a CHARACTER becomes guild leader, all resources are bound to that one CHARACTER until they transfer leadership to another member.  But in the event that the one CHARACTER is deleted, the entire guild is vaporized forever.

 

I was told by a CSR to open this up for comment.  Currently, the way their systems work, there are no backups of the guild database.  Does not even happen.  No possible way to even recover.  I asked.

 

Having worked in IT as a Sr. Engineer for data centers and infrastructure for almost 30 years now, I can't really imagine that a company would not at least backup something important like the guild database and any relevant metadata.  Going forward, I would suggest that someone in your IT department review that process and maybe add it to your backup sets.  I would also suggest maybe making it possible to decouple the guild resources from a character.  Maybe in hopes of preventing an accidental deletion in the future?  Maybe notify the user beforehand or something that deleting their character will in fact delete the entire guild?

 

So just posting this here to hope that this is seen and some action taken to help prevent this from happening to others. 

 

I empathize with the frustration engendered by encountering immediate inconveniences upon resuming engagement with the game following a prolonged hiatus. The prevalence of inactive guilds over the years underscores the necessity for mechanisms to address ownership transitions in such scenarios. While I concur with the notion of facilitating a transfer of guild leadership after a prolonged absence, I would prefer a more nuanced approach. Rather than automating this process, individuals should be required to initiate contact with customer support to report prolonged absence of the guild leader. This would afford greater agency to players, particularly those belonging to smaller, closely knit guilds, mitigating the risk of inadvertent transfer of ownership to dormant accounts. It is not likely that this system will change, but I will nevertheless share my thoughts.

In recognition of the challenges posed by this situation, I extend an offer of assistance in giving you any lost credits or cosmetics, with the aim of alleviating the adverse effects and facilitating a smoother reintegration into the game. Just send me a message!

Welcome back to SWTOR

May the force be with you

[Rohndogg]

17 hours ago, SteveTheCynic said:

A subscriber guild must have a subscriber as leader.  If the leader drops down to Preferred, the game switches to a different active(1) subscribed member character, if there is one.  If not, it downgrades the guild to be a "Free-To-Play" guild until such time as the leader becomes a subscriber (whether that's by subscribing, by overtly passing leadership to a subscribed  character, or by the non-subscribed leader goes inactive and an active subscriber is the next leadership candidate).

EDIT: noteworthy among the differences between subscriber guilds and f2p guilds are that F2P guilds have:

• No access to the credits in the guild bank, even for non-leader subscribed characters.
• Only five ranks, with no possibility to change the names and no possibility to add new ranks either.  At the moment the guild is downgraded, the ranks are reset to be those five with the default names, and all member characters except the leader are demoted to the lowest rank.

(1) Meaning "has logged in to the character in the last 28 days".

Thank you, I knew there was something but couldn't remember exactly.

 

17 hours ago, SteveTheCynic said:

It doesn't have to be just one person.  Example: guilds in Guild Wars 2 can have co-leaders.

This I'll 1000% give you, it has to be at least SOMEBODY but can be more than one character. But that ultimately raises the risk as well so it's a pros/cons debate at that point. Realistically the vast majority of players will likely be unaffected by this specific issue so it likely won't change anyway, but you're not wrong and adding a way to make more than one character guild master could be nice. But do they make it one legacy? Multiple legacies? I expect this would require a full rework of guilds to make that change.

But more to the point, our guild has like 10ish active members after all these years (Peaked in the 50-75ish range years ago) It would pass from our Guildmaster to Myself or the other officer. From there it would go to our "Quartermaster" which basically just maintains the guild ship, perks, etc. Then it would go to one of the other members. At any point the GM can come back and the officer make them GM again. It would require SO many steps to lose the guild completely.

Most importantly, if I know I'm gonna be leaving for a while, I also have a responsibility to make sure things are in good hands. Do a transition to a new guild master. I can't get mad at the devs for not protecting it for me if I don't take steps of my own first. That's like getting mad at the city if I leave my front door open with nobody home and someone steals my TV. It still sucks, the TV shouldn't have been stolen, but ultimately this was preventable and the most basic step to prevent it was not taken.

If you leave that long is it really even yours at that point? And besides, I have a feeling that bank was cleaned out deliberately at some point by a player that got permissions. Only takes one person to choose to nuke it all. Which makes this a completely different issue at that point.

[Rohndogg]

17 hours ago, KaiserImperium said:

Rather than automating this process, individuals should be required to initiate contact with customer support to report prolonged absence of the guild leader.

I'd argue this is worse personally. If it takes 30 days of inactivity for the players to even notice then requires a manual submission and review process, that's going to greatly increase the time before things are corrected and a new leader is selected.

It's not hard to log in once every 30 days if it's that important to someone.

And finally, even under that process, given enough time, the exact same thing would happen. Guild master leaves, process, new GM. Rinse repeat until someone is GM that decides screw it, empties the bank, and gdisbands. It only takes one single person in that whole chain.

My biggest question is how long was OP gone between last visit when guild existed and when they logged in to find it gone. That information will affect this greatly. If it was over a year, I really don't have that much sympathy. That's a long time to be gone. If it was like 2 months, that's really rough because that's not that long and means someone nuked it after only 1 to 2 transfers of ownership.

That's my view on it anyway.