Some people spend real money on these guilds. The game should not allow one single person to basically defraud a guild full of people who build up his "product" and then sell it out from under them. There should be safeguards.
2
zephyriahMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,980Arc User
Some people spend real money on these guilds. The game should not allow one single person to basically defraud a guild full of people who build up his "product" and then sell it out from under them. There should be safeguards.
Such as?
I've tried to think of some that would work. I have come up with nothing that I couldn't think of a way around so would be interested in other ideas.
As wrong as guilds selling out for $$ is - I don't see any way for the devs to stop it that wouldn't also hinder other aspects of guild transfer.
Our guild was handed over to us when our original leader went off to play ARK. He gave it to three of us. When we went to join our alliance - one of the three of us was out of town and the other was at work. The one that was home had to demote the other two in order to accept the invite - then promote us back. It was annoying but we figured out how to do it.
That ability of people at the same level to demote is questionable. We would have had to wait for a week to join the alliance if we hadn't had that option - but it also opens up the issue of if one of us gets hacked/has a mental break down - we could completely hose the guild and there is nothing the other two could do to stop it.
Unfortunately there is no app or way to manage your guild other than actually being on the PS4 (if there is a way I'd love to know) so I understand the logic of having equal level people being able to demote... I just wish there was a better way to handle it.
Founding Member of "Wrong Side of the Stronghold" Ravenskya - TR / Krisha Chaos - OP / Waffles - GF / Dex Domitor - HR Becky the trendy GWF - GWF / Too Toasty - SW / Falcor - DC / Morrigan - CW / Sir Didymus - OP
How about a vote to kick for 6's and 7's? To kick or demote someone of this rank you have to get the majority of votes from the rest of leadership. Just a thought.
The way STO does it is if there's more than one R7 in a Guild, you can demote *yourself* from R7 freely and immediately, but if you try to demote anyone else it goes on a 7 day probation *and* only one R7 can be demoted at a time *and* any other R7 may cancel the demote.
This doesn't help if there's only two R7s, or if there's 3 and 1 is on vacation for a week, and it runs into issues where, say, I have 5 alts all at R7. And it doesn't stop a solo R7 from selling the guild or all R7s agreeing to sell.... but it *does* stop the "one R7 is compromised, everyone is now GERBIL" factor.
Yeah we learned the hard way in the beginning to each only have a single character at rank 7 - all of our others are rank 6. Because voting became a nightmare.
Founding Member of "Wrong Side of the Stronghold" Ravenskya - TR / Krisha Chaos - OP / Waffles - GF / Dex Domitor - HR Becky the trendy GWF - GWF / Too Toasty - SW / Falcor - DC / Morrigan - CW / Sir Didymus - OP
Some people spend real money on these guilds. The game should not allow one single person to basically defraud a guild full of people who build up his "product" and then sell it out from under them. There should be safeguards.
Such as?
I've tried to think of some that would work. I have come up with nothing that I couldn't think of a way around so would be interested in other ideas.
how about in order to be r7 (exception if the guild is under r1) you have to have been in the guild as a member for at least two months. while it wouldn't dispell this kind of behavior entirely I suspect it would make it far less attractive and would be kind of obvious from word of mouth that it was going to happen. (at least in the case we're talking about where it's the same guild who is behind it repeatedly)
How about making a policy that you cannot turn over more than 10% of a guild every 30 days. This at least discourages sales because people will take months to weed out and replace. You cannot prevent sales, but you can make them onerous and annoying to complete. If your guild is actively managed, this would not prevent dumping of bad or inactive players. And what guild leader needs to drop more than 10% of their current actives without a nefarious purpose.
Or you could tie the above to activity fairly easily - you cannot drop more than 10% of players active within the last 30 days, within a 30 day period. So as long as ppl stay active, they have at least a decent chance of remaining in a guild for a while after it is sold. It does not prevent the sale, but who wants to pay $1500 for a guild that they then have to spend 10 months removing everyone from.
> @zephyriah said: > Some people spend real money on these guilds. The game should not allow one single person to basically defraud a guild full of people who build up his "product" and then sell it out from under them. There should be safeguards. > > Such as? > > I've tried to think of some that would work. I have come up with nothing that I couldn't think of a way around so would be interested in other ideas.
Frankly, it is not my job to design their game.
Here is the reality. As it is now one single person has the power to appropriate the contributions of their entire guild for their own profit (apparently within the rules if for in game compensation). That is a serious flaw since it is ripe for abuse. Especially when some guilds charge hundreds of dollars worth of in game goods to join. I know, buyer beware, yada yada. This is a somewhat isolated problem, but since it is mainly isolated to one single guild how about Cryptic nip it in the bud.
(sorry this got much longer than I intended but I hope it can help other guilds and alliances who are struggling with how to build a healthy political and economic structure. Please let's keep this constructive and focused on helping guilds run better and avoid inter guild/alliance drama. I look forward to hearing other perspectives and maybe learn a thing or two:)
As a guild leader and alliance leader this is a tough problem. One thing a guild and alliance can do (which we have done successfully) is structure things like a real corporation where we have 7s be a small board of directors as owners who are wealthy in game and help with a large amount of financing the development of all the guilds in the alliance. They consist of people who know the economy well (trading, lock boxing, masterwork, etc) and their interest is to grow their business by teaching more people how to earn money in the game and this teaching/opportunities are available to everyone in the alliance. We in effect build a first world country where many more people get to participate in opportunity and prosperity rather than everything being concentrated into the hands of a tiny number of people who hide and restrict information.
For example anyone who joins our alliance can join a message group where they can learn about masterworks material farming, which is bar none the best way for anyone below 3.5k to quickly progress to that level by making 200k an hour doing a boring activity they can do while watching Netflix or doing laundry. Members are free to sell on the auction house at retail or they can choose sell materials to the master crafting team for a bulk rate which is less than the AH but we can buy pretty much everything you farm. You can also exchange for items or even deeply discounted masterwork items or even attempts on the tools yourself which we will happily guide you through because we want to turn all who wish to into masterworkers who will then bring more wealth into our economy. Basically if you are generous with us we will do a lot to help you learn the trades.
By creating a positive economy based on teaching people how to make money while allowing them to contribute to the alliance construction, we can avoid member hated things like mandatory Dragon Flight and monthly dues.
Back to guild structure. Having a board is inherently stable because they are people focused on doing what they love to do in the game and don't get burned out by the BS of being a guild leader or alliance leader. Obviously the board members need a high level of trust among each other for this to work.
Now we work with the guilds that are part of this governance to staff up an executive team. This consists of a guild leader at rank 6 and officers at rank 5. The rank 6 is configured with all powers of a 7 except they can't do a couple of things like change the name of the guild or edit alliance settings.
This has some nice properties because now if the guild leaders get burned out and hate the game (which it is easy to do because being a guild leader is very stressful and tends to give you little time to actually enjoy the game) then they have the choice of leaving or working with the guild to choose a replacement. If they rage quit the board can then work with the guild to choose a new leader
If you are in an alliance as the helm and you have independent guilds that become zombies (guilds with members but the leaders/owners quit) then it is usually not hard to work with them to negotiate a handoff to the board so that they don't screw over their members by selling to a random buyer. A stack of GR legendary boxes or the like works fine which they can then keep or dispose of however they like. We have applied this strategy successfully and our board now controls several guilds in our alliance and the branch guilds are now functioning as part of a multi-guild where each of the guilds has active leadership, recruitment and progressing quickly due to their own activity with help from the wealthy board members.
This kind of structure has some other benefits that really surprised us. In particular it largely eliminated the helm vs the satellite of scrubs mentality that I have seen plague and destroy other top alliances. When a bunch of the guilds in an alliance are part of the same multi-guild then the LFG has to happen in alliance chat and this spreads in a positive way to the entire alliance chat.
From this post some of you may figure out who I am and what alliance I help run. This may be a surprise but this really is our secrets of success.
So far all the ones that I've seen have been voluntarily sold by leadership - all to the same guild. I think part of the anger comes from the fact that they are buying up alliance helms, and the other guilds in the alliance don't have any say in the matter. Also, there is of course the TOS issues.
It all depends on what is considered buying within the ToS and what is actually happening between the guilds. Now maybe there is a mutual agreement between the new guild leader/alliance and the old guild leaders. Such as, we acquire and hold the lead position of your guild and you can continue to operate it as such before and you will pick up additional resources from us as we are max for our guild. This is a mutual benefit as the alliance head takes ownership to ensure that the guild does not bail on them after they reach say GH rank 15 or so and the guild benefits from still operating as they were and get resources from any guilds in the alliance that do not require the resources.
If a guild is being bought out right, say cash or other external means where the old guild leader is truly benefiting, than that is more than likely breaking the ToS.
As for alliances being bought out. I heard that some top alliance give all active players a choice, stay or come over with us if you meet ABC requirements. Most that meet those requirements do move and stick around in the new alliance as the more active larger alliances tend to have more activity and can get more stuff done without needing to reach outside of the alliance for help.
Take from someone that was very active in recruiting in another game and managing a guild. It is a 2nd job and in this game managing an alliance is not easy and takes plenty to get it done. Alliance leader are also guild leaders, they have quite a bit on their shoulders and some consider both a 2nd or even a 3rd job. Some leaders will quit simply due to all the drama that happens in guilds/alliance.
As for the original poster, there are plenty of smaller alliance and guilds out there and many don't have boons due to this.
No, supposedly the one was sold for $1500 real world dollars... but that's just word of mouth. A friend was in a chat with someone who was told by the guy who raked in the $$. So who knows what is true.
I heard something similar, but the question is was it $1500 cash or $1500 worth of in game items? If the later, no issue.
Im a guild leader and from my standpoint I don't see what the problem is here I donate I'm guessing 3 times what the average person in my guild donates I do influence on at least 2 toons every day and I grind epics to buy vouchers every day on at least 2 toons and that being said it's my guild and at the end of the day it's up to me what I want to do with my guild. But that being said if I was going to sell it I would talk to my officers first
I have run a few successful clans/guilds in other games (was leader in one very successful clan that has worked with playstation talent and a digital game developer creating content) and the approach has always been the same. If I start a guild then start asking people to join it becomes their guild too. Maybe not technically but they should have a right to have their voice heard in decision making. Helping guild members learn different aspects of the game and including them with decision making will show that they are appreciated and in return they will stick around and help grow the guild. With that said..... When a founder is ready to step down for any reason there should be a vote among all guild members and the leadership should be handed down to someone else within the guild. This will ensure that those who put in time and money wont have their investments lost. The voting system will insure that the guild isn't handed off/sold to a random player. Guildies who have been inactive for 30 days+ should be contacted via psn (or xbox messaging if you're on that platform) to find if they intend to return or have moved on. This will allow a clean active roster and will allow no hold ups on the voting process. It is my opinion that THIS is the only solution that the developers can add to prevent this kind of situation from becoming the norm or a problem. A founder can argue that it's their guild but honestly, the game developers own the rights to all virtual property in the game. A founder just leases the property. At any time the developers can remove property from the game (even if you paid money) or shut down the servers and nothing you can do. This includes stronghold/guild content. No player should be allowed to profit off other players or the virtual content they have leased to use for real world currency. Gamers who are asked to pay x amount of virtual items or real world currency to join a guild are in many cases being taken advantage of, tricked or scammed into doing so. The only way to combat this is to spread the word and let new players know they don't have to pay to be a part of a great guild. Proving that a guild was sold for real world currency is nearly impossible and proving that a guild has asked someone to pay x amount of real world currency is possible but proving the transaction actually took place is nearly impossible. The voting system will most likely eliminate the sale of guilds but won't prevent guilds from charging real world currency Membership fee's.
Founder of Knights of Ra guild in Neverwinter PS4. Founder of The Arashikage Clan in Defiance, formally of PlayStation Home.
No, supposedly the one was sold for $1500 real world dollars... but that's just word of mouth. A friend was in a chat with someone who was told by the guy who raked in the $$. So who knows what is true.
I heard something similar, but the question is was it $1500 cash or $1500 worth of in game items? If the later, no issue.
True - I don't pretend to know one way or another - and honestly I couldn't care less.
What these guilds do has no effect on my or my guild/alliance primarily because we don't pvp, and we have enough people in our guild alone to run any content without even tapping the alliance much less needing others. And the best part is that we were running top end content without the help of massive guild boons - so now that we have them it's like mad bonus
Now if the guilds buying up other guilds runs people out of the game - that is bad for everyone. If guilds buying other guilds hoses up PvP for those that play it... that's not good either
Otherwise, I don't care.
Founding Member of "Wrong Side of the Stronghold" Ravenskya - TR / Krisha Chaos - OP / Waffles - GF / Dex Domitor - HR Becky the trendy GWF - GWF / Too Toasty - SW / Falcor - DC / Morrigan - CW / Sir Didymus - OP
There's a clue in the OP and these guys are known to have done the same on XBox.
The only thing I can say is that after they have a full alliance they stop buying up other guilds as their alliance is full. As for their 'immunity from prosecution', well, that's been a subject of much debate for a long time.
My guild was 3rd to reach GH20 on XBox but I wasn't worried about us being bought out; one of our leaders was an ex-member of this other guild and had absolutely no love for them or their tactics. In fact, we established our alliance around the principle of being the complete opposite and it's been very successful.
Please Do Not Feed The Trolls
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
0
micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
edited July 2017
What bothers me the most out of this thread is the price.
A full SH20 guild, with boons need about 10mil influence. The Zen pack that costs 3.5k ZEN, gives 4 packs, of 5 vouchers of 400 influence each. Meaning 8k influence per pack, and thus: 1250 packs for influence only, this is 4,375k ZEN or 437k USD just for influence.
My local currency is valued less than half the dollar value, so I was planning to be a millionaire now... 1.5k USD?!!?!? Plans ruined !!
Run dragon flights and kill four dragons and you get plenty of vouchers to upgrade a guild and the cost of dragon keys is much lower than buying the vouchers in the AH.
There are plenty of guilds out that that won't sell out and won't just take your loot and kick you. The game is more fun if you are in a guild or with friends - just be careful who you join up with in the future.
Founding Member of "Wrong Side of the Stronghold" Ravenskya - TR / Krisha Chaos - OP / Waffles - GF / Dex Domitor - HR Becky the trendy GWF - GWF / Too Toasty - SW / Falcor - DC / Morrigan - CW / Sir Didymus - OP
Selling a guild is not done by selling an account. The person who "buys" it is given leadership of the guild after all other players have been kicked out. Then the final original leader leaves the guild. It does not appear to violate any agreements if done that way. The also technically use real world currency because the person buys zen and converts it to ad then sells it to another player who can convert it back to zen. This is still not a violation because the currency remains in game. However, Any other exchanges of currency outside of the game e.g. Western union is strictly forbidden but must be proven (which is very hard to do if you don't know the person irl).
I'm surprised that there are some people defending this tactic. Mind boggling. And with recent "other" developments I'm surprised these guilds and players are still in the game. Just a matter of time I suppose.
I agree that joining a guild is better but I also agree that being cautious is a good practice. I personally have put a lot of work into getting our guild to where it is not to mention the other things I've purchased like character slots, packs, mounts, etc etc. When a player puts real money into a game they usually tend to stick with their investments.
Founder of Knights of Ra guild in Neverwinter PS4. Founder of The Arashikage Clan in Defiance, formally of PlayStation Home.
I dont think is possible to dificult this kind of action... Is really sad but i cant figure a mechanic for that, the PC Forum had some people conjecturing this happening in future but that discussion never turned on to any usable idea, i think...
My guild was 3rd to reach GH20 on XBox but I wasn't worried about us being bought out; one of our leaders was an ex-member of this other guild and had absolutely no love for them or their tactics. In fact, we established our alliance around the principle of being the complete opposite and it's been very successful.
The shocker is that the person who sold the guild being discussed also hated the people he sold to. He would constantly speak poorly of them and how disrespect he felt. But in the end, money talks.
As others have indicated there are some good guilds out there who do not and have not screwed the players over. We reached twenty with full masterworks without taxing one single player, in fact all we asked is they did their influence runs to reduce the pressure. Sure it took longer but it can be done and generally fosters a much better atmosphere as you can leave the members to play the game the way they want to.
Comments
I've tried to think of some that would work. I have come up with nothing that I couldn't think of a way around so would be interested in other ideas.
Our guild was handed over to us when our original leader went off to play ARK. He gave it to three of us. When we went to join our alliance - one of the three of us was out of town and the other was at work. The one that was home had to demote the other two in order to accept the invite - then promote us back. It was annoying but we figured out how to do it.
That ability of people at the same level to demote is questionable. We would have had to wait for a week to join the alliance if we hadn't had that option - but it also opens up the issue of if one of us gets hacked/has a mental break down - we could completely hose the guild and there is nothing the other two could do to stop it.
Unfortunately there is no app or way to manage your guild other than actually being on the PS4 (if there is a way I'd love to know) so I understand the logic of having equal level people being able to demote... I just wish there was a better way to handle it.
Ravenskya - TR / Krisha Chaos - OP / Waffles - GF / Dex Domitor - HR
Becky the trendy GWF - GWF / Too Toasty - SW / Falcor - DC / Morrigan - CW / Sir Didymus - OP
This doesn't help if there's only two R7s, or if there's 3 and 1 is on vacation for a week, and it runs into issues where, say, I have 5 alts all at R7. And it doesn't stop a solo R7 from selling the guild or all R7s agreeing to sell.... but it *does* stop the "one R7 is compromised, everyone is now GERBIL" factor.
Yeah we learned the hard way in the beginning to each only have a single character at rank 7 - all of our others are rank 6. Because voting became a nightmare.
Ravenskya - TR / Krisha Chaos - OP / Waffles - GF / Dex Domitor - HR
Becky the trendy GWF - GWF / Too Toasty - SW / Falcor - DC / Morrigan - CW / Sir Didymus - OP
cs.. hahaha..
Or you could tie the above to activity fairly easily - you cannot drop more than 10% of players active within the last 30 days, within a 30 day period. So as long as ppl stay active, they have at least a decent chance of remaining in a guild for a while after it is sold. It does not prevent the sale, but who wants to pay $1500 for a guild that they then have to spend 10 months removing everyone from.
> Some people spend real money on these guilds. The game should not allow one single person to basically defraud a guild full of people who build up his "product" and then sell it out from under them. There should be safeguards.
>
> Such as?
>
> I've tried to think of some that would work. I have come up with nothing that I couldn't think of a way around so would be interested in other ideas.
Frankly, it is not my job to design their game.
Here is the reality. As it is now one single person has the power to appropriate the contributions of their entire guild for their own profit (apparently within the rules if for in game compensation). That is a serious flaw since it is ripe for abuse. Especially when some guilds charge hundreds of dollars worth of in game goods to join. I know, buyer beware, yada yada. This is a somewhat isolated problem, but since it is mainly isolated to one single guild how about Cryptic nip it in the bud.
As a guild leader and alliance leader this is a tough problem. One thing a guild and alliance can do (which we have done successfully) is structure things like a real corporation where we have 7s be a small board of directors as owners who are wealthy in game and help with a large amount of financing the development of all the guilds in the alliance. They consist of people who know the economy well (trading, lock boxing, masterwork, etc) and their interest is to grow their business by teaching more people how to earn money in the game and this teaching/opportunities are available to everyone in the alliance. We in effect build a first world country where many more people get to participate in opportunity and prosperity rather than everything being concentrated into the hands of a tiny number of people who hide and restrict information.
For example anyone who joins our alliance can join a message group where they can learn about masterworks material farming, which is bar none the best way for anyone below 3.5k to quickly progress to that level by making 200k an hour doing a boring activity they can do while watching Netflix or doing laundry. Members are free to sell on the auction house at retail or they can choose sell materials to the master crafting team for a bulk rate which is less than the AH but we can buy pretty much everything you farm. You can also exchange for items or even deeply discounted masterwork items or even attempts on the tools yourself which we will happily guide you through because we want to turn all who wish to into masterworkers who will then bring more wealth into our economy. Basically if you are generous with us we will do a lot to help you learn the trades.
By creating a positive economy based on teaching people how to make money while allowing them to contribute to the alliance construction, we can avoid member hated things like mandatory Dragon Flight and monthly dues.
Back to guild structure. Having a board is inherently stable because they are people focused on doing what they love to do in the game and don't get burned out by the BS of being a guild leader or alliance leader. Obviously the board members need a high level of trust among each other for this to work.
Now we work with the guilds that are part of this governance to staff up an executive team. This consists of a guild leader at rank 6 and officers at rank 5. The rank 6 is configured with all powers of a 7 except they can't do a couple of things like change the name of the guild or edit alliance settings.
This has some nice properties because now if the guild leaders get burned out and hate the game (which it is easy to do because being a guild leader is very stressful and tends to give you little time to actually enjoy the game) then they have the choice of leaving or working with the guild to choose a replacement. If they rage quit the board can then work with the guild to choose a new leader
If you are in an alliance as the helm and you have independent guilds that become zombies (guilds with members but the leaders/owners quit) then it is usually not hard to work with them to negotiate a handoff to the board so that they don't screw over their members by selling to a random buyer. A stack of GR legendary boxes or the like works fine which they can then keep or dispose of however they like. We have applied this strategy successfully and our board now controls several guilds in our alliance and the branch guilds are now functioning as part of a multi-guild where each of the guilds has active leadership, recruitment and progressing quickly due to their own activity with help from the wealthy board members.
This kind of structure has some other benefits that really surprised us. In particular it largely eliminated the helm vs the satellite of scrubs mentality that I have seen plague and destroy other top alliances. When a bunch of the guilds in an alliance are part of the same multi-guild then the LFG has to happen in alliance chat and this spreads in a positive way to the entire alliance chat.
From this post some of you may figure out who I am and what alliance I help run. This may be a surprise but this really is our secrets of success.
If a guild is being bought out right, say cash or other external means where the old guild leader is truly benefiting, than that is more than likely breaking the ToS.
As for alliances being bought out. I heard that some top alliance give all active players a choice, stay or come over with us if you meet ABC requirements. Most that meet those requirements do move and stick around in the new alliance as the more active larger alliances tend to have more activity and can get more stuff done without needing to reach outside of the alliance for help.
Take from someone that was very active in recruiting in another game and managing a guild. It is a 2nd job and in this game managing an alliance is not easy and takes plenty to get it done. Alliance leader are also guild leaders, they have quite a bit on their shoulders and some consider both a 2nd or even a 3rd job. Some leaders will quit simply due to all the drama that happens in guilds/alliance.
As for the original poster, there are plenty of smaller alliance and guilds out there and many don't have boons due to this.
When a founder is ready to step down for any reason there should be a vote among all guild members and the leadership should be handed down to someone else within the guild. This will ensure that those who put in time and money wont have their investments lost. The voting system will insure that the guild isn't handed off/sold to a random player. Guildies who have been inactive for 30 days+ should be contacted via psn (or xbox messaging if you're on that platform) to find if they intend to return or have moved on. This will allow a clean active roster and will allow no hold ups on the voting process. It is my opinion that THIS is the only solution that the developers can add to prevent this kind of situation from becoming the norm or a problem.
A founder can argue that it's their guild but honestly, the game developers own the rights to all virtual property in the game. A founder just leases the property. At any time the developers can remove property from the game (even if you paid money) or shut down the servers and nothing you can do. This includes stronghold/guild content. No player should be allowed to profit off other players or the virtual content they have leased to use for real world currency. Gamers who are asked to pay x amount of virtual items or real world currency to join a guild are in many cases being taken advantage of, tricked or scammed into doing so. The only way to combat this is to spread the word and let new players know they don't have to pay to be a part of a great guild. Proving that a guild was sold for real world currency is nearly impossible and proving that a guild has asked someone to pay x amount of real world currency is possible but proving the transaction actually took place is nearly impossible. The voting system will most likely eliminate the sale of guilds but won't prevent guilds from charging real world currency Membership fee's.
What these guilds do has no effect on my or my guild/alliance primarily because we don't pvp, and we have enough people in our guild alone to run any content without even tapping the alliance much less needing others. And the best part is that we were running top end content without the help of massive guild boons - so now that we have them it's like mad bonus
Now if the guilds buying up other guilds runs people out of the game - that is bad for everyone.
If guilds buying other guilds hoses up PvP for those that play it... that's not good either
Otherwise, I don't care.
Ravenskya - TR / Krisha Chaos - OP / Waffles - GF / Dex Domitor - HR
Becky the trendy GWF - GWF / Too Toasty - SW / Falcor - DC / Morrigan - CW / Sir Didymus - OP
The only thing I can say is that after they have a full alliance they stop buying up other guilds as their alliance is full. As for their 'immunity from prosecution', well, that's been a subject of much debate for a long time.
My guild was 3rd to reach GH20 on XBox but I wasn't worried about us being bought out; one of our leaders was an ex-member of this other guild and had absolutely no love for them or their tactics. In fact, we established our alliance around the principle of being the complete opposite and it's been very successful.
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
A full SH20 guild, with boons need about 10mil influence. The Zen pack that costs 3.5k ZEN, gives 4 packs, of 5 vouchers of 400 influence each. Meaning 8k influence per pack, and thus: 1250 packs for influence only, this is 4,375k ZEN or 437k USD just for influence.
My local currency is valued less than half the dollar value, so I was planning to be a millionaire now... 1.5k USD?!!?!? Plans ruined !!
Ravenskya - TR / Krisha Chaos - OP / Waffles - GF / Dex Domitor - HR
Becky the trendy GWF - GWF / Too Toasty - SW / Falcor - DC / Morrigan - CW / Sir Didymus - OP
I agree that joining a guild is better but I also agree that being cautious is a good practice. I personally have put a lot of work into getting our guild to where it is not to mention the other things I've purchased like character slots, packs, mounts, etc etc.
When a player puts real money into a game they usually tend to stick with their investments.
Is really sad but i cant figure a mechanic for that, the PC Forum had some people conjecturing this happening in future but that discussion never turned on to any usable idea, i think...