Last night I received word that a guild mates account had been hacked – only some coin was taken, guild bank and regular bank not touched, nor was gear touched. It seemed a little odd to me, but I spread the word around to all my guild mates to be aware, and that was that.
Or so I thought. This morning I received an IM from Belghast saying that they had actually purchased plat from a 3rd party and that their missing money was SOE taking it as compensation. But don’t worry, he confirmed for me, they didn’t touch any of his broker items and his masters were still for sale and he had 20p to his name so he’d be ok.
What was I supposed to do? What would you do in this situation?
I told him I was really upset, had lost all respect, but that I wouldn’t remove from guild. I technically don’t care what people do with their real life money – but – because it involved my guild, I did care. I care about my guild a great deal.
So, how would you have handled the situation? Do you care if your guild mates buy plat? Let me know in comments!
As much as I hate to say it, but the rules are the rules. I was an officer for 1.5 years in a large guild, and our rules stated that if Sony thought it was illegal, then you don’t do it. We never had to boot anybody for plat buying, but several people received warnings and one “commander” (guild rank, kinda junior officer with some authority to recruit and whatnot) was demoted with a warning because he should have known better.
The real problem came when Sony decided during TSO that opening instances with level 50 toons and then finishing them with higher toons for XP/AA was an exploit. When our leadership came out and said that its, we had several people who strongly disagreed…their argument was “I pay my money, I can play how I choose”, unfortunately how they “played” reflected on us as a whole. A few of them were booted because they would not stop.
In your case, if it is not stated in the guild rules, then it needs to be and a general public warning as well….if it is, then these folks need to be warned if its their first and dealt with if not (that of course also depends upon your guild rules…we tended to make group decisions based upon the persons actions when they were warned).
Plat buying hurts everybody, because it makes accounts vulnerable to hackers, perpetuating the problem. I would eject him, or barring that, let him off with the sternest possible warning and insure that all guild members know not to buy plat, and if they do, they’ll be bounced in three seconds flat.
I’ve been in a guild where a member admitted that he was RMTing in guild chat and therefore clearly violating the rules of the guild [i]and[/i] the game. The guild leader refused to kick him, so I left. How would I trust that [i]any[/i] matter would be dealt fairly if an open-and-shut case wasn’t?
I have been in two different games where I knew people in guild that purchased game currency. Neither time was I the guild leader though.
My decision would likely be based on how well I knew the person. If they were new to my guild and were just starting to find their way in, I would be more inclined to just boot them. One bad choice is likely to lead to another. If they were someone I knew for a while, I would let them know they had lost respect and place on ‘probation’. Mess up again in the next X weeks/months and the boot comes out.