How to deal with old guilds

[Corbin]

One thing I've noticed on this shard about guilds... there are a ton of them.

This causes a problem because of the turnover rate on the shard. We have a new player join with intentions of sticking around, so they work for a new house and buy a guildstone to make their own guild... then leave a week later. Their house decays and the stone is moved to the guildstone graveyard. The problem is that their guildstone is still attached to an abbreviation that is stuck on the stone until and if the player ever comes back, which is more often than not, a negative.

What I would suggest to staff is giving players a specific amount of time to reclaim their lost stone... maybe something like 2 months after it's moved by a GM from a fallen house to the graveyard, else the stone and guild be deleted from the game. This will keep guild abbreviations open for other guilds to actively use.

I'm sure the suggestion of just contacting staff about a name you want would come up, but there are some problems with this:

First, you never really know if the guild is active. Just because you don't see them in town doesn't mean they aren't actively playing either on other characters or simply remaining out of town. A guild should never be removed if the player is active and the stone in a house that is actively being refreshed.

Second, the staff have better things to do than take a bunch of pages from people who are looking to see if a stone is active or not.

Third, while I'm not sure how accurate this is with production shards on EA, we also have a much higher turnover rate than they did because of this shard having no monetary investment. This means many more people showing up for a week and simply leaving.

Any thoughts on this?

[MatronDeWinter]

So, someone already has your guild abbreviation.

[Corbin]

So, someone already has your guild abbreviation.

Nah, it was just something I was thought of the other day when considering the population and economy of the shard and how many guildstones are abandon and put in the graveyard never to have anyone claim them.

[Panthor the Hated]

Just come up with a new abbreviation

[applejack]

Dibbs on reviving The Murdering Scumbags.

[iamreallysquall]

i know quite a few people who left for 6 months or more and came back reclaimed stones

[Ronk]

The question is what the era accurate policy was. I never recall there being a guildstone graveyard, then again I wouldnt' recall something like that.

[Corbin]

The question is what the era accurate policy was. I never recall there being a guildstone graveyard, then again I wouldnt' recall something like that.

Accuracy I believe demands that the stones are left in place and not moved by GMs for the sake of house placement.

[applejack]

Era accuracy here does not apply to policy so I don't think it's relevant what was done on OSI. That said, I still think this is a good discussion.

[mrbojangles]

On OSI guildstones WOULD be moved for house placement, but usually kept on the same screen that they were on before. I'm not sure of the policy regarding their deletion, but guilds absolutely did eventually get deleted, freeing up the name again.

[Faust]

Derrick has done a guild purge in the past that removed a lot of them.

[Mikel123]

The question is what the era accurate policy was. I never recall there being a guildstone graveyard, then again I wouldnt' recall something like that.

Accuracy I believe demands that the stones are left in place and not moved by GMs for the sake of house placement.

Sometimes they would, sometimes they wouldn't. I'm not sure what the letter of the law was, there probably wasn't any, but the spirit of the law just depended on the GM you happened to catch. It was generally a good strategy,when you paged a GM for something and got declined, to page again the following day at a different time and hope for a different GM.