So in Silvermoon City, just before the outside gates, there is an inn called the Wayfarer’s Rest which hosts a lot of local Silvermoon roleplayers. There’s a guild that hangs out there called the Wayfarer’s Tavern. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t do this, but I feel that since they are pushing for recruitment to make up for the mass exodus of their guild members and allied guilds due to poor management, others should be warned. Many members of the guild were leaving already, including guild officers, when a meeting to address the concerns of past and present members and allies of the guild in order to try to help fix them was called by one of the members. She contacted both past and present members of the guild and compiled a list of the issues that lead to their having left or their intentions to leave. Enough of the guild provided input that it was pretty obvious that the guild was dying, but they hoped that their efforts could save it. The end result was a lengthy document that she read to the voice chat as well as provided as a transcript to those who couldn’t be present. The airing of grievances, brought up points such as: members (including officers) being ignored entirely; being expected to abandon exploring new content–and even real life–to tend the bar when other members were present in the bar; belittlement of other players in a massive amount of shittalking that even included other members of the guild on alts that weren’t known to the guild to a degree that members were afraid to bring around alts unknown to the guild; elitism and cliquishness; favoritism and nepotism; and a variety of other important issues. All of these issues had been raised independently of one another at various times, but had been ignored, resulting in the call for this sort of drastic action. Afterward, the guild leader, Tallika, and officers retired to a voice chat, returning after some discussion to give a rebuttal that essentially blamed the messenger for causing drama and trivializing the problems raised. Guild members were told that they were to behave as NPCs at all times while in the bar, and that they were expected to be in the bar as essentially a part-time job, as often as possible. They were told to type “I understand” to indicate that they agreed to this in the discord. None did. As a result of this discussion and subsequent massive mishandling of the situation, approximately two-thirds of the guild quit immediately, and previously loosely allied guilds such as House Starwalker immediately pulled support. The guild leader’s response to this exodus was to ban dissenters from the guild discord and to post an Announcement stating, “I am reopening recruitment,” in order to replace clearly expandable guild members without addressing any concerns of those remaining, despite claiming that the guild was “a family” in several rants prior, as well as during this discussion. Rather than a family, it feels more like a form of imprisonment or a cult.
I feel that the new recruits should be made aware of what it is that they are getting into. Tali and much of the management are lazy, manipulative, and threatening to those they don’t like at their whim, and engage in the encouragement of mass-reporting of those who disagree with them. I understand that this may not be the best forum for this, but I hope that posting this here will warn those that may be considering signing on with the Wayfarer’s Tavern.
At first, this seemed like a good story, gathering information on how to improve.
Then the retort rather than saying, "We hear you, we are going to work on this and that first," was bad.
Then the rest was downhill.
If this is true it's a valid warning.
