Freeing up Guild Property?

[Kerech]

In the past 3 months the membership of the guild I am in has dropped dramatically (like 75%). Most of the people that left have said they are never coming back, but they own guild property in our guild city that is now not accessible for new members to own/develop. Some of these properties are not even developed - they bought the plot/lair and then quit without developing it, so the guild doesn't even get the benefit of the plot. With other plots the guild can still use the machines usually, but there are permission problems that crop up from time to time due to having an inactive owner.

So, the question becomes this: Is there a way the guild master can free up these properties for other active members to use, or transfer ownership of fully built plots from an inactive member to an active one (so silos and buildings could be upgraded for instance)? I was working with our GM last night and we tried to free up an undeveloped lair by kicking the inactive owner from the guild, but now the lair is still owned by him and he's no longer a guild member. The lair has one structure planned on it and it is 0.2% complete - and we only have 2 lairs in our guild city, so one is now totally useless

Has anyone else gotten around this problem? What can we do to resolve it?

[Rowr]

TG was working on a manager for guild leaders to use to manage their guild plots. With the current situation I can only suggest asking EI to manually mark specific plots for sale.

[Death-knell]

well considering they can't even fix account creation problems good luck with this. My guildmaster put a ticket in almost 8 weeks ago and still no resolution

[LaughingOtter]

Until the billing system is fixed and EI can correctly seperate active accounts from inactive ones, any attempt at plot repossession would be A Very Bad Thing.

[Hoberton]

I know of one guild site that main site is owned and all other plots are for sale and the owner of said site has not been online and I have not seen anyone from that guild online either. I am hoping a complete redo of the reclaimations happen again which include guild plots.

[Kerech]

Well, darn. I was hoping there was something in-game we were missing. I told the GM to contact EI and see if customer support could help us out, but it doesn't sound too hopeful.

Thanks for the replies everyone

[agak]

the problem with plot reclamations is that this is only done after a certain period of an account being closed. I havge played some other games that you could own land and or hoursing and there was a small fee that you had to pay in order to keep the land/home if the fee wasnt paid the land/home was automaticaly made available for repurchase -- the new buyer would get all building and/or belongings --- while I dont realy like the idea of a tax on the land/buildings it would seem that even if set to some amount based on size that it would ensure only active players could own land/buildings -- it doesnt have to be a huge fee just something that yu need to pay on a monthy basis -- no paying ahead either
make the system detect if the fee has been paid and if not then wait 15 days and make all things associated available -- this would give the player some time to pay what is due --

[Tantalyr]

Another alternative would be the Ultima Online housing system. You must log in the character who owns the house at least once per month (or week, I can't really remember which) and enter the house to "refresh" it by entering it. If you fail to do so, the house goes "IDOC"--meaning "Imminent Danger of Collapse." When it reaches IDOC stage, you have but ten more days to log in the character and refresh the house. If you don't, then the house "collapses," all items within it fall to the ground for anyone and everyone to pick up, and someone may place another house at that spot.

Obviously, the system wouldn't translate precisely to Horizons, but with massaging the concept might work. For example, a character owning a plot/lair would have to log in every so often and set foot on the plot (or in the lair) or the plot/lair goes up for sale to the public.

[Peaches]

It was you had to log in once a week, and after x amount of time, it was put up for various levels of decay, last one being, in danger of collapse. The downside to that , was people who went away for vacation, ended up returning to no house.

Currently, they are no longer refreshing houses, they are all auto refreshed. However, banned accounts, their houses get deleted now with all items in them. Cancelled accounts, go through the ritual of the phases of decay.

Well, partially true, those houses that have more than one house per account, will still decay if not refreshed, but am not sure how many of those are left now.

[HAG]

Though i think one month would be a good period for the starting of that decay.

[Aaelefein]

Decay, no Decay, Delayed Decay...

While I can appreciate the problems associated with a guildmate buying a community property and not returning...essentially rendering the plot unuseable...

There is a HUGE difference between not logging into the game as frequently as others, and not paying your monthly subscription fee.

If the person in question, is paying a monthly subscription, there should be NO decay of any type...with no chance of their plot being scavenged. Of course this would, should be slightly different for community plots as there should IMO be a mechanism for the Guild leader and or owner of the primary community plot to manage these plots.

That said...for people that let their accounts lapse (non-payment/cancellation) ...give them a grace period of 3 months before starting the decay/reposession clock. Some people have a real life, others have school and or vacations from school, some even have jobs that keep them from logging in weeks at a time, as well as those that might run into financial difficulties from time to time.

For all them and others, a three month grace period is not too much to ask for...especially if it saves them from loosing maybe hundreds of hours building their plot, not to mention any stored resources or loot items.

[Guaran]

Guild subplots belonging to an account that lapses used to be subject to the same reclamation process as any other plot. We've got a few white flagged properties on my guilds' plot.

So all that needs to happen is the normal plot reposession process be resumed.

Assuming there are no bugs. Reposessing a plot that is actually owned by an active account (happened during the very first reclaim) is A Very Bad Thing ™ , and results in a database rollback.

Until the process is fully tested and working, which cannot happen until all billing/accounting issues are resolved, no plot reclamation can take place.

[zayin]

Guild subplots belonging to an account that lapses used to be subject to the same reclamation process as any other plot. We've got a few white flagged properties on my guilds' plot.

So all that needs to happen is the normal plot reposession process be resumed.

Assuming there are no bugs. Reposessing a plot that is actually owned by an active account (happened during the very first reclaim) is A Very Bad Thing ™ , and results in a database rollback.

Until the process is fully tested and working, which cannot happen until all billing/accounting issues are resolved, no plot reclamation can take place.

i really hate so say the same thing over but i agree 100% if you mess with plots you will lose what few customers that you have.