Trust in Guilds

I’m a guild leader in that massive online game known as World of Warcraft. You know the one. You probably know someone who plays it, or wishes they could play it. We now have about 100 characters in the guild, and had yet to have anyone really steal from us. We have 5 bank tabs (think storage for a large group of people), and everyone had played it fair. In fact, we usually had to empty it about once or twice a week because it got full from the items everyone put in it. Every time we’d empty it, the money from the sales would go back into the bank.

My current system I thought was more than fair. You put more into the bank, you get to take more out of it. Promotions were based on what people did for the guild as a whole, and what effort they put into it. With a promotion you got access to more items, and more varied items.

We had a member who had been playing in our guild for a few months. He was friendly enough, and fairly active. He had four alts in the guild, each of which was active enough to be promoted at least once.

As a result of the fairness, and the number of alts, he was able to take over 30 items from our bank. Granted, we’re still fairly young enough that it mostly contained items to help other people in the guild level. From blue items, to blue card items to gems, these items could have helped someone else. Instead, they helped him get money for this character, or another one of his characters.

We demoted him immediately. We sent mails and tells to him when he logged in. He didn’t quit the guild. After about two days with no response, we kicked him. Since it was an “Unknown” that was kicked, we assume that either the characters were deleted or transferred.

The hardest part about this situation is deciding what to do next. We’d rather not punish everyone in the guild. That’s silly. We have a lot of responsible individuals who have done nothing but help each other.

My first instinctual reaction was to only allow one character to be promoted for each player. This idea wasn’t the best because then people would be uncomfortable telling you who their alts were. I’d rather have an open honesty like we’ve had in the past.

In the end, I think we’ve decided to add two ranks, and limit the amount of items people can take out on a daily basis for the lower ranks. It’s not an easy decision, and I don’t like feeling like anyone else would take advantage of their other guild mates. I can only hope that it won’t happen again.