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Letter from a disappointed, ex-member to the guild: Ethereal Guardians.
Ayan1750
Member Posts: 3
I don’t talk about this stuff at all, but I was completely flabbergasted at the way and the reasons (which I will be mentioning below) I was kicked from Ethereal Guardians (henceforth shall be referred to as EG) last night. I was kicked by officer#1. His reasons were and I quote: “I never liked your attitude. Like that one time we went dungeoning in CoE, and you laughed at me when I died.”
It all started when I first joined EG. EG is a massive guild of some 500 members. So you can imagine how hectic guild chat can be. I am a recluse and a quiet person, so small-talking isn’t my forte. Over time, I learned who doesn’t do dungeons/PvP/WvW/world events etc. and I ended up just blocking them because they added nothing to my Guild Wars 2 experience, and they buried other people's advertisements who asked for members for a dungeon run for example. They just talked about unimportant things (unimportant to ME. I am not belittling what they talked about). Makes sense so far, yes? Except for one little mishap on my part… one of the people I blocked was an officer (a high ranking person in the guild).
EG does Tequatl everyday except for Saturday. Part of their strategy is having a “zerg group” that melees Tequatl the whole fight. This one day I was standing further away from the group, and I received a whisper from officer#2 asking me to join the zerg group. My response was: “Relax, Tequatl hasn’t spawned yet.” because Tequatl really hasn't spawned yet. Apparently that was enough of a reason for her to bring up the issue to even higher ranking officers. One of those high ranking officers who tried to contact me was the aforementioned blocked officer.
I received a whisper from another officer#3 asking me if I have officer#4 blocked. I said yes and asked why. He asked me to unblock him and also asked me why I did it. I gave him the reason I mentioned to you in my second paragraph. He told me I am not supposed to block officers. I took heed and unblocked him, and kept him unblocked. I even messaged officer#4 and personally apologized and gave him the reason as to why I blocked him. He responded with and I quote "It's all good." One example of another officer who spamed guild chat with stuff - albeit, sometimes with stuff that is actually related to the guild - is the guild leader himself. Other times he spammed guild chat with things like and I’m paraphrasing here since I don’t remember what was said exactly (goes to show you how unimportant it was): “If you want to do a good job of meleeing, try and not be dead - Phineas Phoe to Nalgorath” (I am unsure of both the spelling and the names of the people mentioned in that quote). He repeated it some 10 times in a row in guild chat, quoting someone else’s saying. What matters isn't the conents of what he said, but the fact that what he spammed the guild chat with was something that didn't need to be repeated over and over.
The guild also ran lottery regularly. One time - to celebrate the guild’s anniversary - they made a massive lotto which its name slips my mind. I talked to the person in charge and I asked her “what does the guild do with the rest of the gold that doesn’t go into the pot?” Normal question, correct? Except to her it wasn’t. Her answer to that question was “I don’t know.” So I thought to myself: how can you run something, and you have no clue what happens to the gold that sits in the guild’s bank? I tried to talk her into finding out what happens to the gold, and she kept telling me that she trusted the officers, and that she wasn’t going to ask them. Basically she kept saying she trusted them blindly even after I literally told her that. Apparently this whole conversation with her was enough of a reason to report it to the high ranking officers.
Last night during guild missions on Thursday 8:50pm server time, we had completed a mission and were moving onto the next one. People had already ported to a different map. Someone linked the waypoint in guild chat, but I missed it because I logged out real quick to fix a sound bug. I came back online and asked in guild chat “Someone please link waypoint.” I waited for a good minute or so, and no one responded. I asked again “Someone please link the waypoint.” And yet again, no response. So I repeat it about 10 times over hoping to get someone’s attention (remember the guild leader spam? Except my spam was related to something we were doing at the time, and I did it for an actual reason). Finally, 2 people linked it. Not a minute later, I noticed everyone’s names went from orange (the game displays guild members with orange names) to green (everybody else shows up green to you). I sent a message to someone who was running guild missions at the time, asking them to re-invite me because I thought it was a joke. That person tells me he isn’t an officer. So I started talking on TeamSpeak (TS is required for guild missions) and asked them to re-invite me to the guild. Officer#1 pulled me to a private channel - which I am guessing is the officer’s channel - and this is where the worst part comes.
He started off by saying “I never liked your attitude.” I asked him, “What attitude? I almost never talk in guild chat, much less in TeamSpeak.” Little does he know that it’s hard to convey tone in text chat anyways. Then he brings up the whole situation of me laughing at him when he died in CoE when dungeoning together. I actually giggled at that remark when he said it. Of course, I tried to respond to him by saying that “who doesn’t laugh from time to time when someone dies in dungeons?” But unfortunately I kept getting cut off by him. I didn’t think much of it, and let him talk. Then he started bringing up the previous things that happened, like the lottery thing. He tells me and I quote “How dare you question our leadership and harrass the person in charge of the lotto about what we do with the gold?” I reply politely: “I am not questioning it, I just come from other MMO’s where guilds make their gold bank public to their members, and I was just curious as to what is being done with the gold.” That wasn’t a good enough of an answer to him, and he just brushed it aside. And if I really was harrassing the person in charge of the lotto as office#1 put it, she would have blocked me. I promise you that she doesn't have me blocked even to this day. This went on for a minute or two. As I was defending myself, I get muted by the guild leader and then the officers continue to bash me for another minute. Finally he cuts them off saying “It doesn’t matter anymore, he’s muted. Have a fun time in GW2 and good luck.” and proceeded to ban me from TeamSpeak.
I tried to reach out to them in-game, but all the officers have had me blocked soon after I was kicked/banned, except for officer#2. I attempted to explain the situation to her, and she straight up tells me “You are not getting back in the guild.” I responded back saying “I am not asking to get back in, I just want to ask you if the way I was treated and kicked fair or not?” She replied back with "You were given warnings in the past." I tell her "I was NEVER officially been warned that if I do something again, I will be kicked." The only thing that even comes close to a warning is officer#3 telling me not to block officers again. I failed to reason with her and she wished me good luck with my future endeavors. I wished her the same back, and that’s where it all ended.
I will say it again: I hate no one in EG. I have nothing against them. They are not bad people. EG is a fantastic guild. The problem lies in the tight-knit group who lead the guild, and if you aren’t good - and I mean GOOD - friends with them then you’re just a disposable member where whatever you say means nothing, and their word stands regardless of how unjust and unfair it is because they completely trust what they have to say to each other, when they haven't heard/completely disregard your side of the story
I apologize for the long rant. I was extremely disappointed and found it unfortunate for me that things ended that way in that guild. The main reason for this post was BECAUSE I wasn’t able to reason with the leaders of the guild. So I am putting it on here so they can see exactly what happened with me and to get the opinions of you, the readers.
Comments
There are trees outside and a shining sun, or rain where I am. Try it out. Baby steps.
let it all out man, let it alllll out... Then take a moment to breathe and realize that nobody cares about it. It's not important. A game is just a game. A guild is just a bunch of gamers and gamers usually are just a bunch of assholes due to too much insignificant self entitlement.
Plus Ethereal Guardians is a very, very gay guild name.
Sadly big guilds like this usually involve douchebaggery at some point, it is just the nature of the beast. When a guild is so big it tends to have way to many cliques and more often than not is run military/corporation style.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Just about every big guild is ran by a clique. Usually its all the same thing, if you're not one of the clique, you don't mean anything. Smaller guilds are far more fun then bigger ones to me. Don't worry about EG, terrible name and all, you will find a guild with some good people.
In a world of sharp knives, you would be a spoon.
And now they can all laugh at you for posting here, because nobody with common sense takes their guild drama to a forum like this.
Like officer 1 said, you have an attitude problem.
Welcome to GW2 where guilds persuade the whole guild to pay to switch servers (don't need this with mega server now) and then kick you out of the guild with out even saying anything. Log off one day and log in the next and your no longer a member.
Now I have my own guild so I get a little extra storage space and no intention of adding anybody else!
For me GW2 is now a single player game with other players that come and go!
After reading all that I had to wonder why you even cared after they kicked you. Clearly you weren't 100% into the guild (blocking people, etc.)
The few times I found myself in such a situation, having to ignore people, not feeling at home and more, I knew it was time to leave.
Some people leading guilds and in officer positions (or the brown-nosers) are downright trash. They forget it's a game and act online the way they could never in real life.
The worst is when a regular member logs in, says hello and hardly anyone greets back. Or asks a question and gets ignored.
An officer (or higher) logs in and the whole damn chat comes alive: "heeey sweetie, how's it going???" or they're so annoyingly present in the chat (LOOK AT ME, I'M POPULAR) just like in the examples you gave.
But if you dare do the same, ho boy...
I hope you find decent people to play with.
Is it just me or anyone else understand why he got kicked...?
I agree with the guild. If you are going to join such a guild for grouping. Then be part of the group or gtfo. You want to participate but don't want to be a team player. Just join the rest of your group or leave, seriously. Any raid guild that I have ever been in what you did was a insta kick. They don't tolerate bullshit like that. it's bad for guild morale and a lot of other people are where they are suppose to be yet you are an individual and don't want to be there. Explain to me why 10- 20 - 30 - 40- 50- 60 people should tolerate such behavior. If everyone did what you did when it was time to go everyone would have been spread out. Saying "Wait, wait, wait."
You admitted that you were a smart ass when they asked you to join the melee group. Instead of joining it. Even more reason to kick you. Seeing the picture yet? Seeing what's wrong with it? Those officers might be assholes. Though there is nothing unreasonable about expecting someone to be a team player if they want to participate in an event.
Now here's the really good part. They have 500 people according to you. Right or wrong the guild benefited you more than you to them.
You sir, hit the nail on the head with that. That is EXACTLY how it was in that guild. The officers and girls got attention like crazy. Everyone else gets ignored.
I get what you are saying, but as I said, the guild does Tequatl a lot. That was a one time thing where I stood further away from the group, and it wasn't like it was intentional either. I just happened to not be paying attention. I don't see how me doing that that ONE time was such a big problem. Do you people ever think that everyone is a person, and they make mistakes? Why are most people here making it out as if I wanted to be an asshole and a smartass on purpose? Is it all white or black? No gray area?
1. Way to long..
2. I am sure you feel like it wasn't a good reason or even correct to be kicked from the guild..
3. What do you expect to happen now? Because it is not going to cause a mass exodus from the guild, nor is it going to stop everyone else from joining. Plus now that you wrote this the chances of them taking you back have dropped quite a bit.
Overall, it normally is best to just let it go. It is a game. Most likely you will never meet any of them in real life, so get over it and move on.
I don't really know the people you reference. Or the situation specifically. While my post might have come off a bit dick'ish. I can sympathize and say I don't like large guilds for the reasons you listed. Matter of fact it usually takes me a long time to find a guild in a given game. Mainly because I want to avoid situations like you describe. I've been pretty lucky as far as that goes.
I think as large structured group events goes. Most places I have been didn't take to kindly to individuals doing their own thing or not paying attention when we were staging or at any point. I know it's just a game. But everyone else is where they are suppose to be. I assume that's the case here? I could be wrong. I think stuff like this is pretty black and white. That said even then I've seen passes given. Boiled down to the RL's mood.
The other stuff.... Exactly why I avoid large guilds.
If you join a guild, you accept their terms and "way of doing things". You can't decide to cherry-pick and block the rest, because sooner or later the group will realise that you don't really fit-in.
It appears that EG reached that point in your case.
Your opinion of them is irrelevant to your continued membership, but if you want to be a member of that group, their opinion of you is vitally important. It's a large guild, which most probably means it will not struggle to attract new members. So if peon #437 has "attitude problems", they can easily be replaced. All large human organisations work that way.
It's understandable that you look to other people for support after being forcibly removed from your home guild. I'll pray for you and others in this situation as well. Perhaps the guild was just too large and you would be more comfortable with a smaller guild. Or perhaps you don't really want all that business going on anyway. You can always go do Pet Battles in WoW. Or even join a Christian led guild which is also my home, SOLAguild.com. We're here for you! Hoping for the very best to EG and the OP!
I agree that the "I never liked your attitude when you laughed because I died" is a severe case of an officer being butthurt.
However you randomly blocked people "who didn't contribute to my gw2 experience" - that speaks for your attitude problem.
I'm still a Gamemaster on a RO server that used to have 4000 players. I can tell you trying to organize people and a few hundred of them will give you attitude as a thank you for your efforts makes clicking the banhammer button a neccessary routine.
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