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Officers' Quarters: A gkicked player takes revenge

lord godfrey fires his pistols

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available from No Starch Press.


Here at OQ, I receive emails all the time about people acting like jerks. Jerks are everywhere, and MMOs certainly have their fair share. Of all the jerks I've heard about, the player from this week's email has to be among the all-time worst. Fortunately, his terrible behavior has a bright side: By sharing this guild's story, other officers can avoid the same fate.

From the start one of our members started to complain about the guild at the start of raiding early cata. However the officers and GM has brush it off as him being annoyed at the game because he hated the expansion. Things went from bad to worst when we started Firelands.

He started to make plans to overthrow the GM of the guild and made fun behind him. He complains the GM is never there supporting the guild because he took a month off due to work reasons. He made fun of our progression even though we manage to get at least 1 heroic mode down. When we got to dragon soul he stop raiding with us all together. Which is fine because our guild is a casual raiding guild and members are free to choose to raid or not. However he complains even more that people in the guild are stupid and we won't ever progress. It got to the point where we kicked him from the guild but the problem didn't stop there.

He started to harass people in the guild. First he whisper people in the guild during raid times and makes them mad enough to quit the raid early. Then he send COD letters to the same people with items that would represent the person best from his memory with a ton of gold cost to take the item.

The latest thing he did is he got hold of the previous owner of the website and because that person never gave up ownership of it he lock everyone out of the site but granting them the ability to see the latest post. He logs in under a person's ID and makes a fake post about them and pretty much insults them. This really got everyone mad and some even are preparing to file a lawsuit. Being an officer of the guild is there anyway to get this guy to stop and calm people down. Thank you for your time reading this and I hope to hear a responds.

What a complete low-life this guy is to take things that far. Clearly he is not content merely to harass. He's taken it to the next level and damaged your guild's ability to function.

Taking back your site

Is there any way you can get in touch with the previous owner and get him to undo whatever control he gave this person? If he can't, you could try contacting your site host's support team to see if they can help you. Beyond that, I'm not sure how you would fix the situation except to simply cancel the site and start over with a new one. Maybe a tech-savvy reader will have a better solution for you.


The lesson in this for all of us is to make sure that a current officer is the one with ultimate control. When there is a frequent turnover among officers, it's all too easy to lose track of who actually has the "keys" to a website or a voice chat server.

My own guild had an issue a few months ago where a person came into our Vent server to distract us during a raid. We soon discovered that no current officer had access to admin functions, and we were unable to ban the guy. It was pretty embarrassing for the leadership. It's one of those things that you don't really think about until it's too late. Until that point, the guild had never needed to exercise admin control in all of its seven years.

Don't let people hurt your guild by neglecting this important leadership duty!


Dealing with harassment

This person's repeated in-game harassment is a matter that only Blizzard can resolve. Tell your members to report him. GMs can see chat logs, even whispers, so they could see for themselves what he has been saying. They will most likely issue a temporary ban at first and then a permanent one if the behavior continues.

I don't see how a lawsuit could help the situation. If anything, it would simply incite this loser toward new, real-life forms of harassment.

The rage that your members are experiencing comes from feeling helpless to stop him. The officers need to empower their members to defend themselves within the rules of the game. Encourage them to report this player every time he acts out.

Resolving the website situation will also help people feel better and move on. Once you get control back or start over, then make sure your members know that something like that will never happen again. Tell them specifically the steps that you've taken -- and will continue to take -- to prevent the same situation in the future.

In the meantime, don't provoke him. Like all internet trolls, feeding him only makes him stronger. One way or another, the situation will eventually stop and you can all get back to the business of having fun.

/salute


Officers' Quarters keeps your guild leadership on track to cope with sticky situations such as members turned poachers or the return of an ex-guild leader and looking forward to what guilds need in Mists of Pandaria. Send your own guild-related questions and suggestions to scott@wowinsider.com.