Last week, we covered that wild story about a “heist” in EVE Online that allowed the perpetrators to make off with trillions of ISK in cash and assets, amounting to a value of something like $22,000 US. And when you look a little more closely at the story, you realize it wasn’t really a heist at all but some very clever veteran players taking advantage of some loopholes in the way corporations (guilds) are designed; they effectively used a stealthy vote and a pile of long-forgotten corp shares to take over the dormant org and loot it dry.
As we noted, this is sadly common in plenty of MMOs, even if most folks’ guild vaults don’t have $22,000 worth of loot worth stealing. Sometimes, just taking over the guild’s name or reputation or age or rank holds the real value, and many MMOs don’t even wait for an impromptu vote; they just demote absent leadership and hand the guild off to the next most active officer or member.
In the comments of that story, MOP reader Minimalistway proposed we discuss the topic in a broader sense. “[H]ow do you deal with absent leaders of guild or groups? This is important not just for games but for online communities too.” So let’s do that today in Massively Overthinking. Which MMOs handle the passing of group property the best? Should they automatically transfer leadership when the boss goes missing? Are calls for a vote a better method? Or should a guild be treated as the leader’s property and players should simply leave and form up elsewhere in the event of abdication? Similarly, as a player, how do you handle the situation when your guild leader goes AWOL?
​Andrew Ross (@dengarsw): Oof, this is a toughy. I’ve been on both sides of this one too. I think one thing that makes “guilds” as an in-game structure vulnerable to this kind of thing is the idea of guild ownership versus player ownership, particularly by virtue of making one person the (wo)man in charge. Rarely do these groups allow for councils, and when they do, the above “heist” kind of deserves it. Communities often get less than what they deserve, so if you neglect your community, it shouldn’t be surprising that the above happens.
That being said, I didn’t have this issue in games where the “guild (leader)” owned everything. In the Asheron’s Call games, before housing, players hoarded their own stuff and passed it out as needed to their direct followers. I set up something similar for my World of Warcraft’s guild, in that players and current officers worked together to promote new officers, and sub-guilds within the guild could have “their” officer take out guild goodies, but largely, the guild bank had stuff that was barely above trash; the officers held the good stuff on alts and passed it out as needed. It was admittedly a bit of a chore, but even when there was a coup while I was in Japan, the guild as a whole lost nothing but person-power. That’s a lot more valuable, but it also won’t make headlines in mainstream news, and as someone allergic to guild drama, I’d vastly prefer that. In fact, in both my own guilds in Asheron’s Call, having multiple leaders heading their own sub-groups made it easier to leave and rebuild communities if there were issues, including absent leaders. Decentralized power worked best for me, but it’s also more work than most people want to put in.
Andy McAdams: I haven’t actually dealt with this too much. If anything, I was the guild leader who ghosted because I got all nomad-y and wandered away. Oops. Sorry to my Secret World cabal way back in the day.
That notwithstanding, I don’t think that guilds are the leader’s property, not when so many other folks contribute and really make the culture of the guild what it is. As for how to transition leadership in the event of leader-ghosting, I think either a ticket support or enough votes of members would be a good way to transition. The whole line of succession idea from Tyler (below) is pretty interesting. Also, having more than one owner, like a council, allows for additional flex in guild ownership and leadership that adapts as people drop the game and come back.
Ultimately the root of it is this: MMOs are social games, and in most cases, guilds are collections of players who have a shared enjoyment of each other and particular aspects of the game. If the leader ghosts, that group shouldn’t be punished and so there should be options to allow it to continue to exist – whether that’s successions, tickets, or just more ownership types than “single ownership,” to account for all the ways that people engage with guilds – and ultimately disengage with guilds.
Ben Griggs (@braxwolf): Many of the communities I’ve observed recently have moved nearly completely offline (Discord or Reddit) at this point. Most studios have recognized this shift and have decided not to pour many resources into in-game guild tools. The communities have become more self-governed and less reliant on game companies to develop processes and procedures. It seems like many communities are more persistent now, and even migrate together from game to game or participate in several simultaneously. The days of knowing and interacting with someone only within the confines of a single game or guild may be in the rearview.
At the risk of sounding repetitive, I don’t believe most studios see this as a priority to be addressed, nor should they. In the case of EVE, the mantra has always been “don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose.” The same attitude should apply to corporations: Don’t go absent and expect to come back to all your stuff.
Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): The first time this happened to me was way back in Ultima Online. Our guild – which existed even before the game added guilds as a mechanic – had crumbled and splintered a couple of times over infighting and drama, and the nicer folks finally ended up in a pretty decent version of it with the troublemakers expelled. A month into the endeavor, our guild leader – whom I very much looked up to as that rare breed of noble vigilante anti-PK PvPer and roleplayer who never broke character – vanished. I did my level best to keep things going, but I was just a teenager way out of my league, and I really had no idea what had happened until a month or two later when he showed back up and admitted he’d checked himself into rehab for gambling and drinking problems. By that point, however, the guild had kinda moved on beyond him and merged with another group of friendlies, and he didn’t stick around.
I can also tell some horror stories about the way elections for city mayorships are run in Star Wars Galaxies; it’s a long running dirty trick for a group to squat on the outskirts of a town, wait for the town limits to expand to include their houses, declare residency, and run for mayor with your new voting bloc, basically taking over a town other groups paid for without their ever giving you permission to even live there, let alone to take over. If the founders can’t mobilize the existing citizenry to log in and vote fast enough, the town is easily lost.
I don’t have a super great answer for this question, honestly, because I see it from both sides as someone who both knows how much it sucks when your leader goes poof but also as a guild leader for a multigame guild that sets up shop in lots of MMOs and gets super annoyed when I log back in and somebody’s kid’s third alt has somehow ended up with the star and nobody can get it back so we can add our toons or access the guild hall. I do think the sudden calls for a three-day election, as contributed to the EVE incident, however, are out of touch with the reality of online gaming – that seems like the obviously exploitable part of this specific design.
Carlo Lacsina (@UltraMudkipEX, YouTube, Twitch): I don’t think MMOs need to do anything about disappearing guild leaders because the option to leave the guild is there. MMOs are a social platform, and just allowing the abilities to create, disband, or leave a guild is more than enough. That’s up to the group to decide. Early MMO players have made it work with much less. Think of how DKP worked so well without any tools other than an excel spreadsheet kept a relatively orderly way for guilds and their members to gear up. If a guild leader leaves, and the bond of the guild is strong enough, there’s no problem with creating another guild. The same goes for guilds that transition to other games.
You know what would be a plus, though? When games make engaging content designed for guilds. That’s a win in my book
Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): This can be a serious problem for a guild for two reasons. First, it creates a vacuum of leadership that could disintegrate the guild if it’s not handled expediently (who wants to stick in a guild that doesn’t have a GM or officers?). And second, if the GM had sole access to guild tools and vanished, some of the guild functionality could be lost.
MMOs should have a way to transfer leadership in the unexpected lengthy absence of a GM, because if not, the only solution is to reform the guild somewhere else. Both MMOs and guilds should be thinking and planning about this possibility.
Sam Kash (@thesamkash): Yes, this is trouble in a lot of games. I had an issue with a guild in the original Guild Wars. We had a leader go radio-silent, but no members with enough seniority to get the guild moved to a new leader. Everyone basically, slowly moved apart. It totally deteriorated, and I didn’t find another solid guild after that.
Of course, I’ve also been on the other end where I was the most senior officer after the leader left in a different game. I think I did something similar and absconded with most of the guild’s assets… not my proudest moment.
I’d say that the system should have some system in place for a long-lost leader’s role to pass down to another player. If the system runs out of officers to appoint, then it can just make everyone leader authority. I know that isn’t perfect either, but at least it would prevent the situation where the guild has no control and everyone is basically locked out of control.
Tyler Edwards (blog): I haven’t belonged to a guild in years, so I may not be the best person to ask, but perhaps it would be best to put the choice in the hands of the players? Let guild leaders set the limit for how long they have to be inactive before they get demoted (within certain boundaries probably). Let them choose what happens when they have been inactive — maybe set up a line of succession, or at least define parameters for choosing the new leader.
Every week, join the Massively OP staff for Massively Overthinking column, a multi-writer roundtable in which we discuss the MMO industry topics du jour – and then invite you to join the fray in the comments. Overthinking it is literally the whole point. Your turn!
