I was into the second sentence when my brain hurt too much to continue. Formatting helps.

EDIT: I meant to say second line. I didn't make it to the third line.

It might be unpopular but I wouldn't mind seeing a long cool down period upon switching Guilds. It would make people doing so take this a lot more seriously.

CatalinaWineMixer2 wrote: »

It might be unpopular but I wouldn't mind seeing a long cool down period upon switching Guilds. It would make people doing so take this a lot more seriously.

Maybe an eventual cooldown after multiple rapid guild changes would make sense.

Thing is there are also legitimate reasons to leave and change guilds. My long-time trading guild suddenly collapsed this year and I was quite glad I could leave and immediately apply to a new one. Sometimes during events with a lot of drops, I temporarily join an additional trading guild to handle the extra items that I'm listing (with a mutual understanding that this is ok).

I've also joined guilds in the past and found their chat so offensive that I left immediately. Or found that they are not very active, or members are in cliques and don't engage outside of that, or they have some requirement that wasn't mentioned that I'm not willing to meet, or any number of things that I couldn't have known beforehand.

Having too strict of a cooldown merely for switching guilds would be frustrating for people who are doing so for legitimate reasons.

[Edit for formatting].

DenverRalphy wrote: »

All too often when joining guilds, you take one good look at the MoTD that you can't see during the application phase, or witness their in game guild chat (or their discord chat), and realize "Nope, not for me". It can be for whatever reason. Whether their issue is serious or petty, doesn't matter.

Agree and I think it should be no one's business why someone decides to leave a guild - many likely leave exactly to avoid being involved in dramas.
If I join a guild I got invited to and I find out, before even speaking, that if I express my opinions I'll get blacklisted or reported by all members, then I just leave and prefer to not give a word.

Also, some guilds have like a "3 days kicked" policy: if you don't appear online for 3 days straight you get kicked and this is often made known after already having joyned. So I wouldn't blame anyone who reads this requirements and insta-leave if they know they only play during weekends.

I'll add one more thing - the onus cannot only be placed on players to basically only join guilds that they know are going to be a good fit. If players are to be punished for leaving a guild, then guilds must also share a responsibility to not send blind invites and to communicate with potential new members, and to provide complete and fully updated and accurate information on requirements and expectations up front and to take steps to ensure that new members are included.

Many guilds do not do so and this is a big reason why people join and leave.

Reasons why I've left a guild ASAP after joining over the past 12 years:

—Slurs in guild chat, usually racial slurs. GM's were cool with this. This was absolutely NOT mentioned at any point when I was considering said guilds.

—Infamous abusive trolling drama-monger was a guild officer. They behaved the exact same way as an officer that they did as a player, with more power-tripping.

—Requirements for being a member that were not disclosed to me in the application process. (Most egregious example: the GM herself told me when I asked that there were no activity or monetary requirements. As soon as I accepted her invite, she DM'ed me that I'd be kicked if I didn't log in at least once a week and donate or sell 250K per week, "no excuses." I was doing a lot of traveling for work at the time and was already upfront with her that I needed a guild that wouldn't be a second job.)

—Guild's stated focus was very outdated. They no longer were the type of guild they said they were when sending me the invite. (I was looking for trade; they had stopped that and were now a PVP guild, which I have no interest in.)

—GM was very obviously only running a guild to stroke their own ego and was getting high off "controlling" the members and using them as free therapy. To be perfectly honest here, OP's behavior with wanting to hold new members hostage for a while and demanding they fill out a form to explain why they're leaving is skewing far too closely to this for me to want to join any guild OP's involved with.

armyveterab2012 wrote: »

It is in my opinion that guilds should have a reason on wanting to leave aspect that should be given to players that want to leave a guild because its really disheartening when you recruit and get new memebers for your guild or any guild and then they leave the guild <snip>

Maybe send the leaving player a mail politely asking them why they left so suddenly, as you'd like to know how to improve your recruitment process.

If players are joining then almost immediately leaving again frequently enough that it's become a problem for you it might be worth reviewing how your advertising and recruitment process compares to the reality of being in the guild. What are you promising them and obviously cannot offer? What requirements don't you tell new members until you've already got them in the guild?

Also, there's nothing stopping you from contacting those players to ask them why they left, unless of course they've also blocked you.

I really don't think locking them into a guild for a fixed period of time after they realise they made a mistake joining will do anything useful for anyone involved. It would just annoy them and even if they were locked out of leaving you can't force them to participate. In fact it would probably be best for you if they don't, if they just turn off guild chat and don't show up to any of your activities, because if they do they have absolutely nothing to lose by being as disruptive as possible, as long as they don't go so far they risk getting banned from the game. What are you going to do, kick them out the guild?

For what it's worth I've joined and then quickly left a guild a few times and my reasons are very similar to the ones other people gave:

1) The guild isn't what they said it was. For example they told me voice chat is optional and rarely used, when actually it's the main way they communicate, or they said they can help with anything I'm stuck on but will only actually help with trial achievements and only for trials they were already scheduled to do.

2) Guild chat is a constant screaming argument and/or stupid drama that never seems to end. Or one or more people constantly spamming "jokes", including asking anyone dumb enough to need to ask a question about anything at all.

3) Rules I wasn't told about before joining. Like the trade guild who said they had no sales requirements but did require you to log in multiple times per day to refill any slots ASAP after something sold, or the guild who said their events were optional but spammed me with threats if I was online and not participating, even when I said I had to log off in 5 minutes. (I joined, left 5 minutes in as promised and apparently that was worse.)

There was also one I really hope was a one off. The leader's preferred way of referring to members was the R word, and he made it very clear he meant it. I think he was going for a drill sergeant persona and massively missed the mark. (What made it even more absurd is for everyone else there was a no swearing policy so strict you could get in trouble for saying 'bloody' unless it was obvious you were literally talking about something covered in blood.)