Wednesday 4 March 2009

Guild Bank Robbery

On Monday evening we had a couple of great raids. We finished off Naxx 25 (horsies, dragon and the big guy), then went and had a quickie OS (killing all the dragons because we didn't have a lot of time). I goofed up a bit with our suicide kings so settled in Dalaran to sort it. The rest of the guild went off fighting in IF defending the king against a horde invasion who were probably quite surprised to see a fully raid buffed reception party when they stormed the throne room!

Anyway - I got a whisper from someone who said he was one of our Council member's bank alt and could he get an invite. I invited him and promoted him without a thought. Twenty minutes later I decided to go to IF to see if there were any horde left. There weren't. Then I decided to go check how many Abyss Crystals we had in the GB to see if I could ask for some for an enchant of a new staff I won that evening.

The bank was empty. I thought it was an add-on of mine and asked in Officer chat for someone to check. The new bank alt logged off very quickly. It was true. The bank had been completely cleared (all 4 tabs) and 500g (the limit for Council withdrawals) had been taken.


Three Council members immediately submitted tickeets to a GM. The new Council alt disappeared from the guild list (showing the character had been deleted).

I felt sick. Violated. Hurt. Stupid. My son said it was one of the oldest tricks in the books. Everyone was really nice to me, but I didn't feel a lot better. I've not slept properly for the last 2 nights. The poor Council member whose name was used to make the alt felt awful too.

Speculation raged... could it have been a guildie (I seriously doubted it), was it someone with a grudge against us (we don't let people aged under 25 in unless they know someone in the guild), .... all sorts.

On Tuesday morning a GM contacted one of the Council and took more information and told us that it would be escalated and investigated.

This afternoon (Wednesday) we got news that all our items had been returned to the Guild Master (a level 1 alt of one of our members - non Council). We had 5 or 6 pages of mails containing all we had lost (but no gold).

I am so relieved. We have put new policies in place now so that an alt can be invited to the guild, but that the Council member who it belongs to must promote it. We only have on bank tab that guild members can withdraw from and they can only take one stack a day. We are trying to decide if we need to limit Council alts at all, but some of our Council alts are currently the Council member's key raid character so that seems a bit harsh.


It has been one of those life lessons but the guild was fantastic - pulling together, offering to farm more stuff, craft things, pay money. It's been wonderful in that respect. But please, please review your guild's policies on inviting alts and also on the rights your Officers and members have to withdraw from the guild bank (in particular gold, as this was not refunded by the lovely GMs).

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ouch! The guild I was in when guild banks first became available got stung like this early on. Since then, if a player wants an alt inviting they have to request the invite on their main character and give the name of the alt, then switch for the invite. I'm glad you got your bank items back quickly and I really hope that the thief gets a permanent ban.

T.J. said...

Our guild does it the same way by having the main request the invite and giving the name of the alt before switching and then whispering the officer with the alt character. Sometimes I even have fun with it by asking the alt something about the main character that wouldn't be too common knowledge. Anyway, don't feel bad about it, you weren't the first person that's been tricked, and you won't be the last. I'm really happy that the GMs were able to get the guild stuff back.

Anonymous said...

I am really happy for you that you got the stuff back <3

Dont talk to me about guild banks though as i hate them and my last guildmaster abused our old one but thats a different story all together.

Anonymous said...

How awful for you :(

I'm glad that in the end your guild got the items back, even though the gold wasn't.

It's really too bad that people will stoop to such a low level and abuse the trust of others.