Soldiers of Stonewall?

Hi everybody,

I would like to let you all know that we have finally found a down-side to having two Republic guilds and so, as promised, I am opening up this issue again to get the opinion of everyone.

It seems that the guild banks which are coming in the next week or so (with the 1.2 update) are going to be expensive. Our Resources Officer, KiddKasper, has done some research on the test server and it looks like the first bank tab will cost us 600,000 credits and the price will increase with each subsequent tab. This would be expensive for us as we need to treat all three in-game guilds equally and open up bank tabs at the same time in each guild.

The reason we had to create the Soldiers of Stonewall guild so quickly without a chance to get everyone's input was because we had only 15 character spaces in Knights of Stonewall. We have now begun to remove "unknown" characters (those who have not put their username in their member note) and we are planning to start removing any character which has been inactive for more that 60 days. This will decrease the number of characters in the guilds and remove the urgent need for more space, also the ongoing 60 day inactivity limit will hopefully keep the number of characters in-game below the 500 limit for the forseeable future. We couldn't do this before as we hit the limit within the first month and all the characters were "active".

Contrary to what some people think, we have only lost a small number of members from the guild since launch and the real reason for our inactivity is that our current members are taking a break from the game or have decided not to play anymore. However they have mostly decided to stick with our community and still play with us in other games. We have also never put much effort into actively recruiting outside our website and the SW:TOR site as we did not want to look like we were poaching from other guilds (although I think we were the first one formed in the GLBT community). We will begin active recruitment to ensure that we can keep the guild as active as possible from now on, and we just hope that we are not too successful as we were before, lol.

Therefore, I will get to the point... We would like to re-merge the Soldiers of Stonewall guild's characters into the original Knights of Stonewall guild on the Republic side of the game. As well as allowing us to focus on fully paying for the guild banks in KoS and LoS, we hope that the ability for members to use the in-built "guild" chat function will solve some of the socialising issues (expecially the bugs that randomly kick people from the Kos channel).

What do you all think?

Zepari

Sounds good, I fully agree with your reasons and support a re-merge.

I second the re-merge! It would be nice to see the Troopers and Smugglers who are online and the planets they are on.

Question for you, Zepari or other guild leadership. Is it feasible to merge everyone? Obviously it is since we're talking about it, but will it cause any sort of strain in doing so? Will we be flirting with the member limit? Will we have to re-enter our member note (not major, but people would easily forget)?

Good questions QiqJoe! As I have had to add the majority of characters to the website roster as the guild rosters were updated I feel I can answer those questions. I can perform a search for character names and as long as they have already been added I will be able to find out the owner's forum name and quickly update that for anyone that may forget. Anytime you leave a guild and join another your information will have to be re-added to whatever database that guild uses even if that new guild is within the same organization. I will also have to go into each character's record and change the name of the guild they belong to but again that is not a problem in the least. ;) After the initial information changes that are required, it will be easier for me to make sure the roster information is up to date because I will no longer have to logout of one toon and into another toon in each respective guild to update information. Sometimes that can take a fairly extended amount of time depending on what else is going on with the server and I usually warn anyone I am dealing with that if it takes 2-3 minutes for me to "reappear" please don't worry. I haven't left or forgotten them.... :laugh:

After clearing the rosters of unregistered and/or inactive toons, we will currently have a much larger buffer before we will again hit the member limit set by the game. Originally, that wasn't the case and was what forced the drastic step of splitting the guild without giving the officers time to get member input. I also fervently hope that Bioware will figure out what a mistake they made by setting that limit at 500 to begin with and causing untold grief for all the large guilds in the game. Maybe this will be a "surprise" change as it hasn't been mentioned anywhere in their discussions of future updates. :( We can only hope....for a lot of things... :S

Thanks again for all your excellent and pertinent questions! :cheer:

Finally!! Good idea and long over due.

As of last nite KoS only had 312 members, down from 485. If you remove the folks who have not been on in over 60 days the number goes well below 275. So there will be no need to worry about out growing the cap.

If you move the few active members from SoS to KoS you still will not go over 300, again giving you enough wiggle room in KoS for growth.

Thanks for the info, Intervlet...and the specific numbers, Van! I love the merge. :)

Now I guess the question is what happens with Soldiers of Stonewall? If everyone abandons the guild, does SoS just cease to exist? Is the name still there for us to use if we have the unfortunate circumstance of needing it in the future?

Quote by QiqJoe

Thanks for the info, Intervlet...and the specific numbers, Van! I love the merge. :)

Now I guess the question is what happens with Soldiers of Stonewall? If everyone abandons the guild, does SoS just cease to exist? Is the name still there for us to use if we have the unfortunate circumstance of needing it in the future?

You could always keep a handful of toons in KoS to keep it active, think of it like a skeleton crew, that way if there's a need for a second guild ready made.

I think this is a good idea. Should we switch them over as soon as we can or are we waiting for a bit?

Quote by SaintPlazma

Quote by QiqJoe

Thanks for the info, Intervlet...and the specific numbers, Van! I love the merge. :)

Now I guess the question is what happens with Soldiers of Stonewall? If everyone abandons the guild, does SoS just cease to exist? Is the name still there for us to use if we have the unfortunate circumstance of needing it in the future?

You could always keep a handful of toons in KoS to keep it active, think of it like a skeleton crew, that way if there's a need for a second guild ready made.

One issue I see with keeping the SoS guild is that it will require a dedicated character slot on that player's account. Four people would have to agree to that. Not a problem for me, I have a lowbie toon parked at the GTN keeping an eye on the market. I'd be happy to put him in the SoS guild if that's what leadership decides and needs.

Soldiers of Stonewall will remain just in case we need to use it in the future in whatever capacity. This will be taken care of by the officers and you guys really don't need to worry about using up a character slot to save it :)

To date it seems like those that have responded have agreed with the remerging of the guilds on the Republic side. I, personally, don't see an issue with people being reinvited to KoS is they wish to go ahead.

Sent from my Desire HD using Tapatalk

I'm definitely happy for this to happen. Especially with the knowledge of how much the tabs are going to be. I hadn't been able to login to the Test Server to check myself unfortunately!

I'm relieved to see that everyone is ok with this idea, so far, lol. I'll give it a few more days to ensure everyone gets a chance to comment.

Ltervlet fully explained the way we would transfer characters from SoS to KoS, and I'd just like to add that we would need players to ask to be re-invited to KoS as we can't just transfer the characters when they are offline (and we wouldn't do that without permission anyway). For inactive characters, they will be automatically removed (by Ltervlet, thanks) after 60 days, but active characters need to be transfered by the players themselves.

Please be patient when asking for an invite to KoS from SoS, and it would be wise to ask in the KoS chat channel if anyone can invite you to KoS before leaving SoS. To answer the question about when you can ask for a transfer, there is nothing stopping anyone asking for an invite to KoS now, but I would ask that everyone wait until the weekend so we can be sure that it is what the majority of players want, and so Ltervlet is not swamped (there are more people with invite ability on at weekends normally).

Halish is right that the officers will be keeping SoS as a "spare" guild and we will have our least played characters put there so we can do that. One idea for SoS is that we can use it for crafting members so they can store supplies there, but we would only start buying bank tabs there once we have all the tabs in KoS and LoS, and SoS is clear of characters.

I'll keep my toon in SoS

The guildmaster is the only character that is forced to stay in a guild. If that person wishes to leave, the title of guildmaster has to be transferred to someone else

it would be nice to merge back with the wimpie jedi ;) the need the wits and strenght of us smugglers and troopers :D

i dont mind using a slot to help keep sos open and available if needed at a future date

Only the guildmaster has to remain in the guild to keep it available for future use. When do you usually play Silver101uk? I am usually on from evening EDT(US) to overnight, except on Tuesday evenings. I have been on my KOS toon to be available for anyone that wants to return home to KOS. If that's not a time you can be on, let me know what is a good time for you and I will log on then to extend you a re-invite to KOS. :)

Has this been done, i just rolled a BH and need to join a guild, would that be LOS or SOS?

Bounty Hunter is an Imperial class so you would need to /cjoin LOS and ask for an invite on Imperial side, Seannewboy. :)