There was a thread about this a few weeks ago. And lately I’ve seen people complain about them in zone chat quite a bit. They really should not be allowed to do this, they’ve single handedly made so much of the playerbase hate them. I keep 5 guilds all the time because of them.

Pevey wrote: »

There is no way it's not a bot. The invite happens the INSTANT you port to a wayshrine. This happens even if you are porting within zone, so there is almost no load screen. There is no way they could target your toon and manually invite that quickly, even with a macro.

I saw an account the other day, sitting at the banker. Their name matched the guild name with a number (it was like 20 something). I found it alarming.

They currently claim it is being investigated, as they have said before, but nothing ever comes of it and we never get updated with the outcome to any investigation.

Any update on the latest "investigation" please @ZOS_Kevin ? This is annoying so many players and has done so for years. You guys claim nowadays to be listening to us, so why is nothing ever done about this?

People claim it's a custom add-on, therefore it's not botting or breaking TOS. But I would argue it still is. I assume these accounts are AFK, and they're automating button presses to spam invites every few minutes.

I've seen them too, they're usually naked level 3 players that are hiding somewhere near the wayshrine for days without logging out until they get banned. Bizarre nothing has been done considering normal botting is punished often.

The issue is that being banned doesn't stop you from making a new account. ZOS does not IP ban or Hardware ban (Which is good because those are easily bypassed anyway.) Something deeper needs to happen like either the guild leader needs to be punished or the guild should start getting invite restrictions if possible.

It just makes the game look trashy and leaves a bad first impression for new players. Especially with that one guild that does it and then requires you to join their discord in X amount of days or be kicked.

LittleLionLeone wrote: »

People claim it's a custom add-on, therefore it's not botting or breaking TOS. But I would argue it still is. I assume these accounts are AFK, and they're automating button presses to spam invites every few minutes.

I've seen them too, they're usually naked level 3 players that are hiding somewhere near the wayshrine for days without logging out until they get banned. Bizarre nothing has been done considering normal botting is punished often.

The issue is that being banned doesn't stop you from making a new account. ZOS does not IP ban or Hardware ban (Which is good because those are easily bypassed anyway.) Something deeper needs to happen like either the guild leader needs to be punished or the guild should start getting invite restrictions if possible.

It just makes the game look trashy and leaves a bad first impression for new players. Especially with that one guild that does it and then requires you to join their discord in X amount of days or be kicked.

They don't even need to spend that much time or energy. Just add an option to block guild invites. I can already block duel requests and other things; it shouldn't be this difficult or take this many years to fix something so easy.

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

They don't even need to spend that much time or energy. Just add an option to block guild invites. I can already block duel requests and other things; it shouldn't be this difficult or take this many years to fix something so easy.

I would imagine that the devs are worried about push back from guilds if they added an option officially to block guild invites. That or it's just something that's not on their radar to add.

LittleLionLeone wrote: »

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

They don't even need to spend that much time or energy. Just add an option to block guild invites. I can already block duel requests and other things; it shouldn't be this difficult or take this many years to fix something so easy.

I would imagine that the devs are worried about push back from guilds if they added an option officially to block guild invites. That or it's just something that's not on their radar to add.

Every properly big MMO like WoW has the option to block this, as well as the other stuff like duels. Don't know why it's not an option in the game by default, same with friend invite spam for streamers and the need to auto block friend invites.

Soarora wrote: »

I think the fact that someone can say “guild invite spam” and we all know exactly what guild it is, is pretty telling, even if they are operating within what’s currently allowed.

It may be within what's currently allowed for guild recruitment, but it's causing continuing annoyance and interruption to other players and that surely is not allowed.

It's not the kind of situation in which we can be told we have to ask the guilds not to do it and then report them if they don't stop, as I don't consider them the kind of players I want to engage with in any kind of interaction. I expect ZOS to put a stop to it, pure and simple.

In my opinon, it doesn't matter if they are botting or not. They are disrupting the server so much that there have been multiple threads about it. Disrupting the peace of the players should not be allowed.

Soarora wrote: »

I don't know any guilds randomly sending out invites except for them. It'd be similar etiquette to sending friend requests to strangers. When I ask people to join my guild I talk to them. If they wanted to join but have guild invites blocked, I could just send the recruitment link and they can apply.

Exactly, and their one of the biggest guild groups on PC/NA. I'm sure they would absolutely complain. But I have gotten other random invites to other guilds but I know those are probably newer players wanting to build up their guild.

Random guild invites are a inefficient way to build a guild I know, but idk I just feel like people would complain if they gave the option to auto decline/ignore them. At that point why not just get rid of the mechanic entirely because most people would always ignore random invites because of the spammers.

SilverBride wrote: »

In my opinon, it doesn't matter if they are botting or not. They are disrupting the server so much that there have been multiple threads about it. Disrupting the peace of the players should not be allowed.

And I agree it shouldn't matter, but I doubt ZOS would bother to do anything otherwise.

I just don't think the issue is mainstream enough to be on the devs radar yet. Sure there's a few threads on here and Kevin and other mods have responded but it's usually only to ask people to send them video proof or names of the guilds so they can send it to support.

Stuff like repeated teabagging happens all the time so yeah they finally addressed that by saying if someone asks you to stop, you stop or be punished.

Most people just turn a blind eye to the invite spam and go on about their business after declining.

Being able to manually invite someone to a guild has its purpose and uses. As a gm and officer I dont want to see that go away.

One of the issues here is that this could be somone that isnt an office or gm of the guild trying to get the guild disbanded by ZOS.

Not trying to say it isnt an issue. Just trying to point out that, just like the imitation guild not so long ago reported on these forums, there could be other factors at play that complicate things.

Pevey wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Being able to manually invite someone to a guild has its purpose and uses. As a gm and officer I dont want to see that go away.

One of the issues here is that this could be somone that isnt an office or gm of the guild trying to get the guild disbanded by ZOS.

Not trying to say it isnt an issue. Just trying to point out that, just like the imitation guild not so long ago reported on these forums, there could be other factors at play that complicate things.

Extremely unlikely. This is their well-known MO. They use this shady recruitment tactic that naturally nets more new players and players returning after long breaks (because they are more likely to have a guild slot open). The way to go up the ranks in the guild is to recruit more members. The guild itself provides the automated tool. The minions actually doing it were probably recruited into the guild as brand new players and have been totally indoctrinated at that point. All the members who were not indoctrinated and see the guild for what it is leave quickly or are kicked, which is why they constantly need so many new members. It operates like a cult. And it's all very much on purpose.

I am curious. Can you dm me the name of said guild? Or which wayshrines they park at?

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Pevey wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Being able to manually invite someone to a guild has its purpose and uses. As a gm and officer I dont want to see that go away.

One of the issues here is that this could be somone that isnt an office or gm of the guild trying to get the guild disbanded by ZOS.

Not trying to say it isnt an issue. Just trying to point out that, just like the imitation guild not so long ago reported on these forums, there could be other factors at play that complicate things.

Extremely unlikely. This is their well-known MO. They use this shady recruitment tactic that naturally nets more new players and players returning after long breaks (because they are more likely to have a guild slot open). The way to go up the ranks in the guild is to recruit more members. The guild itself provides the automated tool. The minions actually doing it were probably recruited into the guild as brand new players and have been totally indoctrinated at that point. All the members who were not indoctrinated and see the guild for what it is leave quickly or are kicked, which is why they constantly need so many new members. It operates like a cult. And it's all very much on purpose.

I am curious. Can you dm me the name of said guild? Or which wayshrines they park at?

I run into them all the time in Daggerfall. I hear they move around some though, but I've seen them by the wayshrine in Daggerfall at least 10 times over 5 plus years. Same guild. Same BS that should have been stopped years ago.

ZOS needs to disband all "TGC" guilds (y'all know the ones) and ban their leaders for requiring this AFK guild spam, as well as the members who are doing the AFK auto-spam recruiting, a requirement for retaining their guild status. They won't, but they should.

"[somethingsomething]SucksToes" (who changed to a new "bat"-themed character after I pointed that gross name out here last time) has been camping the Vulkhel Guard wayshrine on the same level 3 character for 12+ hours a day for weeks now, never moving, never leaving, just doing whatever bot thing they're doing to keep from getting idled out. I log in and out on various accounts as free time allows during my days, and I see them every time. There's also a "gecko" person from the same guild group hanging out right in front of the Daggerfall wayshrine. I block everyone I see in that guild group and have all guild slots full, so they can't spam me, thankfully. I take screenshots every time I see these jerks, since those are date/timestamped and can show ZOS that these jerks are AFK-lurking for hours at a time, or otherwise have a habit of this poor behavior.

I have mixed feelings about this.

First of all, I don't care for the guild and I dislike the invite spam. I wish they'd stop.

But..

I have accidentally joined this guild in vet trials via the group finder and they have a lot of *really* nice members who really love the guild. Because their members were so nice I thought I might stick around, but I hated the way it was managed and left after less than a day. This was last year.

I was also a fake member for about a week last month. I accepted an unsolicited invite from them on my storage account just to assist with fast travel. And while I wasn't even tempted to stay, I saw that they herded in a lot of ESO players who would have otherwise been lost. They gave them a lot of help and direction.

So I tend to think ZOS sees it through a similar lens in that they don't love what's happening, but they see a positive side they don't want to eliminate. Some ESO players really need that nudge.