Revisiting the Ally Rank

It's been mentioned in a few places, the thought of reviewing and potentially revising our ally list, as well as our definition of the Ally rank.

Let's kick off this discussion. Please state your thoughts/opinions on what we should do with the Ally rank, as well as reasons.

Thank you for starting this thread Kitty

I mentioned this in Tommy's thread, but here is my official opinion on the Ally Rank.

To me, Ally is a rank for members of Guilds that we officially consider to be Ally guilds.  At this time, as far as I know, the only two guilds that we consider Allies are [Liars] and [RLR].  There is still [BOOM] but Captain and Seamon have graciously decided to join us as permanent members

We can consider adding other guilds to our Ally list, but at this time that is it.  If a member who is marked Ally is not a member of one of those guilds, we need to talk to them, give them a few days to contact their friends and update their friends list, then they should be removed from the guild.

Even someone like Andrea, who I love dearly, should not be immune to this rule.  Andrea has started a guild of her own.  If she would like to petition [AoL] to have her new guild added to our list of Allies we can consider that, however at this time she is not an Ally of [AoL] and should not be in our Ally rank.

This is just my opinion.  Feel free to comment, shoot me down, revise, or say I'm totally off my rocker

I agree with what Beau said. All we do when we let people we like join as Allies when they're not in an allied guild is let people with one foot out the door keep the other foot in, just in case they need something or get bored.

Either you're AOL or you're not. If we want people who are not in allied guilds coming and going, then I think that's an indication that we need to re-visit our rep rules. The Ally rank has a clear purpose.

I think I have to agree with Beau here. We shouldn't let people abuse the ally rank when it wasn't intended for letting people get away for not repping and staying in the guild.

Along the lines of that, I don't think we should be adding/keeping Allies that never rep us or even contact us ever. As far as I'm aware [Liars] and [BOOM] are the only guilds who have members that actually make contact with us and even rep for a short time on occasion (usually for missions or ask for dungeon party). If it were not for the fact that I've heard that [RLR] is an ally guild I would have never known they were. To my knowledge, it appears that they do not make any sort of contact with us at all. We might want to possibly rethink keeping them as an ally or figure out a way to get them to be in better contact with AoL so they feel more like allies.

well i gotta disagree alot of things first of all.. ther is contacts in rlr ( me for one) we are talking tyhwith them and some of thier members help out on sundays gms.also about not beign in laly guild... ther is aroubnd7-15 allies that were ally in gw1 but arent that in gw2 ( that also appplies on andrea). we cannot go on 100% we love oyu but youre not on ally guild atm so bb ... that would cause alot of ppls to rethink if they want to be part of us anymore....... os if this is gonna happen it need to wisely revisoned before.

Also, (I forgot to add) I especially believe that aiming for having good contact when making new allies with other guilds is important. Otherwise they would be no better than having random ally members who are allies just cause so they conveniently use us.

If Andrea wants to keep her guild as an ally, she's gotta put forth effort to be a good ally like Liars and Boom and of course we ourselves would need to put forth effort to be good allies her guild. Same thing goes for us with our other allies, otherwise we are no better than our fellow Ally abusing allies.

ok thanks for straightening that out for me Dia

also andrea is good ally! she helps out alot on sunday gms and other stuff

I would support Andrea as an Ally, because of what she does for Guild missions.  I am just saying that we should not use Ally as a catch all for just people we like or are friends with.

Not really sure what Dia is saying at the end there - that we shouldn't tell people they have to rep us so they don't want to leave??

as I said before I want to keep the allied rank for members of allied guilds but I'd also like to allow any who help with the sunday guild missions to have that rank. Other than that, say when a member leaves, I don't think we should just move them to ally. It could go badly for us if we start this ball rolling.

Yeah id like ally rank to be what it was intended for, allies. Could broaden the range and say allies to the guild for exceptions like Andrea

Tonight we temporarily re-added Tommy to guild for gms, then he left again - I'm thinking we can maybe keep with something like this for GMs only for people who don't fit the ally rank?

Why not re-purpose one of the existing ranks for an Allied-Gm rank, it lets the ally rank stay for allies, the allied gm rank can be for those who JUST help gms, if they dont help out for gms within a set duration of time, then they get kicked. Allied-GM rank lets them know where they stand with us, and its easier for us to keep rank thinned down if people just sit and idle in that rank for no good reason.

getting rid of the allies who help us in gms just because they are not in an allied guild will hurt us in the long run, sunday morning gms thrive on allies to help us, get rid of them and we will end up losing even more people because we cannot maintain gms for sunday morning. Unless we want to just be a american based guild, then thats a different discussion.

allrighty.. i would wanna know who keeps telling ppls about these conversations on the officer forums?i got several contact today about the ally system from ppls whoo have no acceess to the officer forums.....

B E E Z wrote:Tonight we temporarily re-added Tommy to guild for gms, then he left again - I'm thinking we can maybe keep with something like this for GMs only for people who don't fit the ally rank?

Ok I hate to say it but I don't like this at all. Tommy left, he didn't want to be a part of us anymore. Maybe I'm just a bit annoyed by the way he left, saying the guild wasn't willing to party with him when the only time I ever saw him asking for parties is when he wanted someone to hold a place for his arah sales. Him coming back for guild missions last night wasn't to help us, it was so he could get his rewards. He left the guild again after it? That kinda rubs me the wrong way. I say no way. He wants another guild he can do the missions with them. I know this sounds kinda harsh but why are we doing this for him?

d-shadow wrote:allrighty..   i would wanna know who keeps telling  ppls about these conversations  on the officer forums?i got several contact today about the ally system from ppls whoo have no acceess to the officer forums.....

Please remember what is said here stays here.

Blank De Ratche wrote:

B E E Z wrote:Tonight we temporarily re-added Tommy to guild for gms, then he left again - I'm thinking we can maybe keep with something like this for GMs only for people who don't fit the ally rank?

Ok I hate to say it but I don't like this at all.  Tommy left, he didn't want to be a part of us anymore.  Maybe I'm just a bit annoyed by the way he left, saying the guild wasn't willing to party with him when the only time I ever saw him asking for parties is when he wanted someone to hold a place for his arah sales.   Him coming back for guild missions last night wasn't to help us, it was so he could get his rewards.  He left the guild again after it?   That kinda rubs me the wrong way.   I say no way. He wants another guild he can do the missions with them.  I know this sounds kinda harsh but why are we doing this for him?  

I can see where you're coming from here, but just a few things:

He left right after because I told him to, since he's not an ally or a member. He was just meant to be there temporarily.

Also, this isn't something I'd just propose for him..I'd say this for anybody that left on good terms (not kicked out, didn't leave in a giant huff)...I mean look at Andrea. Yes I understand the morning missions actually need help, but isn't this kinda what we're doing for her?


Here's my take on things - Having more people at GMs is a good thing, in my opinion. Tommy is still friends with a lot of people in the guild. We're not up against our max number of people in guild. What's the harm in letting people just temporarily join in? Regardless of motives (wanting to help vs wanting to get rewards), having more people around does make things more fun IMO. No need to shun people just because AoL didn't offer what they wanted from a guild. Considering we're pretty slack at getting stuff organized, you can't blame someone for wanting to join a guild that does things like Tommy's guild, which is like a hardcore dungeon guild.

Just my 2c but if this bothers people I can let Tommy know that was a one-time thing.

OK, Tommy and Andrea would fall under exceptions to the rule.  What about the rule.  We can talk about exceptions later.

In this case aren't the exceptions the things causing the change? If we allow exceptions then there's nothing to change. I'd say whatever we decide for people like Tommy and Andrea should become the rule..otherwise there is no point in having a rule at all.

That is true Beez!    That is why we brought this up.  I am solid in my opinion of above.  Andrea and Tommy are not Allies.  If we have people that join for Guild missions then maybe they should be added as friends and only invited temporarily.  OR!  We could make a Guild Mission rank.

Oh, Diablo... I did talk to Andrea and Tommy about this since it concerns them.  I'm not sure of who else may have been talking about this thread to other allies.

Seems like Ratche was against the idea of temporarily adding people...unless that was specific for Tommy?

I have yet to weigh in on the ally topic because I am still deciding how I feel about the rank and how we use it.

However, something far more important has come to light in this thread, so I'm going to go ahead and comment on that for now:

Andrea and Tommy and all other allies are not officers, and thus should not be told of this conversation.  I'm really starting to feel like what we say here isn't respected for the privacy that we're told we should expect here.  It's one of the big officer expectations, and yet information that belongs amongst the officers is being shared with non officers?

It doesn't matter if it concerns them.  They are not officers.  Period.  They are not privy to this discussion, and have no say in the matter.

This is a reminder to EVERYBODY here, regardless of what rank you are in the officer circle.  This is happening too much, on this and other issues, and the justifications that are being given are weak and disrespectful.  If someone is unable to respect officer privacy, they should not be an officer.  Of any rank.

Sorry if anyone finds these words harsh, but we are making too many excuses and allowances for people who are leaking information from a forum where we are supposed to feel safe speaking our mind.

Durnik wrote:Unless we want to just be a american based guild, then thats a different discussion.

That's something I've been very curious about. Now, don't ANYBODY get offended, I'm genuinely curious about this ...

I thought Blackgate was a North American server. As I understood it when I chose a server initially, there are North American servers, and there are European servers. But we have lots of people in Europe and other parts of the world, playing on our North American servers? If they want to play with more people in their time zones, wouldn't they have been better off choosing a European server and/or a European guild?

Or are they in weird transition areas, not serviced by NA or EU servers or something?

Or are they blended somehow and all play on the same megaservers?

I guess I never really understood why some guilds try to have international presence on what I THOUGHT was a north american server.

I am probably misunderstanding something. So if someone could kindly explain to me how it all works, it would be greatly appreciated.

kntty basically eu servers have theri own megaservers and na has their own.the na servers werent only for na players.i know many beside me chose to come to na servers bc had more friends in na servers thna eu servers.and for international presence id say maybe even 50% of them are for wvw that many guilds take so seriously XD

Kitty, I agree with you on non-officers should not be told of anything in the officer section and we need to respect/reinforce that rule. If stuff leaks out to the rest of the guild then we wont feel safe expressing concerns to the point

But I think that someone should at least tell andrea and tommy of this situation, eventually, when the time was right (like when we decided on ally rank and tell them theyre welcomed/unwelcomed/blahblahblah)

Kittynne wrote:I thought Blackgate was a North American server. As I understood it when I chose a server initially, there are North American servers, and there are European servers. But we have lots of people in Europe and other parts of the world, playing on our North American servers? If they want to play with more people in their time zones, wouldn't they have been better off choosing a European server and/or a European guild?

for that, there's a lot of reasons. gw1 didnt really separate regional servers you could just change the district while in game to go to a different region so lots of people would have lots of friends all over the world (i know I did atleast..) and to play together in gw2 they had to be on same server, so theres that. I dont know if its still a thing now, but NA servers were a lot popular because something about wvw having more dedicated guilds/ EU servers not being as social and having trouble on world events so NA servers became more popular for people. correct me if im wrong anyone

I fail to see how telling Tommy that the fate of his ally status is being discussed is leaking sensitive information.  It is not like I have given him anyone opinion but my own.  He asked me if I would make him an Ally and I told him that I would not at this time because it was being discussed, period!  I have never shared anyone's opinions or thoughts from this forum other than my own.  I do not believe that warning Andrea that we are reevaluating the status of all of our Allies is leaking anything sensitive either.  My opinion on this matter is the harshest of them all so far.  If anyone has anything to hide from Andrea it would be me.  Hey Andrea I am thinking of kicking you out.

I should not have told Andrea anything until a decision was made.

I would like to find a way where we don't have to kick people but still maintain what the ally rank is for. That's why I'm all for having a guild mission rank. I don't think that we should jump to any conclusions or hurt any feelings. A guild mission rank helps achieve this by letting them and us know exactly why they are with AoL. Some people feel that letting people sit as an ally rank lets them be in here with one foot out and don't feel we should allow that. I would like to see AoL keep trying to remain an international guild. To achieve this I feel we need to keep things how they are, and risk losing people who like AoL but do not like the direction it is going. Or we will have to change how we look at allies and the reasons some people are here and risk losing some of the people who are just in the guild to be there, not for any helpful reasons at all.

We all have friends we would hate to see go any way this is decided. We just need to find the best to minimize hurt feelings and the damage done to AoL and its reputation for the standard we hold to our roster and how we treat our members.

I think a GM rank would be no difference from having a second ally rank. If we did that then it would be 100% pointless to 'change' anything at all.

Also, if we want more people for Sunday GMs, then lets recruit more active players from EU/Oceanic timezone. If the majority of our members are allies (who are not allies for the purpose they were meant to be) for Sunday missions, then they are just abusing our ally system like any NA ally player (again, who is not an intended ally for the ranks purpose).

I am going to very blunt and even kind of harsh, but I feel AoL sucks at kicking people who are more than nobodies that no one cares about. Quite frankly, sometimes to maintain the goals of the guild that they were originally intended for you have to kick people. That's just how it is.

From what I've read, Ally rank was meant for Allies. Period. And making 'exceptions' defeats it's true purpose. Changing it's purpose means nothing will change. Making a GM rank means nothing will change other than one more 'ally' rank and it will probably grow whenever we have anyone 'we like' leave AoL. I very very strongly believe we need to learn how to let people go.

I know kicking people we care about is hard. But as much as we may love some of our allies who shouldn't be ally rank, we need to learn that we can't always keep them. Also, if they get offended by that we need to kick them then it's not our fault. They left. They shouldn't have even had the chance to become allies. It's not on us, it's on them for leaving AoL. If they still want to hang with AoL people, well they can add everyone as friends and still run with them. For GMs, if AoL is not full they can have a temporary invite to do them. Other guilds do that for random people all the time. I don't see why we'd say "no you can't help anymore" all because they aren't actually in AoL any longer.

I apologize for sounding harsh, but I really think we do need to let ally rank go back to it's original intention otherwise it'll just keep growing and taking spots that new active players could take.

I really like what Grimmz said above about how AoL basically has a holding tank for popular people (or people that joined from GW1 that haven't logged in for a gazillion years) that doesn't make much sense.

I also like her point that guilds do temporarily just invite random people to do GMs all the time, like if random people are just chilling in the area and came to see why there were 100 commander tags. I don't see why we should not do this just because we used to know them. Obviously the exception here would be if someone was kicked for being an asshole.

Nai wrote:I think a GM rank would be no difference from having a second ally rank. If we did that then it would be 100% pointless to 'change' anything at all.

Also, if we want more people for Sunday GMs, then lets recruit more active players from EU/Oceanic timezone. If the majority of our members are allies (who are not allies for the purpose they were meant to be) for Sunday missions, then they are just abusing our ally system like any NA ally player (again, who is not an intended ally for the ranks purpose).

I am going to very blunt and even kind of harsh, but I feel AoL sucks at kicking people who are more than nobodies that no one cares about. Quite frankly, sometimes to maintain the goals of the guild that they were originally intended for you have to kick people. That's just how it is.

From what I've read, Ally rank was meant for Allies. Period. And making 'exceptions' defeats it's true purpose. Changing it's purpose means nothing will change. Making a GM rank means nothing will change other than one more 'ally' rank and it will probably grow whenever we have anyone 'we like' leave AoL. I very very strongly believe we need to learn how to let people go.

I know kicking people we care about is hard. But as much as we may love some of our allies who shouldn't be ally rank, we need to learn that we can't always keep them. Also, if they get offended by that we need to kick them then it's not our fault. They left. They shouldn't have even had the chance to become allies. It's not on us, it's on them for leaving AoL. If they still want to hang with AoL people, well they can add everyone as friends and still run with them. For GMs, if AoL is not full they can have a temporary invite to do them. Other guilds do that for random people all the time. I don't see why we'd say "no you can't help anymore" all because they aren't actually in AoL any longer.

I apologize for sounding harsh, but I really think we do need to let ally rank go back to it's original intention otherwise it'll just keep growing and taking spots that new active players could take.

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I agree 100% even some of the zombies who haven't logged in in forever maybe should be sent a message then let go.

We try to recruit for that time zone but its doesnt always work out. Thats part of the reason Andrea left, she could not get enough new recruits. Saying to do it is one thing, Making it happen is another entirely. If we become strict on the ally rank, and cannot have a gm rank, then consider the possibility of losing the ability to do gms on sunday morning, resulting losing some of AoL's active members from that time zone simply because AoL turned into a place where they cannot have fun and achieve what they want. Continually inviting people each and every sunday will get annoying. Sure doing this might seem like a good idea to most of you, but try and think about how the current way benefits the people not from north america. I work 3rd shift and I get to easily play with both sides. the proposed solution as it currently stands will not solve any issues but just offer peace of mind to those wish to see everything followed exactly without worrying about how it affect others. I understand rules are there for a reason and ranks should be followed, but i strongly do not feel this is the right way about making changes.
We might suck at kicking some people, but as stated in another thread, AoL is mostly a social guild, not a true pvx guild. so whats the harm in letting friends stay.
At least a gm rank with a requirement to help out in gms every so often in a set amount of time helps reduce the clutter of allies who never rep us and if they do not wish to help in gms, then they will be kicked for that reason.They get a chance to stay and help, and if not... They know why they are kicked, we follow rank rules, and both parties prosper without losing old friends.

If we don't want to worry about having to kicking anyone, then what we really need to do is reevaluate the representation requirement rules, not allow exceptions with a GM rank or ally rank. Otherwise, we allow people to abuse AoL.

This is part of the purpose of this tread, to decide the requirements of the Ally rank.  Since reading many replies.  I've wavered back and forth a bit.  At this time, our main Ally rank has almost no requirements at all.  Those are members of Liars and RLR and maybe Bye; I've heard they still exist.  Liars do join us for missions, but as others have said we have a growing list of people who do participate in Guild Missions.  It is easy for me to track the Ally rank by Reping RLR and Liars to see if they are all members.  

However, keeping track of a random group of Allies that helps during missions will be more complicated.  Someone would have to take on the Job of keeping a track of how often they participate in missions.  They would have to participate like every other week to maintain that rank.  People who participate in Guild Missions is actually a more beneficial use than random people from Liar and RLR.  I think the only people from RLR now are a few officers.  We have more from Liars because of missions.

On the Guild Mission idea, I do not mind so bad having them as allies.  However, just keeping random friends marked as Ally after they left I do not like that so much.

OK, let's put the guild mission aside for a minute here...

I was one of the officer who raised that issue of misuse of the ally rank in the past. it was maybe spurred by Andrea leaving explaining that there was not enough peeps online at her times or that people were not responsive... I play more or less in her time because it's evening for me, and started spotting some of our members not repping AoL, and as I asked for explanations, it seems that some select members were allowed immunity (and that had nothing to do with GM)... So there I was, spotting members like Potchi, Midway, AJ and others not repping AoL because they were repping a guild that was doing something we do not do here (PvP, WvW, speed runs...).

And that was my original question... Why do we allow some members to not rep us where they are in another WvW or PvP focused guild? Why do we not allow other members to rep other guilds because they have "red pants fridays" over there? Our requirement is 100% with a tolerance for storage guilds. Not 100% until you decide you wanna WvW.

I also strongly believe that this method is against AoL development, as these people, instead of trying to develop WvW or PvP here in AoL, they do like electricity and choose the path of least resistance which is joining a guild that already has such activity in place. We've got examples of good peeps in the past like Kainis who was always willing to teach fractals to members, even on low levels where it would not benefit him...

I have also noticed when talking to those members who somehow do not rep us that they "forgot to rep back" when they finished with their farming/mapping/WvW/Jumping Puzzle guilds. We allow them to rep other guilds for other activities that are not popular in AoL but then they "forget" to rep back? That's kind of a lack of respect in my opinion.

Another issue, somehow linked to the reason Andrea left, is that if one doesn't rep, one doesn't see guild chat. Less eyes = Less chances to get a reply...

Now back on the guild mission topic. It is true that if we were more strict, we would probably lose some people for guild missions and it could hurt some other members... At the same time, if you think about it, the guild needs influence to be able to run guild missions. Yet, some choose to not rep us for other activities and give that influence to another "better" guild, then they only have to flick a switch and rep us again for mission time, get the benefits from the missions that OTHER members made possible by bringing influence to AoL, for then disappearing after they open the last mission's chest... And what about after expansion hits? Do you think there's a potential possibility that some members will leave AoL because we can't afford a guild hall? Guild hall that are bought with... Influence? That we get by having members actually rep us?

So while I do understand more people are better for guild missions, I believe the message we're sending is wrong. Maybe I'm old school, but in my basketball days, you could be the best player in the team, if you had skipped practice that week the coach would just bench you for the entire game that week-end. He'd let people who gave a shit have the play time they deserved, even if that meant losing the game or losing that "best" player. I also fear that if we continue this way, in the long rune, we're going to become one of those specialized guilds who do Big Worm or Teq only we'll be running guils missions...

I really like the points you made, Yurrlz. Your replies are always well thought-out <3

I especially like the point you made where allowing people to join specialty guilds (like WvW) removes any incentive to get it up and running in AoL.

hmmm maybe we should revisit the whole rep ppolicy. I'm totally stuck in GW1 mode where more than one guild was not an option. I know the reason we started it was the whole gw1 mentality and also wanting more influence, but maybe those reasons are not good enough anymore.