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Post by Miss Medicina on Apr 14, 2010 13:45:44 GMT -5
Well folks, over here in the US chapter of SAN, we have ourselves a little situation - one I've been dreading since the days of inviting 20-30 people a day into the guild.
We now have more than 500 members, with 323 active accounts.
Exactly how many members do we have? I have no idea. Due to Blizzard limitations, everything after 500 is a foggy haze of mystery.
Now, I suspected that would happen, and explained to lots of people that we would just have to deal with it. The problem, however, is worse than I foresaw with mine priestly Mind Vision.
At any given time, there may be 20 people online, but only 10 people showing up on the "Guild Members online" list. Half the people, 2/3 of the people, maybe only a couple of members, don't show up on the list. This is a pretty big problem for people who want to know who is online - and since we're a social guild, people usually DO want to know who all is online.
It has been suggested by a couple of different people that I start cleaning out the inactive members. I really do hate kicking anyone from the guild - active or inactive. I know a lot of people may just be taking a break from WoW at the moment, or perhaps they are just over with their normal guild busy with things. SAN is supposed to be a guild you can just pop into once every blue moon and have a place to say hello to a bunch of friends.
Unfortunately, it is becoming a pretty big problem for a lot of our members, and I will have to clean out the roster. I will probably start by kicking people out who haven't been on for over a month, and sending them an in-game mail telling them why.
I wanted to post this here so that people know that I really regret having to do this. If you are removed from the guild because you haven't been online for awhile, all you have to do is log on and whisper a member for a reinvite. This does not, in any way, mean that we are trying to permanently remove you from the guild! I'm just tidying up a bit so that the UI is more useful.
Just to reiterate - please do not be upset if your toon is removed from the guild. It is not a big deal at all to invite you back into the guild! I am going to start cleaning house this week. If you are concerned that your toon may be removed, all you need to do is log in.
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Post by valgav on Apr 14, 2010 14:45:14 GMT -5
Just a thought, and it would require some work to check it, but perhaps we should compile a list of people's alts? That way, you can say "hmm.... so and so hasn't logged in a month, but it's Mazgorath's DK."
I just foresee a lot of people switching to an alt to find that they have to get reinvited... again and have to update their info. Not that it's a lot of work to do that.
Otherwise, I think its a good idea to keep the guild roster tidy. There are probably a lot of people who roll a toon because the idea of SAN is neat.. but then never come back.
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Post by grimmtooth on Apr 14, 2010 18:31:30 GMT -5
Huh, I was going "what's the big deal?" until I saw the part tht says you can't even SEE peeps when they're online. Are we sure that's not an addon breaking, say, guild_fu or one of its cousins? If one logs in with addons turned off, is it the same?
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Post by bullcopra on Apr 15, 2010 2:41:55 GMT -5
First of all, the amount of members in the guild shouldn't be a problem, as they will not be online simultaneously. What I would be concerned over is the part where MissM stated that not all people online can be seen as being online. I guess I have to agree with Grimm: it has to be a problem with either BlizzUI or addon, because in my mains guild we have easily 30-50 members online at one time on raid nights and everyone can be seen in the guild_fu without a hitch. Even Guildgreeter could handle those situations without a bug.
Second, the problem with alts is even easier to solve: everyone can change their character's guild notes (and in SAN-EU members can change the officer notes...), so every character would "belong" to someone. I have marked my toons this way, even my main, so everyone checking the guild roster can see it. Chat addons like Chatter read this info and show it in chat, too, so you can see the 'main' of the toon even in chat. Boy, do I love chatter for this!
I hope the situation can be cleared without /gkicks as it would be shame to do against the general idea of SAN.
C out
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Nefernet
Critter
The elf with a twoll inside
Posts: 75
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Post by Nefernet on Apr 15, 2010 3:25:44 GMT -5
It's not a bug, it's just that the standard blizzard UI cannot manage more than 500 people in a guild, the extra people cannot appear in the UI, even if there is only 10 people online.
One solution could be to ask people to remove alts they don't play a lot (we have quite a big amount of alt in San-EU but we don't have problem at the moment...).
Another solution could be to create an extra chan where people would talk instead of guildchat, that way, you can remove alts from the guild, and people with level 1 who come just to talk because they would just need to join the chan to talk with the SAN guildies.
This last solution implies that everyone join the chan, because if not, some people may be left out of the conversations going on...
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Post by bullcopra on Apr 15, 2010 4:41:44 GMT -5
...and have an alt guild for the 'less played' alts.
Another great example on how Blizz has done a miscalculation on the social tools in WoW.
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Post by eldude on Apr 15, 2010 7:41:31 GMT -5
We noticed that it was cleaned up yesterday and for me it was a nice thing to see all members online showing online in the guild list. I think it was a good idea and a job well done. One or two others that were online were being less than happy about it but I think they were low and new and didn't see it longer than we have been putting up with it.
I don't see any issue since a in-game message was sent. I've actually got one or two that I might pull out of the guild simply because one is a banker and the other a rogue who is on hold for the moment... Good job on at least telling everyone about it.
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Post by valgav on Apr 15, 2010 8:20:17 GMT -5
Okay yeah, editing info to include alt status is obvious. I'm a dummy. =P
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Post by Jaedia on Apr 15, 2010 8:57:46 GMT -5
Ouch, didn't even know that could be a problem :< Shame it's had to come to this but that does sound like the best way to handle it.
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Post by Steamynose on Apr 15, 2010 10:07:37 GMT -5
Probably completely offtopic but it's a known problem among the large guilds. There's no limit to the membercapacity but the silly guildwindow only shows 500 members. Which even with my limited rusty pogramming knowledge makes absolutely no sense Since 500 isn't a logically computerwise explainable number. Probably in the user-interface there's a fixed number "500" set for a function that allows the showing of the maximum amount of guildmembers. The best fix for this would be for a programmer from blizzard crack open the code, replace the 500 with a 16bit array so it shows a maximum of 65k guildmembers which is more then anyone would ever need. If he'd know where to look it's probably 5 minutes of work Anyways, so far for my purely hypothetical ramblings, it might as well be a deeply hidden function that could takes months to fix and has a low priority.
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Post by pilfkin on Apr 16, 2010 12:08:18 GMT -5
I ran into this in my first big guild, we begged GMs a few times for a solution, but came up against a brick wall every time. And basically we ran with what Miss M has suggested here. In SAN-EU we have a non guild channel so people in other guilds on the server can drop in and say hi - but I'm 100% sure that everyone doesn't use it. I think it's sending in-game mails, people understanding and accepting that SAN is victim of its own success Pilf x
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Post by Issy on Apr 16, 2010 14:53:43 GMT -5
The only solutions I could offer would be:
1. Remove all alts (using the separate channel so they could talk too) If the numbers still creep above 500 use a /who single abstract noun to see who is online
2. Create a 2nd guild SAN 2, and use the addon that lets 2 guilds see each others guild chat. We did this before a merger with another guild, and it actually works very well - you just have to make sure that enough people run the addon so that chat always relays.
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Post by Issy on Apr 16, 2010 14:57:01 GMT -5
On another note - if the discussion is of a serious nature like this, perhaps it could be highlighted as such? I only noticed this thread today because from the title I assumed it was about something silly, and thus deprioritised it.
And secondly, the name of the guild chat addon would probably help - I think it was Guild2Guild
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Post by Miss Medicina on Apr 18, 2010 6:09:54 GMT -5
I added an exclamation point icon thingie. Very high tech, I know.
What I did was remove toons from the guild that had not been on for over a month, who had no information in their public/officer note. (I actually removed a couple who had notes as well from when I first started removing people) Before that I sent an in-game mail to every single person in the guild alerting them to the situation, what I was doing, and to come to the message boards to see why.
We do have a separate chat channel on the US side, but trying to get every new person to remember to stay in it has been very difficult. I shy away from trying to do anything that would require any kind of addon, even if it would only take a couple of people for it to work properly. I also am not keen on the idea of trying to manage two guilds.
At the moment, we have approximately 325 active accounts. If we ever get to the point where there are just simply that many active guild members, then so be it. People should not feel that they can't roll an alt and join in, or roll another alt. The guild is dynamic and constantly changing, and everyone has the power to invite others into the guild.
It is unfortunate that for whatever reason Blizzard has placed this limitation on guild rosters. I would have simply left it going the way it was, but everytime I logged in I received multiple tells from people about the problem. If you're the person who isn't showing up on the online guildmembers list, it just plain sucks.
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Post by Kattrinsaa on May 7, 2010 8:51:58 GMT -5
when I joined last night, the charcter count was at 498.. so it's creeping back up there.
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