Guild Maintenance Problems since UI updates

Community General Discussion
1

I’m guild leader of a fairly large guild (800+ characters) and since the UI changes have had all sorts of problems.

For info, I’m currently posting on an alt, as for some reason my “main” isn’t allowed to post!.

I know that many others are in the same situation as myself, both on the EU and US realms. I don’t know if their original thread regarding these problems has suffered the same fate as ours since the forum updates … there appears to have been a whole bunch of threads that have been randomly locked, and I can’t see why. The thread that we originally used for this conversation appears to have been locked due to the “one month and no input rule” … yet the last post on it seems to have been pulled from much earlier in the thread, and then plonked at the end (20th July posted AFTER 10th November). Guild Management p2 ft Communities - #92 by Poisonenvy-lightbringer

Some of the problems we’ve been encountering seem to be bugs, others seem to have been deliberate changes which, potentially, may have been done with the best of intentions and, for some guilds, may well have had little or no impact, but for others they have caused all sorts of problems.

A lot of issues guilds have been having (or rather, their administrators) have been a knock-on effect of either the integration into the “Communities” interface, or the changes in permissions (“is officer” “is not officer”).

The problems relating to the interface that seem to be currently outstanding boil down to:

  • occasional “lag” between typing into guild chat, and that text showing up on the guild chat channel.
  • occasional disconnect from the battle.net which causes a complete disconnect from guild chat.
  • guild members who choose “show offline” in their launcher, also show offline in the guild roster.
  • occasionally guild members who are offline with one character, but may well be online with another, still show in the “online” guild roster on their offline character (albeit with the “last online” time showing, rather than location).
  • Lag between typing something in a public note, and it showing up in the public note box.
  • A “sorted” guild roster list constantly re-sorts when members go on and offline, making guild roster admin a nightmare.
  • You can no longer multi-sort the guild roster (for member maintaintence I would normally sort first by guild rank, then alphabetically by name within those ranks) - this is now no longer possible.

The problems with permissions seem to be:

  • For guilds with higher fine-tuning of permissions for various ranks, this change removes a lot of their options.
  • We would not want a new member of the guild to be able to amend their public note … that would be reserved for any member of the guild who could invite (officers plus a few ranks below) - now the only people able to amend notes are the person themselves, regardless of rank, and the officers.

I’m sure there were other problems that people encountered, that I’ve forgotten to post here … feel free to add below!

*edit … hmm turns out I can’t reply to my own post … that’s going to make guild recruitment interesting … anyway:

Oh and this is a smaller version of the US megathread: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/the-new-guild-ui-and-permissions-yikes/18758

:joy:

1 Like
2

Hi, just wanted to add some advice about the name issue on the forums.

A few possible fixes are - log into game on character you want to post from and do a quest or something then log into forums again. Change password. Clear cache. Keep logging on and off until it fixes itself. Those a few that have worked for others.

As for the threads locked when being migrated I have a feeling it was ones that had the normal maximum replies but a few have been unlocked I think.

I will delete this comment if you want at a later point so it doesn’t mess your thread up. :slight_smile:

Edit: also you should be able to reply now I’ve replied.

1 Like
3

Just adding to Nefaryas post, regarding the new forums;

  • Log off the forums and log back in to get access to your characaters. Just logging on to the game did not work for me, so if it doesn’t for you either, try what I did.
  • All threads that had been active(replied to) the last 2 weeks were transfered over. All other threads have been locked and made read only.
  • To edit your threads/posts, you need to be logged on to the character you posted the thread/post on. Not sure if this is a bug or intended.
1 Like
4

I’ll try the options above … but for now I’m okay posting with a different character as it’s obviously some problem with the new forums and if other people have been having the same problem, I’m assuming Blizzard will, at some point, fix it.

I had already tried some … including logging on and off, and had been in game with the various characters. I’ll try again when I have the time.

As for the “reasons” you guys gave for the thread being locked …

  • The thread was 91 posts long. I don’t know what the cap is for thread posts before they get automatically locked … but there are threads longer that are not locked.
  • The thread was last replied to, by myself, 9 days ago.
  • There is a post that was made earlier in the thread, on the 20th July, that has been placed AFTER my post of 9 days ago.
  • There are many replies to the thread, including direct quotes of the post that is now showing as the last post, only 13 posts into the thread.
  • Obviously an admin has accidentally moved one of the posts in the thread from near the start of the thread, to right at the end of the thread, triggering the “locking for inactivity” rule.

*edited, because of silly “can’t reply to own post” rules …

I realise it’s not relating directly to the in-game issues for guilds, however, it is pertinent to guilds in respect of recruitment. Normally I’d have created a guild recruitment post in my realm forums (indeed, I did have one that was updated occasionally, had all the information on it and took ages to write … but that seems to have disappeared). With the restrictions in place now of being unable to reply to your own post … if no-one replies to my guild recruitment post, and because I can therefore not reply to it, I simply keep updating the original post … does the “thread getting locked after x time” apply still, or does it take into account the last time it was edited?

So if I created a recruitment post, no-one replied, and I just kept updating the post … would the threshold time for locking it be taken from the date it was originally created, or the last time it was amended?

5

yeyy… finally getting to reply using my main :slight_smile:

1 Like
6

I honestly don’t know if editing the posts will keep the thread from being locked or not but in would imagine it wouldn’t work.

I can understand why they want that system in place to prevent necros though but it does pose issues for people like yourself. Unfortunately it seems a case of a few spoil it for the rest.

I don’t really know what to suggest other than asking for a guild member to help keep it active? Or keep a copy of everything in a word document so you can copy paste the info into a new thread if the other gets locked although that might be pushing the forum rules a bit. Might need an admin to clarify that.

7

This one probably isn’t a bug.

Before appear offline was introduced people were wanting a feature to make them appear offline across the spectrum. You can find threads going way way back, it was a highly demanded feature for a long time.

If you go do some research on this, on the Battle net forum for the app, you’ll find that when the feature for appearing offline was introduced people noticed that they still were appearing online in their Guild and there were numerous posts requesting that the feature extend to Guilds.

It only makes sense that when you appear on one platform offline, thus showing you offline across all games, in particular the WoW battle.net window inside the game, the same logic should apply to a large Guild since the intention is you want to be only contacted by those you specifically contact or write to while appearing offline.

It’s the same in real life, sometimes we only reply to those who have “higher” priority; closer friends, family, loved ones, we leave others who we deem can wait a little bit if we’re busy.

8

I do understand that viewpoint with regard to the launcher “show offline”. I understand that people might occasionally not want to be disturbed, or even have people on their friends list know they were online … however, it seems really odd to me that it would also show offline in a guild. People who play wow have a massive choice of characters to play … they can have characters in many different guilds, in many different realms, and characters outside of guilds. I could therefore understand it if people wanted some alone time, but still wanted to play WoW, they would pick a character not in a guild … and then “show offline” makes complete sense.

But to be deliberately playing a character that is in a guild, and not actually want anyone online in the guild at that time able to see them just seems odd to me. Like deliberately going into a room of people you know, and expecting no-one to see you.

However … to each their own. BUT … what I would say is that we had several members who were NOT aware that this was a thing. To the point where we were doing various troubleshooting trying to work out what the problem was, and it took days to suss it. So … at the very least there should be some infobox or tooltip pop up to say “selecting this makes you appear offline to all your battlenet friends, all your contacts on your friends list, everyone in your communities and everyone in your guilds.”. Or even better … have two different “show offline” … one as is, and one that does not include the guild.

But anyway … that’s really a minor niggle based on people being unaware of the impact of show offline, compared to all the other problems with the updated guild interface.

People not showing up online when they are (and showing up online when they aren’t) are just stuff that you learn to cope with, even tho they seem silly to some.

Stuff that makes running and administering a guild so much harder, is not a minor niggle.

I run a guild with over 800 members. It takes long enough to keep the roster maintained and keep everything running smoothly, even as it was before the changes. I and other guild leaders had plenty of suggestions on how to help make things easier for us … but I think generally now, we’re simply asking for a rollback to how it was before, even if it wasn’t particularly great previously … at least it was better than we have now.

We’re currently limping along maintaining our guilds using the old UI, but with the expectation that will disappear at some point … making our lives VERY difficult.

I realise some of the initial problems have been sorted … sort of … such as the problems with the public notes and guild invites. It’s a “little” better now than it was initially … but it’s still not ideal.

The big thing that I, and a few others, have mentioned, is the fact that the roster just does not stay sorted in the same way. As soon as someone logs in or out, the whole roster seems to rearrange itself.

Imagine having the roster sorted, going through the list methodically to check who needs promotions, who may need removing for inactivity, etc … and every time someone logs in or out, the list re-sorts randomly … my post from the incorrectly locked thread:

Continuing the discussion from Guild Management p2 ft Communities:

It won’t allow me to post the link to the screenshots that I included in my original post … but you can see them if you follow the link to that thread.

9

I’ve been noticing recently a disconnect between the number of people online in my guild … and the number being SHOWN as online in my guild. Temporary “glitches” where we might have quite a few online … I’m viewing the online roster, and then suddenly a whole load disappear …

For example tonight I was looking at it … we had 19 online. Suddenly a whole load disappeared (there were no disconnections during that time) and we only had 4. I know we had more than 4 online … because we’d just been chatting in guild chat. A few seconds later … we were back to 19.

It is just so unreliable and inconsistent.

*Edit … wait … what? I just realised I posted a reply to myself (hadn’t realised initially) … I thought we couldn’t do that … was something I was concerned about in relation to guild advertising posts … is it just that there’s a time limit during which time you can’t reply to your own?

10

okay … its just been pointed out to me as well, that with the new interface we can’t search professions?

We can search within a specific character’s profession … but I can’t find a way of searching to see who can make something specific …

11

It works exactly the same as before:-

  • Press J
  • Click on Roster tab
  • In drop down menu select ‘Profession’
  • I always tick ‘Show Offline Members’
  • Click ‘View All’ next to whatever profession it is you’re looking for something
  • Find the item you are after
  • Click on ‘View Crafters’
12

hmm … there’s something wrong with mine. That’s what I’ve been trying to do, but I didn’t have the “view all” option next to the professions …

I normally access the roster using the UI button. I tested it … used the UI button … no “view all”. Then used “J” … “view all” button appeared. Then went back to the UI button … and lo & behold, the “view all” button was there. Wouldn’t it be nice if it just worked?

I spent around an hour on Wednesday afternoon, trying to fix my guild chat. I couldn’t see it, nor contribute to it. I did the usual process of assuming it was an addon or a glitch … reloaded, switched addons on and off … nothing worked. I could contribute and see all other channels, including officer … just not guild.

Switched to another character - everything was working fine. Logged back into my main … still not working … started browsing Blizz forums to see if anyone else had the same problem, then suddenly after around 5-10 minutes … guild chat just appeared of its own accord.

I just get the feeling that the new guild UI is unstable … and I still haven’t worked out how to actually get the roster to sort, and stay sorted …

13

That is odd. Sounds like you’ve had all sorts of problems with it. I’m not having those issues myself but we do lose guild chat when they pull down the communities system when trying to fix things.

You can still access the old roster system by typing /guildroster. Can you see VIEW ALL going in that way?

14

Yes … it’s almost as if going into the OLD guild roster kicks it into action … so if I’m going into the new interface fresh, there’s no “view all” … but if I then go into the old one, where everything is showing no problem, and then go BACK to the new one … it shows up.

I just get the feeling that the new interface is just not really quite ready … there are bunches of bugs and weird glitches and, basically, stuff that should work a particular way, that no longer does. I just hope they don’t get rid of the old interface until the new one actually works properly (all of the time!).

15

I’m so glad that fixed it!!! I wish they hadn’t made us go to the new communities system. I guess we just have to battle on and keep waiting for improvements.

16

Its more of a workaround than a fix … but I completely agree. I understand in a way why they did it … because on the face of it … “guild chat” is a similar idea to the communities chat. But lumping them together has had major consequences. And it’s just so frustrating not knowing what Blizzard are thinking about this. Whether they’re happy with how it’s going, other than the odd tweak, whether they’re considering doing a big update … what their ideas for the future of guilds is. Because quite frankly so far the lack of input from them leads many people to feel guilds have not only been sidelined, but that people are actually being encouraged not to even bother with guilds. Why would you, when they’re so much more difficult to maintain now?

Which is fine for those who are happy playing solo with the occasional “discord for wow” incorporated … but some of us like the fact that guilds are MORE.

17

Found a new problem with the guild interface. Well … it’s an old problem that got fixed, and is now back again. It no longer shows how long someone has been offline for. Which is unhelpful as one of the things I do whilst maintaining the guild roster, is sort by “time offline” (which got merged into the “zone” column on the new UI) … so that I can see who may need kicking for inactivity.

1 Like
18

I struggled to change guild notes earlier. I actually went in via guildroster in the end to do it.

19

public notes? I struggle with public and officer notes because they seem to have some weird lag on them. You change them, but the change doesn’t happen straight away. Its like you’re having to wait for a background refresh before changes show.

20

Yeah this was the public note. I agree it’s probably lag in some way. I’m just impatient.

1 Like