A problem was reported by another guild leader recently and they can't post in the forum because they are no longer a sub so I'm doing it for them. They used to be a sub but some emergency came up and they had to stop playing and left their friend to run things in their absence although they kept the Guild Leader role for themselves expecting to return.

Their sub lapsed at which point the guild got slapped with free to play restrictions which meant all the ranks, permissions and guild bank permissions were reset to default. Their friend and others in the guild were subs but because the guild leader did not login the mechanism that bounces leadership to the next highest ranked sub did not get triggered which meant they had to wait for the 30 day inactive system to do it.

That meant for 30 days everybody regardless of rank was able to withdraw large amounts of credits and items.

I would suggest that if a guild gets downgraded to a F2P one that the ranks, permissions and guild bank permissions remain as they were to avoid this problem happening again. Lock them by all means so they can't be edited but don't reset them to defaults.

This is very odd. How certain are you of the events?

Normally, if a GL of a sub guild drops their sub then the leadership automatically transfers to another sub. You are saying that because the GL had not logged in then the guild was switched to a F2P guild even though there were still subs in the guild. In the case of the 28-day timer leadership passes as soon as someone logs in. I would expect that to be the procedure in the case of a GL dropping their sub, too, but perhaps it is different.

You say that the guild was downgraded to a F2P guild. Normally, F2P and preferred players are barred from the guild bank entirely. They can purchase authorization to access item storage, but that does not grant them access to guild funds. When a guild is downgraded to a F2P guild then the entire guild is barred from accessing guild funds, sub or not. If the F2P restrictions had been applied to the guild then no one should have been able to withdraw credits.

Either something very odd occurred, perhaps a confluence of events for which the guild system handled poorly, or there are additional details that are missing.

Here are the responses to the questions myself and the other guild leaders asked them:

I recently had a family member pass away and other family issues so I was away from game for over 28 days which is the max amount of time you can be inactive before your guild leadership rank gets bumped onto someone else...the person it got bumped onto is my best mate who I know irl and he never touched the ranks or permissions but when the change happened it reverted all the ranks and permissions back to the default which enabled anyone to take as much as they want from the guild bank hence why it then got raided

The permissions were set perfectly before I left, I’ve managed guilds for years across various games so I know with full confidence that I did it right. Maybe it’s because It changed to a free to play guild meaning my own permissions of the guild bank got changed to default and my best friend I trust with my life we’ve known each other our whole lives and I know for a fact he didn’t change anything, he’s screnshotted all the logs and sent them to me when I was away. When he sent me a picture of the permissions it said recruit rank was able to take out 999 items

 

I had about 3 billion credits worth of stuff in my bank ranging from gear pieces, gear set boxes, various weapons, mounts, cartel toys, dyes, crystals like so much **** and now it’s all just gone cause of greedy disrespectful snakes

They included screenshots showing the items being withdrawn.

the guild went free to play when my sub ended which then made it a free to play guild but then the guild master rank got bumped onto my friend who was a subscriber but the perms and ranks had got reverted back to default when it became a free to play guild while I was still the leader but then stayed in place even when it became a sub guild with my mate being the leader while I was away

Did the rank and bank changes happen straight away or only when you first logged in as a preferred player? I mean did you login as guild leader after going preferred before going inactive for 30 days?

Nah I didn’t login as pref the whole time I was away man, they happened as soon as I went free to play I believe cause that’s when the stuff started getting raided from the bank and then ownership went onto my friend who was then able to change it and he gave rank back to me and it changed to free to play again and the default perms happened again

Belongs in the Suggestion forum as this is not a bug.

From a certain point of view... I would say it was a bug in the logic.