Changes to the "Topic V.7. WoE and Guild Rules" section of the ToS
For easy reference, I'm pasting the pertinent section of the ToS:
Emblem changes with an intent to look similar to, or in anyway resemble, any active WoE Guild (at the GMs' complete discretion) is illegal. Changing your emblem during WoE for the purpose of confusing another guild is not allowed and may be punishable.
Disabling of the emblem during WoE is not allowed. Any WoE guild (as determined subjectively by GMs) must use an unique emblem during War of Emperium. Emblems with more than 70% of transparent pixels, or resembling mouse cursors or other game sprites meant to confuse the enemy guilds may fall in this category. Characters without a guild, but clearly collaborating with one, as determined by GMs, fall under this rule.
The guild leader is punishable for guild rules infringements. This could range from a warning to jailing of the guild master to a temporary ban, preferably during WoE times. Continued offense will result in guild level lowering, disabling of certain skills for amounts of time, or even the total disbanding of a guild. In the case of infractions deriving from independent action by a player that is not the guild leader, punishment can range from a 1 hour ban to one (1) week ban for the first offense, from one (1) week to three (3) weeks for a second offense, and to a permanent ban for a third offense.
The specific part I want to address is the following:
Characters without a guild, but clearly collaborating with one, as determined by GMs, fall under this rule.
Players deciding to go guildless into a castle should not be held by GM arbitration, as in-game balance already takes care of said choice. The idea of this section of the ToS is to prevent guilds from having an unfair advantage over other competitors. An entire guild having a transparent emblem, while technically impossible due to client limitations in transparent pixels, is an unfair advantage. A guild using an emblem identical to another's to cause confusion is an unfair advantage. A character (or group of characters) choosing to go guildless is NOT providing a guild with an unfair advantage, it's simply a tradeoff, and one that actually comes with huge disadvantages. Not to mention it's a legitimate strategy used to provide supportive Provoke for example.
Let's list the pros and cons of going guildless. Feel free to add whichever I may be missing:
Pros:
- You can "sneak around" more easily, mostly against inexperienced players that don't turn their cameras around, and in the middle of a mess.
- You can break Freeze/Stone Curse by hitting an ally, as well as be broken free yourself.
- You can use certain skills in a supportive manner, like Provoke.
Cons:
- You get hit by every single AoE attack, allied and enemy, which includes your own pre-cast, making you a lot more vulnerable in general, as well as making it borderline impossible to get through your own pre-cast unscathed without having the wizards stop casting just to let you through.
- You are affected by your allied Bard/Dancer debuffs, such as Slow Grace.
- You aren't affected by your allied Bard/Dancer supportive Ensembles.
- You can't flag warp back to defend, vastly increasing the time it takes to rejoin the defence.
- You can be accidentally targeted by your allies' single-target skills, such as Asura, and vice versa.
- You can't attack the Emperium at all.
- You aren't included in Urgent Call. This is a huge disadvantage.
- Currently not present in oRO, but allied Gospel would consider you an enemy and debuff/damage you.
So as you can see, you have to deal with this huge list of disadvantages, just for what? To be slightly less visible? Because it seems to me that that's why it's lumped in there with the emblem rules, just visibility in WoE.
To pretend that a few people going guildless gives the same kind of advantages as having an entire guild use a transparent/copycat emblem is nonsensical to me, and I urge the change back to how the WoE and Guild Rules section of the ToS was before, without that specific passage, because all it does is stifle competition and reduce the amount of possible legitimate strategies to use in WoE, as well as potentially give people a weapon to report players they don't like.